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SWITZERLAND EXPLAINED

‘Grabesruhe’: What are Switzerland’s strict rules around burials?

Switzerland, as you might expect, has strict rules regarding laying people to rest. They can vary depending on the canton, but Lily Töngi-Andrews explains why people shouldn't expect to rest in eternal peace in Switzerland.

A cemetery in Zurich.
A cemetery in Zurich. Photo by Tomas Trajan on Unsplash

For the unassuming foreigner visiting a Swiss cemetery, they may be surprised to see that many of the headstones will be dated back only 20 to 25 years.

Cremation is the preferred funeral rites in Switzerland, however, earth burials are still a thing – for an alloted time anyway.

More than 80 percent of the deceased, according to the Swiss Funeral Institute, are cremated. Ashes can remain with family members, be scattered over lakes, rivers, favourite mountains, placed in a columbarium or buried in a grave.

READ ALSO: What are the ‘five Switzerlands’ and what do they represent?

For the remainder who are buried in one of Switzerland’s neat and orderly cemeteries, it is not always their final resting place, thanks to Grabesruhe.

‘Time limit’

Grabesruhe translates as graveside rest and means there is a time limit to people’s ‘eternal’ resting peace.

From canton to canton the graveside rest period ranges from 20 to 30 years for the majority of adults that have been placed in a line or row grave – the next grave in line in a public graveyard – and are usually a cost-free option.

A graveyard in Lauterbrunnen, Canton of Bern.

A graveyard in Lauterbrunnen, Canton of Bern. Photo by Mortaza Shahed on Unsplash

Children under 12 years of age have a rest period of between 10 and 15 years, and children under six have eight years. Urns that have been buried are generally left for 10 years before they are removed or covered over. In some cantons it is 15 – 20 years.

Once the time has expired the remains are dealt with according to cantonal regulations. Notices are erected next to the plots to be recycled to advise visiting families that they can clear the graves if they wish. The notices are generally there for a year. Notices are also put in the official gazette. Some relatives may be written to directly if an address can be found.

After the interested parties remove gravestones, plants, adornments, pictures and crosses, the stones that are not taken will automatically be removed by the municipality and ground into coarse gravel for the walkways. The majority of graves are recycled by the cemetery garderners rather than removed by families.

What happens in different areas?

Frau Nicole Waldispühl, from the Friedental Friedhof in Lucerne, advised that at Friedental the remains are left in the grave and new bodies, or urns, are buried on top.

Many private graves remain for longer periods, particularly family graves, as they are paid by family members for an intitial 25 years and then renewable for 5 – 25 years or multiples of 25 years. One family grave has recently been paid to the year 2100. Other graves, once they have received Erhaltungswert, a conservation value, or heritage listing, are allowed to remain where upkeep is taken over by the cemetery/state.

Heritage listed graves that remain undisturbed contain famous people and those that have cultural, commercial, artistic, political and/or beatific value for the cemetery and municipality. Frau Waldispühl said that there are 1,200 graves at Friedental that have been heritage listed.

Other municipalities around Lake Zurich sow the cleared fields with grass and leave them unused for 10 to 20 years. When the fields are reused, graves are then placed according to ‘alternate use’, where an urn burial site becomes a coffin burial site and vice versa. Depending on land available, some fields may be left for 60 to 80 years before reuse.

In some burial grounds, bones and urns are removed, reburied in a communal grave or at the bottom of the new graves interred. Exhumation of the bodies is done en masse and in accordance with health authorities.

In municipalities in Bern, there are communal graves for those who don’t wish to be cremated but buried with no gravestones, plants or memorials. For a fee, names can be added to posts to the side of the plot.

In some cantons, for example Valais, it was common for the bones to be removed from the graves and stored in ossuaries that can still be visited – the most famous is at the Leuk charnel house.

As society moves away from traditional burials, in part due to availability of land and cost, Grabesruhe remains Swiss and efficient.

It does leave the question of how long is long enough for grieving families, and is the peace of the dead observed as bodies are exhumed, or new bodies buried on top, or even as ashes are scattered to the wind? 

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SWITZERLAND EXPLAINED

Why German-speaking Swiss cantons pay money to the French-speaking ones?

Nearly every one of Switzerland’s French-speaking cantons will be receiving financial support from German-speaking cantons in 2025. How does this happen, and why is there such a wealth disparity between the two language groups?

Why German-speaking Swiss cantons pay money to the French-speaking ones?

As outlined in annual data published by the Federal Finance Administration this week, six of the seven cantons where French is recognized as an official language will be receiving support from German-speaking cantons in 2025.

Geneva will the the sole exception – in fact, it’s contributing. 

Overall, 18 out of Switzerland’s 26 cantons will receive money and 8 will pay out to other cantons. In all the total transfer between cantons next year will add up to 6.2 billion Swiss francs.

Valais will be receiving the most financial support per number of residents – 2,469 francs per capita, followed by Jura at 2,229 francs and Neuchâtel at 1,818 francs per capita. 

The three cantons contributing the most – Zug (CHF 3,321 per capita), Schwyz (CHF 1,520) and Nidwalden (CHF 1,081) all recognise German as an official language. The other contributing cantons are Zurich, Geneva, Basel-CIty, Obwalden and Shaffhausen. 

Image: Federal Finance Administration

Why are cantons redistributing funds?

For decades each of Switzerland’s 26 cantons was able to hold onto the entirety of the taxes levied at the cantonal level, under the country’s devolved administration. 

This changed in 2008 when the Federal Council introduced the national financial equalisation mechanism, which had two purposes – reducing inequality in wealth between the country’s cantons, and ensuring that each could fulfil their responsibilities at the same level. 

Essentially some cantons (see below) take in far more in tax receipts than others and the mechanism is aimed at reducing the inequality that creates.

The redistribution also allows cantons to pay for public services which are harder to provide in certain parts of Switzerland than others, due to geographical challenges such as the Alps.

Using a complicated formula that has undergone several revisions, the cantons giving and taking funds are identified, before funds are distributed each year. 

READ MORE: EXPLAINED: Why Switzerland’s cantons are so powerful

So why are German-speaking cantons subsidising French-speaking ones? 

The distribution of specific industries and businesses within Switzerland’s cantons plays a significant role in the disparity. 

The German-speaking cantons of Zug, Nidwalden and Schwyz, who will contribute the most, are each significant centres of economic activity across multiple sectors.

Approximately eight percent of the country’s GDP is generated between these three cantons and it has seen dramatic growth over the past decade.

These three cantons also feature the highest overall concentration of startups in Switzerland, with Zug (13.7 per 1000 residents) in the lead, followed by Schwyz (6.07) and Nidwalden (4.42). 

Additionally, it’s also worth noting that ‘Crypto Valley’ – the concentration of cryptocurrency and blockchain businesses focused on the canton of Zug – is worth approximately $611.81 billion (CHF 548 billion). 

In comparison, many of the cantons receiving funds, in Switzerland’s French-speaking west feature a more specialized economy. 

For example, the cantons of Vaud and Valais, Jura and Neuchâtel are home to a significant proportion of Switzerland’s farms. 

Neuchâtel and Jura also have economies that are focused towards watchmaking and precision engineering. 

READ MORE: EXPLAINED: Why is Switzerland so famous for watches?

There have been efforts to diversify the economies of these cantons and embrace developing industries, such as the life sciences-focused ‘Health Valley’ and autonomous vehicle ‘Drone Valley’ initiatives, centered on the country’s west but these are still in their early years. 

Cantons set own tax rates

This leads to the role played by tax policy. 

Under Swiss law, cantons can set their rates of taxation – and they’re able to use it to continuously draw an influx of business and new arrivals. 

Zug (22.2%), Nidwalden (24.2%)  and Schwyz (25.3%) can afford to set some of the country’s most competitive individual tax rates, as opposed to Valais (36.5%), Jura (39.0%) and Neuachtel (38.1%). 

While not as wide a gulf, the company tax rates for Zug (11.85%), Nidwalden (11.97%) and Schwyz (14.6%) make them a far more attractive investment proposition than Valais (17.12%) and Jura (16.0%). 

Such competitive rates are possible because these ‘richer’ cantons have a wider economic base, diversified across several sectors.

This ensures greater resilience and a continual draw of new arrivals and enterprises, more so than cantons where one particular industry dominates and is subject to fluctuations from outside factors.

So does it run smoothly?

There is a fine balance to strike in the redistribution formula.

“The greater the support given to resource-poor cantons, the lower their incentive to seek to increase their tax base, and the more the resource-rich cantons have to hand over, the less the incentive to enlarge theirs,” Andreas Stöckli of the University of Fribourg told Swiss Info.

In other words the transfer from cantons that tax-attractive to those that are less tax-attractive needs to be well-balanced.

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