It's November 19th, 2056. Today, Benedict Wiesel is attending a funeral of his choice. To our surprise, it is in a very special place, it is a quiet piece of garden next to the garage of our deceased's neighbor in the south of Wismar.
The new legislation makes it possible. We are at the first private cemetery in the Hanseatic city.
I hope you had a lively week. Now we're live again!
Due to the occasion, we are attending the funeral of the painter Manfred W. Juergens, who died unexpectedly last week. He died at the proud age of 100 in his studio from overwork. Happily he fell to the side while painting at the easel and straight into the padded coffin that had been open for months.
'Blissful death at work. A rare cause of death,' his family doctor, Dr. Gruendgens, told me beforehand.
Now let's attend the funeral. The musical accompaniment has just been taken over by Ulrich Tukur, one of the last survivors of this generation. Juergens loved his accordion playing so much that, 46 years ago, he painted a life-size oil portrait of the entire band.
We experience a quite unusual funeral. At the request of the deceased, his widow sits on her tall, slender horse not far from the mourners and photographs a panorama for the Wismar painter's website for the last time. The horse is also affected. The white horse has been part of the family for several years. He lives in the converted car garage at the orchard behind the house and was recolored for today by the hairdresser Jacky. It's a classy, matt silky black with a hint of blue.
Why is the funeral taking place so late? 'Well', said neighbor Renate: 'This guy was just a loner. He just didn't want to die'. Allow me a few personal words.
It can honestly be said that he died far too young. The painter's last irritating sentence was: 'A small mausoleum, please, one that nobody can enter!'
Who is rolling through the flowerbed there? It is the Hamburg actor Christian Redl in a wheelchair, accompanied by his charming wife Martina. Redl skillfully bluffs. Suddenly he jumps up in an athletic manner and greets those present with few words in his usual grumpiness. The eternal actor quotes François Villon with few tears.
We see Nils C. Freytag and his Monika, who he married last year, coming a little late from Hamburg on fire-red solar bikes. The big band of the district music school 'Carl Orff' plays. Cheerful rhythms can be heard.
Instead of bouquets of flowers, many guests carry their own portraits. Portraits painted of them by the deceased when they were young. Some of them are heavy, large, unwieldy wooden panels, wrapped in bubble wrap. But why only?
In advance, the will was kindly sent to us by the Schwerin notary. In this one can read a last wish of the painter. I quote: 'Not to the museum. In addition, after my death, I would like the gallery walls in the house to be largely deserted. I take almost all portraits of familiar, lovable people with me. May they accompany me on my journey through the darkness.'
Times change. The municipality used to ban flower pots in front of Wismar houses, today it allows graves on private property. The processing of the building application was unusually fast. 'We see a spacious burial chamber here,' enthuses neighbor Thomas Bittermann. He was responsible for the engineering planning, a perfectly bricked, well-lit, two-storey custom-made building measuring 3.70 x 2.50 m.
Honorable painter colleagues such as Karmers and Altmeppen amusedly follow the spectacle while standing on the sidelines. ZEIT witnesses like Ulrich Schnabel, Urs Willmann and Rainer Urban also chuckle to themselves.
The funeral procession is now slowly moving from the gallery in the direction of the gravesite. This was built on the south wall of the esteemed engineer's garage. He had to promise the deceased that he would water flowers and nettles at the grave on Sundays for life.
Still lifes and seascapes now hang in the studio gallery. Juergens' last wish: 'The painted, familiar portraits create a stable basis for the coffin in the crypt'. There is also a more concrete statement in the will: 'All surviving people portrayed please personally bury their portraits that they never acquired. It's too late to buy now. Pictures with animals or plants as well as seascapes could not acquire themselves, so are allowed to survive and continue to brightly decorate the gallery.'
Pastor Herbert Manzei calls up the individual pictures with which the painter would like to be buried.
Ulrich Tukur and the Rhythm Boys sink the heavy plaque of their band portrait, in front of which they played at an exhibition opening in Schwerin in 2021, with a bitter look. Suddenly a shrill interjection: 'Stop, stop!' It is the actor's Berlin notary. Excitedly he calls: 'Here, Mr. Tukur, the proof.' On his holographic pad, he shows the mourners an excerpt from an NDR interview from 2015. In this, Juergens said: 'In case Tukur survives me, he can inherit the panel painting.' What a funeral! The thunderous applause goes to the proud notary.
'Back', calls Tukur. 'Back, boys! Pack it up again! My wife Katharina will make it to our new main residence by the Lake Schwerin in her pickup that night.'
For years, Juergens had been working secretly with his friend, the plumber Holger Wahls, on a hydrochloric acid sprinkler system. Yes, they developed, I like to repeat myself, a hydrochloric acid sprinkler system.
Dear listeners! Due to the size of the panel paintings, the construction work was complex.
The madam, familiar to the painter and once ennobled, is reverently lowering the panel paintings of her former employees. Now the six life-size portraits of whores, standing upright, self-confident and colorful, embellish the outer walls of the burial chamber.
Other guests approach with their portraits. They include Lucy Mae from Venice, Manfred Paul, Dirk Merbach and his daughter Marie from Berlin and Saskia from Alaska. Even the White Dandy from St. Pauli came. He too would like to witness this spectacle.
The legendary Paul Millns is just trying to sink his portrait when the Wismar bookseller Juergen Cremer shouts drunkenly into the crowd: 'Stop! We'll trick the painter!' Under his arm he carries an arm painted in oil. The painter once sawed this off the Paul Millns portrait in order to improve his composition. Cremer triumphs: 'The painter only gets Paul's left arm'. He raises a bulging glass of red wine and pours it down with relish.
The painted mayors now follow. The eternal mayor of Gross Stieten and a former one from Wismar with a short reign.
Excitement next door. Chief secretary Uta changes clothes three times in the neighboring garage. She proudly wears the costumes of the respective portraits. Juergens painted three stunning portraits of her. 'Luckily I wasn't painted more often,' she murmurs to the crowd. She is now standing at the grave smoking and enjoying her first joint of the day.
At the end, the vital Ruth Rupp sings: 'And so comes the good end, everything goes to him in the crypt'. The coffin with the corpse now rests on its over many decades self-made picture mountain.
Allow, dear listeners, another excerpt from the painter's testament: 'In the event of my feared apparent death, an emergency button that is clearly visible even in the darkness of the coffin is to be installed. As a protection against grave desecration, the already mentioned hydrochloric acid sprinkler system will switch on when it is opened from the outside and immediately destroy me and my portraits. Of course, an acid-free opening is possible from the inside at any time'.
Now the burial chamber closes. A small black solar excavator quietly rolls up, fills the grave with sand and then with earth. Drones drop two vibrators. These immediately compact the soil. Wild lawn is rolled out. Many of the parents and grandparents of the gardeners and builders present attended the deceased's dinosaur disco for decades.
The triangular tombstone that the painter has kept there for more than thirty years proudly rolls up from the garage next door. It is the journeyman's piece of a valued Wismar stonemason from the Burgfrieden company. The stone work is an aesthetically slender triangle on lion's paws. The center of the Carrara stone is a glass oval, behind which the painter, in his prime, happily greets the viewer with a glass of red wine. The inscription: 'I fear life is beautiful.' Below is a QR code that leads to the painter's website.
This podcast is also stored there in the live stream. What a tombstone. What a tombstone! Great! Now the mourners are invited to a small buffet on the freshly rolled lawn. Fine drinks are served by the Reuterhaus team.
What is that? Elaborate technology builds up. 'The party goes on!' stands under the projected rainbow. This brief, virtual resurrection was the deceased's absolute last wish. Everything was carefully pre-produced by him as a hologram. Lifelike, he now stands behind his desk like he used to be as a DJ and calls out to the crowd: 'Oh man, that I can still experience that! Here is the dinosaur disco! Dear disco community, let's dance! Ultimately, we have thirteen final hours together ahead of us. Shake the hair of your head!' Nele, Ella and Lina, friends from the neighborhood, cheer. Older people shake their heads in disgust and completely bewildered.
Heavy motorcycles roll up. None of the grieving guests can escape this party. The property is suddenly surrounded by bouncers from Hamburg. During his lifetime, the deceased befriended them in St. Pauli, where he once lived with his wife.
But suddenly: A loud scream echoes through the deep darkness: 'N O!'
It was a nightmare. I wake up in a sweat, struggle out of bed and walk around the house confused. All the pictures are still there.
A look at the computer. I see the date 'Damned! As of today I am retired.'
Surprise!