Andreas Rosenkranz, a master stonemason and stone sculptor from Cologne, has developed Germany’s first QR-code gravestones and believes that anyone who denies the digital mourning aspect of today’s cemeteries has failed to recognize the changes in society.
How much change do German cemeteries need, and how much courage and willingness to change should cemetery administrations demonstrate? Finding comprehensive answers to these questions seems difficult. But one thing is clear: the industry has been grappling with them for over a decade now. In other countries, even longer: “In Sweden, as early as 1999, a deceased person received a headstone with a URL engraved on it that led to a memorial website. And since 2008, there have been QR codes on headstones in Japan,” says Andreas Rosenkranz. At that time, widespread mobile internet access was still largely uncharted territory in Germany.
To the master stonemason, the news from Japan therefore seemed rather bizarre. Just three years later, his son asked for an iPod instead of a Nintendo. Rosenkranz examined it and found among the pre-installed apps: a QR reader. The news from Japan came back to him, and he was certain that very soon, many Germans would be carrying a cell phone in their pockets. So he heads into his workshop, begins sketching, and develops a sandblasting technique with which he engraves QR codes deep into the natural stone. The result is the prototype of the first German QR gravestone, which allows visitors to access more information about the deceased directly at the cemetery via their smartphones.
However, the design is more visually appealing than that of its Japanese counterparts. Rosenkranz believes the idea urgently needed an aesthetic overhaul: “To me, those plaques in Japan had a strange look—they resembled price tags. Added to that are the German cemetery regulations with their numerous restrictions, with which the QR gravestones had to comply.” The roughly 100 gravestones that Rosenkranz has since erected throughout Germany are therefore different: The QR code is skillfully carved directly into the STEIN in relief and integrated into the overall design of the gravestone. It’s far more beautiful than any sticker. In essence, it’s a counterpart to the traditional gravestone inscription.
“It was precisely in this capacity that the QR code was classified a year later by the German Association of Cities in a recommendation for action. They unexpectedly passed me on the right without signaling by equating the QR code with the gravestone inscription,” says Rosenkranz. As—to quote from the recommendation—“an independent or unifying design element that cemetery administrations cannot prohibit.” Since 2011, the master stonemason has been generating QR codes from a triple-domain that redirect to the respective pages set up by family members. “This gives us a short, concise code that, for example, can be partially covered—say, by a quarter—if it looks better design-wise, or remain readable even when weathered.”
The first gravestone Rosenkranz erected in 2012—featuring a cross-shaped QR code—was followed by other ideas, such as the QR stele, the QR base stone, and QR code inlays. They can be incorporated into existing gravestones. Rosenkranz not only wants to combine modern technology with memorial design, but—like many of his colleagues in the past—he has often faced a space constraint: “Anyone standing in front of one of those small urn graves can understand this: Where are you supposed to put the STEIN that provides personalized information about the deceased?” Rosenkranz is tired of the limited “business card” approach, especially in an age when there’s an infinite amount of space available in the virtual world. For relatives, the QR code also sometimes takes the pressure off of having to know exactly, shortly after a death, what the headstone should look like and what it should say about the deceased.
Read more in STEIN 5/2019.
