Zur letzten großen Reise: Grabsteine und Traueranzeigen mit maritimen Motiven in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in der Gegenwart

Abstract

This article investigates recent developments in the design of gravestones and obituaries with maritime motifs. The illustrated obituaries are a phenomenon which can be traced back a mere one-and-a-half decades and is closely related to the introduction of the computer-supported design of daily newspapers with the aid of desktop publishing programmes - and which has been entirely ignored by cultural studies to date. Among modern-day occupation- and hobby-related illustrations in obituaries, maritime motifs were missing initially, although many gravestones in coastal regions provided models. It was not until 1994 that navigation-related motifs appeared alongside the others, beginning with the Christian-maritime combination of the cross and the anchor. The reception of maritime motifs was slow at first, but soon increased, a development accompanied by a continual broadening of the spectrum of motifs with the intention of recalling the former activities of the de- ceased in seafaring, fishing and other maritime professions or their water-related hobbies. In comparison to the maritime motifs on gravestones, both clear similarities as well as conspicuous differences are discernible. Some of the similarities result from the adoption of motifs previously found on gravestones ("foul anchor", anchor and cross, heart/cross/anchor, steering wheel, sun setting over the sea - with or without a cross). Specific references to former maritime professions cannot, however, be derived from these motifs. Only the texts provide insight into this aspect, and only if the deceased were licensed officers in merchant shipping and deep-sea fishing, or high-ranking naval officers. References to former occupations in cutter or coastal fishery, on the other hand, hardly ever appear in obituaries in either the texts or the imagery. This circumstance is all the more astonishing in view of the fact that, on gravestones, member- ship in these professions is especially apparent, since numerous depictions of small fishing boats and the like are encountered there. The illustration of the fishing cutter was extremely rare until 1989; in the years that followed, however, a striking innovation in gravestone design came about in connection with this motif: the modern product range included Danish cast bronze reliefs, among them two representations of a fishing cutter with sails. The smaller one, a cutter with a modern spray-hood over the fore ship, is meanwhile particularly popular in the circles of cutter fishermen and their families. All in all, the new pictorial design of gravestones and obituaries reflects a substantial aspect of recent maritime-cultural development which demonstrates, among other things, that the repertoire of images, the spectrum of motifs and the use of maritime symbols and identifying signs in the circles of seafarers and fishermen and their families is especially prominent, even today, in comparison to other occupational groups. Moreover, in an extremely recent development, a new group is now making its appearance both in pictorial gravestone design (there still only in isolated cases) as well as in obituary illustrations: the hobby sailor, a category with its own unmistakable motifs from the realm of water-related activities.