Things to Know About Dying in Basel

Helen Baumer
Sep 23
6 min read

Did you know that residents of Basel are entitled to free-of-charge funeral services? Or that deaths have to be reported to the Basel City Gardens’ Office – the Stadtgärtnerei –within two days? Or that Basel’s main Hörnli cemetery is the largest in the whole of Switzerland? These are topics that people are not always keen to discuss, but this article aims to help you get a better understanding to be able to cope through a difficult time.

First Steps After a Death

When someone dies in Switzerland, the death must first be confirmed by a doctor. He or she will fill in a medical confirmation of death form (Todesbescheinigung).

If the person dies at home, you will need to contact a funeral home to pick him or her up. There are a number of funeral homes in Basel, and you have a free choice between them. However, if you want to qualify for the free services offered by the city you must call the company Wicky & Partner.

Within two days you must register the death at the Stadtgärtnerei (the city’s dedicated Funeral and Burial Office run by Basel City Gardens’ Office). To report a death to the Stadtgärtnerei, whose offices are located at Hörnli cemetery in Riehen, please call 061 605 21 80.

Reporting to the Basel Stadtgärtnerei

Photo: Basel Stadtgärtnerei — Photo: Basel *Stadtgärtnerei*

The Stadtgärtnerei not only registers the death but also provides extensive support services.

At the Stadtgärtnerei, there are a number of staff who are multilingual and who are able to assist families in English. All the services of this department can be found online here. You can also order a death certificate online here.

When you report the death, they will ask whether you prefer cremation or burial of the coffin. Then they will fix the dates of cremation or burial, as well as the funeral. The Stadtgärtnerei will also make the necessary reservations for you, such as booking a cemetery chapel if you wish the funeral to take place there.

If the family chooses a funeral at one of the cemetery chapels, the time set by the Stadtgärtnerei for the funeral ceremony will depend on a number of factors. If there is to be a burial without cremation, the regulations specify that this must take place within seven days of death. Since interment of the body often takes place just before or just after the funeral ceremony, this will be a major determining factor with regard to timing.

The Hörnli cemetery is the largest cemetery in Switzerland, with many funeral bookings, so that coordination of timings demands some flexibility. Before you agree a date, you may want to check the availability and time requirements of your funeral celebrant, if you have decided on a celebrant-led ceremony.

Free Funeral and Burial Services

What are the free services provided by the city of Basel?

All residents of the canton of Basel Stadt are entitled to free transport to a Basel cemetery (unless the person died outside the canton), a simple Basel city coffin, laying out of the body, cremation, and the use of a cemetery chapel for a funeral lasting no more than 45 minutes. If you want to take advantage of the free transport and Basel city coffin, you need to contact Wicky & Partner, who are Basel City’s contractual partner. They can be reached at 061 813 24 00.

The Bestattungsamt (the city’s dedicated Funeral and Burial Office) at the Stadtgärtnerei provides organ music free of charge for these 'free' funerals. It has a team of organists with a dedicated library containing over 1000 pieces of music of varying kinds.

In addition, 'free' funeral services include burial in a communal grave or a standard grave. More about these different options later.

It is worth noting that 'free' burials and funerals are not available in all cantons of Switzerland. In Berne, for instance, this service is only offered in cases where burial costs are not covered by the estate of the deceased. This is judged to be the case where the estate amounts to less than CHF 8000. Families may then be faced with very high costs, sometimes exceeding CHF 20,000.

Why does the situation differ in other parts of Switzerland? The reason is that procedures for burials and funerals in Switzerland are regulated at a cantonal and municipal level. Whereas in Basel, as in some other Swiss cities like Zurich and St. Gallen, funerals are arranged by the Bestattungsamt, in some other areas of the country, funeral homes are in charge of the arrangements.

Different Kinds of Graves

What do you need to know when choosing a grave?

The first thing to note is that burial in a cemetery is obligatory for all people who are not cremated. However, the great majority of people in Switzerland are in fact cremated, around 90%. In such a case, there is almost total freedom as to where the ashes are buried or scattered. This may be in a city cemetery, but other possibilities are woodland cemeteries, rivers, lakes or even high up in the Alps.

For those who choose a cemetery burial, a Gemeinschaftsgrab (communal grave) is very popular in Switzerland. Nowadays, about 40% of Swiss choose this form of interment. Communal graves are usually lawn areas within a cemetery where ashes are buried anonymously, although some of them have engraved plaques by the side which bear the names of people interred there.

If the family choses a standard grave for coffins or urns, they may incur additional charges for items such as a gravestone and care of the grave.

One special feature of standard graves in Switzerland which surprises many people who have grown up elsewhere is that they do not remain in the cemetery for ever. You won’t normally find a jungle of old tombstones dating back for centuries, as you might do in an old English churchyard. Graves in cemeteries are generally cleared after twenty years, and families have the option of keeping the gravestones. The clearance only affects the top layers of earth and the bones below are untouched.

Construction of Switzerland’s Largest Cemetery

How did Basel’s main cemetery come to be the largest in Switzerland?

The Friedhof am Hörnli was constructed in Riehen from 1926 to 1932 when it became obvious that the smaller cemeteries at Wolf, Kannenfeld, Horburg und Kleinhüningen no longer had sufficient capacity. The new cemetery included a crematorium. This replaced Basel’s first crematorium built in 1931 at the Horburg cemetery in Kleinbasel, which was subsequently closed. The new cemetery was planned to accommodate a future Basel population of 250,000 to 300,000 and much of the construction work was done by the unemployed.

Interestingly, it seems that the Hörnli area has a long tradition of burial, since Roman urns for ashes were found at the time of construction, and there was even a Roman manor on the site.

The cemetery's layout covers an area of almost 124 acres with 12 distinct sectors for 40,000 graves. It is so big that it has its own internal bus service. Famous Basel residents buried there include Karl Barth, Karl Jaspers and Jacob Burkhart, whose remains were moved there in 1936 from the old Wolfgottesacker cemetery.

Hörnli cemetery has a Muslim burial area where graves are oriented with the face of the deceased pointing towards Mecca. These graves are also free of charge to Basel residents.

Most striking is the complex of six chapels of varying sizes, accommodating between 56 and 200 people. The buildings are constructed in neoclassical style and are located on an impressive raised terrace.

The Hörnli cemetery also has a museum of supulchral culture, the Hörnli Cemetery Collection. It contains many objects of Swiss burial culture including large horse-drawn hearses, grave crosses, and machines that were used in the cemetery. It is generally open on Sundays.

Other Cemeteries in Basel

Apart from Hörnli, other cemeteries in the city of Basel include the historic Wolfgottesacker – or Wolf burial ground – named for the wolves which were common in the area until the 17th century. The Wolfgottesacker opened in 1872 and many prominent Basler of the 19th century are buried there. Since 1980 burials there have been restricted to family graves, and in 1995 the cemetery became a protected monument.

The Jewish cemetery is located at Theodor Herzl-Strasse in the west of the city, near the French border. It was established in 1903.

In addition, there are cemeteries in most municipalities in Basel Land, and a number of them such as Arlesheim and Pratteln have their own chapels. At the cemetery in Bettingen, administrative functions are carried out by the Basel City Stadtgärtnerei.

Helen Baumer

Helen grew up in Ghana, the UK and New Zealand. For over 45 years, she has been living in Switzerland, working as an editor and business translator before qualifying as a funeral celebrant in the UK and Switzerland. Her company, Swiss Funeral Celebrant, offers personalized English-language funeral ceremonies in all parts of German-speaking Switzerland.

Website: www.swissfuneralcelebrant.com