| Abstrakt: |
Latvian burial places are landscape cemeteries situated in parks. The exemplary Meža kapi (The Forest Cemetery) cemetery was founded in 1913 borrowing the design of the Olsdorf cemetery in Hamburg. Individual tombs are placed with no pronounced regularity; there are no marked boundaries between the tombs. Purposefully the cemeteries organised in the style of Meža kapi are designed for promenades. A characteristic headstone is a slab preserving some natural configuration and carrying a laconic inscription. Often an image of one or two flowers, leaves or a branch of a tree is depicted. In coastal regions, a wave, a gull, a lighthouse, an anchor used to be engraved. The list of the used professional insignia is rather short: doctors, seamen, military persons. Traditional ornaments connoting Latvian ethnicity were used rarely in 1988-1993. This research has found no regularity in the usage of images. The first decade of this century has brought about a range of visual novelties. Expanded sections of the old cemeteries are located outside the woods, in open space. Regular geometric arrangement of tombs contrasts the irregular landscape cemeteries. Two trends of the headstone design reflect the extreme social inequality of this country. Low-income families acquire mass produced imported small headstones, affluent citizens prefer larger granite steles. In both cases the individual tombs are clearly marked off. These trends attest to a rupture with the Latvian tradition: severe “death space” with the dominating black granite headstones draws an obvious boundary between life and death and discourages the promenades. A convenience sample of this research however does not permit inducing the future of commemorating practices in Latvia. A field research is needed to realize whether the social representations of bereavement change along with the changes in the cemetery design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
