IN_FINITE. Living with Death.

IN_FINITE
LIVING
WITH
DEATH

IN_FINITE
LIVING
WITH
DEATH
If we tell the story of the universe within a timespan of
twenty-four hours, Homo sapiens appears only in the final
second. According to scientific calculations, the universe
is 13.8 billion years old. The first traces of life in the form of
bacteria-like single-celled organisms date back approximately
3.8 billion years. Homo sapiens has been verifiably
living on Earth for some 300,000 years.
pp. 2–3
Star cluster Westerlund 2
(image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope)
The star cluster is located in the Milky Way and is
approximately 20,000 light years away from Earth.
Its estimated age is one to two million years.
pp. 4–5
Cirrus Nebula
(image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope)
The Veil Nebula is approximately 2,100 light years away from
Earth and is one of the best-known remnants of a supernova.
This occurred when a star exploded some 8,000 years ago.
pp. 6–7
The centre of the Milky Way glowing in dust
(image taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope)
The Milky Way is our home galaxy, within which the solar
system containing Earth is located. It consists of hundreds of
billions of stars and is approximately 13.6 billion years old.
pp. 8–9
Earthrise
Earth, the place of origin and home of all living creatures
known to date, was formed approximately 4.6 billion years
ago. The photograph was taken from the Apollo 8 spacecraft
in 1968.

CONTENTS
14 Foreword
Hartmut Dorgerloh
16 Introduction
Detlef Vögeli
THE HEREAFTER
22 IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?
24 Four Ways to Live for Ever
Stephen Cave
29 Contemporary Notions of the Hereafter
Félix Ayoh’Omidire / Esther Hirsch / Kadir Sanci /
Jasmin El-Manhy / Vilwanathan Krishnamurthy / Thien My /
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche / Bhai Kashmir Singh / Pir Hasan Doğan /
Mario Vázquez / Mark Benecke / Emil Kendziorra
54 Dead and Alive
Klaus Bo
DYING
70 WHAT IS A GOOD DEATH?
72 Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures
Helaine Selin and Robert M. Rakoff
75 World Death Conference
Rafael Ernesto Mamanché González / Noreen Chan /
Kodjo Senah / Aysel Erki / Anurag Hari Shukla / Myriam Rios /
Mike Kelly / Hadley Vlahos / Bukelwa Sigila / Rachel Ettun /
Patrice Dwyer / Thích Thiện Nguyện
DEATH
100 WHAT HAPPENS AT THE FINAL MOMENT?
102 “The last wave of elec trical discharge before death is
an enormous event”
Interview with Jens Dreier
THE MORTUARY
110 WHAT DOES HUMAN DIGNITY MEAN BEYOND DEATH?
112 Living with the Dead. Living with Death
Liv Nilsson Stutz
118 Care for the Dead
123 Autopsy of the Conditions of Death across the Globe
136 The Names behind the Numbers
148 “It’s inhumane to let people die this way”
Interview with Cristina Cattaneo
GRIEF
152 HOW DO WE FIND SOLACE?
154 “Grief is a messy, painful affair”
Interview with Julia Samuel
OPEN END
160 WHAT WILL REMAIN?
162 On the End of Evolution
Matthias Glaubrecht
168 Cabinet of Extinct and Endangered Species
180 The Democracy of Species
Robin Wall Kimmerer
184 “The distinction between human history and natural
history is no longer tenable”
Interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty
188 Credits

INTRODUCTION
LIVING WITH DEATH.
A HUMAN DRAMA
Detlef Vögeli
“This is the paradox: he [man] is out of nature
and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet
housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that
once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to
prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien
to him in many ways – the strangest and most repugnant
way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay
and die.” 1
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Homo sapiens is probably the only animal that knows it
will die. Only humans are aware of their own existence –
and therefore also of their vulnerability and transience.
We know that our life is finite; and at the same time, like
all living things, we have an instinctive drive to survive.
We must live with death.
The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that
the fear of death determines all human behaviour. This
fear and the longing for immortality are the main driving
forces of human activity. Both the noblest and the most
repulsive forms of human endeavour stem from the
awareness that we are mortal. The knowledge of death
has shaped the course of human history, giving rise to
culture, civilization, science and world views. Humans
have woven stories and rituals to make the inexplicable
comprehensible, the unbearable bearable, and to give
meaning to our finite lives.
The scientific-biological understanding of physical
death as the end of human existence that prevails in
enlightened, secularized societies is more recent.
According to his standard work on the history of death
published by French historian Philippe Ariès in 1977,
death had been “expatriated” from modern Western society
in the course of the 20th century: “Until the age of
scientific progress, human beings accepted the idea of
a continued existence after death.” 2 Death, he states, is
integrated into the cultural narratives of society, a part of
the social world of meaning. Ariès describes pre-modern
death as “tame” and modern death as “wild”. 3
Despite all scientific progress, death remains a phenomenon
that is beyond our understanding. We know
less about the moment after death than about anything
else. Death is perhaps the last inaccessible frontier of
knowledge-based society.
Talking about death requires allowing and enduring
polyphony and ambiguity. To ponder one’s own death
and finitude is to reflect on the human relationship to
the world, a locating of our lives within the community,
within society, within the universe. When we talk about
ideas of life with and after death, we are talking about
world views – beyond right and wrong. The knowledge
of the transience and fragility of human life and all living
things confronts us with existential and ethical-moral
questions.
The contributions in this book are an invitation to approach
the finiteness of life from various perspectives.
They offer insights into different worlds of imagination
and experience. Documentary contributions from the exhibition
in_finite. Living with Death are complemented by
introductory essays and photo spreads. The focus is on
the question of our personal and social relationship with
finite nature. The publication spans an arc from individual
death to the impending extermination of the species
Homo sapiens as a result of the sixth mass extinction.
Historical and cultural evidence suggests that humans
have always done everything possible to postpone
or overcome death – both factually and symbolically
( Stephen Cave, p. 24).
In many cultures, death was and is understood as a
change of state, a transition into another form of existence.
The promise of a life in the hereafter provides
meaning and orientation – be it the idea of a paradise
in Islam or Christianity, a moks· a in Hinduism, nirvana in
Buddhism, or an ancestral world in the Yoruba religion.
The aim is to lead a good life according to certain rules,
to follow one’s personal dharma, to live in a God-conscious
way. Death embeds the individual within a larger narrative,
within a cosmology that provides a framework for
behaviour and promises existence in a better world as a
reward (Contemporary Notions of the Hereafter, p. 29).
Dying and death are universal facts; the way we deal with
them is culturally and individually shaped (Helaine Selin,
Robert M. Rakoff, p. 72). What counts in the last days,
hours and minutes before death? What do people regret
on their deathbed? What comforts them? How universal
is the process of dying? What role do cultural and reli gious
beliefs play at the end of life? Twelve individuals who
accompany others to death at the end of their lives talk
about their experiences and rituals (World Death Conference,
p. 75).
The neurologist and stroke researcher Jens Dreier
has observed what happens in the brain during the final
phase of dying. He speaks of the final wave of release
before death. What happens after death at the level of
consciousness remains a mystery: “Everything that is
accessible to us happens while the patient is still alive.
What might happen afterwards is not accessible to science”
(Jens Dreier, p. 102).
Rituals can provide comfort during the process of dying
and beyond death. The bioarchaeologist Liv Nilsson
Stutz examines how the universal crisis of death is dealt
with in different cultures and the significance of the ritual
care of the corpse. Behind the diversity of funeral rituals
in different cultures lies a universal human need in the
face of death. Beneath the surface, she explains, “we
also discover that our vulnerability is the same, and the
need to make sense of the world and what is happening
to us is a shared human condition. It is in these moments
that we can see ourselves in the other, and the other in
ourselves. It is encounters like this that we can begin to
grasp our shared humanity and the responsibility that
that entails” (Liv Nilsson Stutz, p. 112).
Death unites us – and death divides us. Although no
one is privileged enough to escape physical death, we
are not all equal in the face of death. Social and geographical
origins determine statistical life chances.
Living conditions are also reflected in the conditions of
death. Hygiene, affluence and medical care, as well as
social and political conditions, determine how directly
we are at the mercy of death. We are all living longer than
ever before. However, the gain in lifespan is unequally
distributed. People born in Nigeria, for example, have
a life expectancy of less than fifty-three years, while in
Germany it is currently over eighty years. People in the
poorer regions of the world are already, and will continue
to be, the main victims of climate change (Infographics,
p. 123).
We count the dead and investigate the causes of
death in order to better protect human life in the future.
According to international humanitarian law, the dead
must be identified and buried. The forensic anthropologist
Cristina Cattaneo has been working since 2013 to
identify the nameless people who drowned in the Mediterranean
Sea while attempting to flee to Europe. Identifying
the dead is a question of human dignity – but it
is also important for the bereaved so that they can have
certainty and say goodbye (Cristina Cattaneo, p. 148).
In psychology, “ambiguous loss” is the phenomenon of
losing a loved one without knowing whether or not they
are still alive. This uncertainty delays the grieving process
and can lead to unresolved grief. “Grief is the most
intense emotional pain we know,” explains the psychotherapist
Julia Samuel. She has been accompanying
people in grief for more than three decades. In an interview,
she explains how we can live with this pain – and
why we should once again give death and mourning more
space in our society (Julia Samuel, p. 154).
However, death does not fit into an enlightened, rational
world – not into the idea of the mastery of nature,
according to which there are no natural limits that cannot
be overcome at some point by science and technology.
The successful development of Homo sapiens is also a
history of this idea. The discovery of fire gave humans
more energy than their muscles could provide. Today,
16 INTRODUCTION DETLEF VÖGELI 17

we burn as much oil, natural gas and coal worldwide in
a single day as was created over the course of 500,000
years. 4 These fossil fuels are the drivers of economic
growth and prosperity – a finite resource, the product
of plants and animals that died millions of years ago.
Humans are moving both within and beyond their natural
limits. They use three-quarters of the Earth’s surface
and two-thirds of its oceans and have thus become a
planetary force that is upsetting the balance of natural
processes that are billions of years old. An estimated
one million species are threatened with extinction. The
decline of biodiversity also threatens the very basis of
human life (Matthias Glaubrecht, p. 162). We have become
our own gravediggers.
Are we thus at the beginning of the end of human
history? The Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty is “not
optimistic, but hopeful” – because human beings are
capable of learning. He suggests broadening the global
perspective on the world to include a planetary view that
decentres humanity and understands its history as part
of natural history (Dipesh Chakrabarty, p. 184).
The stories we tell about ourselves and our relationship
to the world are among the most powerful tools we
have as humans. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a plant ecologist
and member of the Potawatomi people, calls for combining
Indigenous wisdom with science to reform our
relationship with nature. She wants to bring ancient stories
to life, stories in which humans do not stand at the
top of a hierarchy as the purported crown of creation,
but rather exist in a symbiotic interdependence with all
living things; as part of the biosphere, dependent also on
the flourishing of the non-human living world (Robin Wall
Kimmerer, p. 180).
How can we live with the awareness of our natural
transience and the vulnerability of all living things? How
can we live better with the responsibility that comes
with this knowledge? What cultural narrative helps us to
channel our fear of death in constructive ways? Or, in the
words of Ernest Becker: “What is life-enhancing illusion?”
5 – for us personally, as a community, as a society,
as a species, and for the planet?
This book, like the exhibition, is rich in experiential
knowledge. Many thanks are due to the people from
Berlin’s urban society who shared their ideas about death
and a piece of their lives with us, as well as to the palliative
care providers from around the world for sharing
their touching and enriching encounters, for giving us
insight into their experiences of caring for the dying
and thus a “glimpse of human nature” (Noreen Chan,
p. 78). These conversations and encounters would not
have been possible without the support of numerous
medi ators, translators and interviewers from around the
world. My express thanks go to all the authors for their
contributions and expertise.
My special thanks go to the curatorial team, my “Circle of
Trust”, Gesine Last and Jan Zappe, as versatile contributors
and active thinkers for their invaluable support on
various levels, Kathrin Haase for her support in researching
the protagonists for the World Death Conference, and
Yvonne Zindel for researching the diverse protagonists
from Berlin’s urban society with their different conceptions
of the hereafter.
Last but not least, my thanks are due to the Humboldt
Forum Foundation: General Director Hartmut Dorgerloh for
his great trust, the exhibition team led by Anke Daemgen,
David Blankenstein and Frank Meißner, as well as Sibylle
Kussmaul and Marc Wrasse from the Education and
Outreach Department for their support, Susanne Müller-
Wolff as the person responsible for the publication for
her careful planning, and Barbara Martinkat for her stylish
image editing.
Thanks also go to Sahar Aharoni, whose skilful design
has made this book look so inviting, to Barbara Delius for
decisively enhancing the publication with her critical and
constructive view of the big picture and her unerring eye
for detail, and to Danko Szabó for his copy editing.
1 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, London 1973, p. 26.
2 Philippe Ariès, Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death [1977], trans. Helen
Weaver, New York 1981, p. 95.
3 Ibid., p. 610.
4 Jürgen Renn, “Das Anthropozän und die Geschichte des Wissens”, 28 February
2022; ww.br.de/mediathek/video/prof-dr-juergen-renn-das-anthropozaen-und-die-geschichte-des-wissens-av:5dce82a1ebea9c001ad6f8bd
[accessed on 30 January 2023].
5 Becker 1973 (see note 1) p. 158 [emphasis in the original].
18 INTRODUCTION DETLEF VÖGELI 19

DEATH
WHAT HAPPENS
AT THE FINAL
MOMENT?
What happens at the moment of death? Does the light at
the end of the tunnel actually exist, and where does it come
from? When is a person dead?
Death is the final certainty in life. But when exactly a person
is dead remains uncertain – the time of death cannot be
clearly determined scientifically. What happens at the
moment of (brain) death on the level of consciousness is
a mystery. There are, however, insights into what happens
in the brain during the last moments of life. Here, observations
from neuroscience about the great wave that ushers
in death and reports from people with a near-death experience
are similar.

“THE LAST WAVE
OF ELEC TRICAL
DISCHARGE BEFORE
DEATH IS AN ENOR-
MOUS EVENT”
Jens Dreier
In an interview with Gesine Last und Detlef
Vögeli, the experimental neurologist Jens Dreier
talks about processes in the brain in the last
minutes of life.
You’re a neurologist and a professor at the
Center for Stroke Research in Berlin. How did
you become an expert in the physiological processes
of dying?
The Center has very many patients who have had
strokes – which is an area I’ve been working on for many
years. There are two main types of stroke. The ischaemic
ones result from insufficient blood flow. And the haemorrhagic
ones are a consequence of blood leaving the
circulatory system and accumulating in the brain’s tissue
or on its surface. I’m especially interested in this second
type of stroke. Cerebral haemorrhages are caused, for
example, by the rupture of an aneurysm. At the rupture,
blood leaves the circulatory system and accumulates on
the brain surface. This initial event is very dangerous
for the patient. In addition to the damage that can occur
immediately from the bleeding itself, there will often be
subsequent strokes for about two weeks thereafter.
These subsequent ones are ischaemic, and are known as
delayed strokes. The mechanism underlying them is very
complex, and that is my actual area of research. Delayed
strokes worsen patient outcomes considerably. A major
problem is that patients are often not conscious when a
delayed stroke develops, which makes it extremely difficult
to start treatment at the right time.
What does that have to do with dying?
The processes that occur during a stroke also occur in
a similar form during dying. If someone suffers a stroke,
nerve cells in a certain part of the brain die. If the whole
person dies, all the nerve cells in their brain die. Our research
includes animal studies as well as studies in patients
in the intensive care unit (ICU), where we perform
invasive neuromonitoring. For example, we continuously
record the electrical brain activity. If certain changes in
electrical voltage occur, they tell us that the patient is
at risk of delayed stroke at that moment. Some of the
patients we have monitored at Charité in Berlin or at our
partner facility at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio
have died during monitoring from complications of their
severe underlying disease. We were thus able to record
what happens in their brains when they die. The processes
that take place during a stroke and during dying
are closely related and can therefore be measured using
the same methods.
What processes do you mean?
First of all, it is important to note that there are certain
elements that always occur during dying, even if they do
not always occur in the same order. The most striking
feature of our recordings are enormous waves, the socalled
“spreading depolarizations”, which I will describe
in more detail in a moment. They occur during strokes
and also during death. Although they are not the only
mechanism, they are the most important in the transition
from life to death.
You said the sequence isn’t always the same.
But does the process of dying still follow something
like a script?
Yes. There is always a phase in which the neurons are
still alive but transitioning to a different functional state.
And then there is the phase in which they actually die off,
which takes a relatively long time. In ICU patients, the
major differences are between death caused by cardiocirculatory
arrest and death caused by death of the brain
alone, although the rest of the body continues to live. The
latter is often simply called “brain death” and refers to
a condition in which the patient is ventilated and has an
intact circulation and only the brain is no longer supplied
with blood.
Cerebral swelling is the reason for this. Because the
brain doesn’t have much room to expand in the cranium,
pressure rises in the brain. And when brain pressure exceeds
systemic blood pressure, blood flow to the brain
fails, which is incompatible with life for that individual
although the rest of their body lives on in a biological
sense. Both cardiovascular arrest and brain death are
associated with spreading depolarizations but their patterns
are quite different.
What time frame are we talking about for the
wave and for the death of neurons in the brain?
When there is a sudden cardiac arrest and the heart
stops beating completely, there may be a period when
there is even some increase in brain activity. This ends
after 30 or 40 seconds. Crucially, the activity ends by
strongly inhibiting the neurons, but they remain alive and
electrically charged. In this way, the cells save energy.
However, they continue to consume a little energy until
at some point they no longer have enough. Then the
energy-dependent ion pumps in the cell membranes fail,
and a tsunami of depolarization begins. Importantly, this
tsunami is not death itself, but rather the wave triggers
processes that lead to neuronal death with a significant
time delay. In an adult with a normal body temperature,
we would say that in a sudden cardiac arrest without
resuscitation, neurons begin to die about five to ten minutes
after the circulatory arrest.
Could we say it’s like a program that follows a
certain logic?
Yes, I think one could describe it as a type of program.
A death that occurs naturally typically follows the cessation
of cardiovascular and respiratory activity. If, for
example, breathing stops first, the heart also stops working
after a certain delay because it is no longer supplied
with the oxygen necessary for pumping. All the organs,
including the brain, will then no longer be supplied
with blood. That is why resuscitation is so important. If
someone pushes the chest down forcefully and rhythmically,
restoring at least a little circulation that pumps a
small amount of blood through the brain, it makes a big
difference. Minimal blood supply to the brain through
resuscitation delays neuronal cell death. The earlier resuscitation
is started, the greater the likelihood that the
person’s nerve cells will survive.
How do the nerve cells respond when circulation
stops?
First of all, they briefly seem to show a changed rhythm.
At this point, the nerve cells are not yet in a depressed
state. Only after about 30 seconds are they then
switched off. Although the inhibitory transmitters now
dominate, tiny amounts of both excitatory and inhibitory
transmitters continue to be released. An EEG (electroencephalogram)
then shows a flatline, but this does not
mean that nothing more happens during this phase. According
to our measurements, another 13 to 266 seconds
pass from the moment when no more brain activity can
be detected to the point at which a spreading depolarization
sets in, which implies an immense loss of electrochemical
energy.
A pivotal point.
102 DEATH JENS DREIER 103

Absolutely. When the wave sets in, processes begin that
are toxic for the nerve cells. The clock starts ticking. An
enormous stress begins for the cells. For example, the
nerve cells and their processes swell enormously, which
you can observe under a two-photon microscope.
What exactly happens when this wave is unleashed?
This wave is truly a colossal event. Neurotransmitters are
released en masse. There is actually no neurotransmitter
that is not released during this phase. The wave spreads
slowly throughout the brain. This releases a lot of electrochemical
energy, which is converted into heat. At
the front of the wave, there are a few action potentials,
which are impulses that can also occur under normal
conditions. Then there is utter silence. The simplest way
to describe the wave is as a short circuit in a battery. The
nerve cells lose their electrical charge with the wave.
That means there’s no energy left to generate any more
impulses. What I personally find important, however,
is that this spreading depolarization is not the wave of
death itself. That’s not the case. The wave induces toxic
processes, after which it takes a while for the nerve cells
as such no longer exists. In mechanistic terms, the occurrence
of a vegetative state is connected with the fact
that the cerebral cortex is considerably more susceptible
than the brain stem to the development of a spreading
depolarization.
When does the process become irreversible?
When the organelles of the depolarized nerve cells are
so badly damaged that they can no longer function adequately
even after energy is restored.
So that’s the point of no return.
Yes, but it is not simultaneous with the wave. The wave
begins and you still have two or three minutes. Only then
do the nerve cells begin to die. Energy is an apt image
for me here. Our brains are normally full of energy. Each
nerve cell is both a power plant that generates energy
from oxygen and glucose, and an energy consumer.
The energy produced in the power plants is stored and
used to generate signal impulses. Normally, a very large
amount of energy is stored, only a fraction of which
is used in the form of impulses, or what are known as
action potentials. But that’s still quite a bit. Although it
a few minutes. If blood flow to the brain is not restored,
all 86 billion of our neurons will eventually be completely
discharged and eventually so poisoned that they will die.
What does dying feel like? What do we know
about it? You speak of an enormous wave.
People also talk about a final great display of
fireworks …
The reports of patients who were resuscitated and
survived are the only things we can rely on. A patient lies
there, unconscious, and appears to be dead although
that is not yet the case. Their heart no longer beats but
their nerve cells are still alive. Around 15 percent of people
who are resuscitated have a conscious experience
during this period. There are various speculations about
what might be responsible for near-death experiences.
Such as?
A relatively interesting thought is that there may be a
surge of activity in the initial phase, a final flare-up, so to
speak, before the spontaneous electrical activity of the
brain comes to a halt. This surge of activity might have
something to do with near-death experiences. What is
migraine auras, however, also describe a type of tunnel
vision and/or bright lights. The source of the aura is a
wave, which is very similar to what occurs in a stroke or
in the process of dying.
Which phenomena are considered to be neardeath
experiences?
Notable features of near-death experiences include a
sense of simultaneity, a sense of being in multiple places
at essentially the same time, and the ability to be of different
ages at the same time. That would fit in well with
a coordinated short-term process in the brain by which
a great many nerve cells are – more or less simultaneously
– activated and call up our (stored) memories at
nearly the same time. A look back in time, when your life
seems to flash before your eyes. Other phenomena include
out-of-body experiences, although these can also
be triggered in other contexts, such as during epileptic
seizures or by magnetic stimulation of certain regions of
the brain.
To what extent are images like the white tunnel
influenced by cultural and religious ideas?
to die. If circulation and a supply of energy are restored
after the onset of the wave, the process is entirely reversible
up to a certain point in time and the nerve cells
can also recover. In the case of a stroke, the waves can
also spread far into healthy tissue with a normal blood
supply, where they can have important signalling functions
for the organism, so that their effects need not always
be negative. It’s all very complicated.
accounts for only 2 percent of the body’s weight, the
brain uses 20 percent of our caloric intake to produce
enough energy for its IT activities around the clock.
In other words, as long as the body is at rest and not
running a marathon, for example, the brain is the body’s
greatest consumer of calories. That being said, much
more energy is stored in the brain than is used at any
given moment. Similar to a battery, energy is stored in
also important is that different regions of the brain can
be in various stages of the process of dying. One region
might already show a spreading depolarization, whereas
another might not yet be affected. Another possibility
is that it is not actually the transitional phase from life
to death that gives rise to near-death experiences but
rather what happens afterwards if resuscitation is
successful. What is also conceivable is that near-death
Most studies on this topic tend to come from a Western
cultural context. But I recently read a report from
Sri Lanka, which has several religions in a relatively
small geographic area. The researchers found different
frequencies in the mention of near-death experiences,
with a somewhat higher rate from areas with Christian
influence. On the other hand, they reported such experiences
from all the religions studied. Atheists, too, can
Is there a point of no return?
Yes, but this point is hard to define. For example, not all
nerve cells die at the same time, because some are very
vulnerable and others less so. That is why there can also
be situations in which some nerve cells start dying but
others are still alive. If resuscitation efforts are successful,
the patient might lose some of their nerve cells
and retain others. This, of course, is a crucial factor for
the quality of life that can be achieved thereafter. One
special variant here would be a vegetative state in which
only the brain stem is capable of functioning. Respiration,
circulation and a sleep-wake cycle are possible, but
higher brain functions no longer work and the individual
each individual nerve cell by separating ions across the
cell membrane. It’s essentially the same thing that happens
in a flashlight battery. Turning the torch on and then
quickly off again would correspond to a nerve impulse.
Turning the torch briefly on and off uses only a tiny fraction
of the energy stored in its battery. You can repeat
that for a long period of time before the battery loses its
charge. In contrast to simple signal impulses, spreading
depolarization is an event in which the neurons, meaning
the “miniature batteries”, suffer a short circuit and
essentially lose all their charge at once. This short circuit
doesn’t take place everywhere at the same time, however,
but instead migrates slowly through the brain from
neuron to neuron, reaching ever more locations within
experiences arise while the brain is regenerating. In
the aftermath of a successful resuscitation, there are
patterns of electrical activity in the brain similar to those
observed in the context of hallucinations from other
causes. The question of near-death experiences constitutes
a broad field.
Many people report seeing a tunnel of white
light. Are there scientific explanations for this?
I find the white tunnel interesting because these types
of light-related phenomena also occur in migraine with
aura. A typical migraine aura consists of a jagged ringlike
image that usually begins in the middle of the field of
vision and slowly extends outwards. Some patients with
have them. There are also historical accounts of what we
would now call near-death experiences. They occur in
different contexts, religions and eras. All of this suggests
that the ability to have near-death experiences is a
fundamental feature of Homo sapiens.
How do people respond to these near-death
experiences?
The literature suggests that around 90 percent of neardeath
experiences are viewed in very positive terms.
Most people report a feeling of joy. Around 10 percent
are negative, however, and interpreted as hellish, for
example. Many people report meeting others who
predeceased them, an experience they often portray
104 DEATH JENS DREIER 105

as positive. Generally speaking, the return to this world,
meaning survival, is experienced as painful and onerous.
You can observe the brain activity of patients in
the ICU. How do you do this – also during their
near-death experiences? What processes do
you use?
We conduct neuromonitoring of patients with cerebral
haemorrhages at the ICU. Those who passed away while
we were recording the process of dying are no longer
with us and cannot therefore be asked about their experiences.
My clinical focus, however, is the stroke unit at
the Charité campus in Berlin-Mitte. I do not systematically
ask about near-death experiences, but sometimes the
patients themselves talk about what they have experienced.
Many of these accounts sound very convincing to
me.
How close to death were these people actually?
The patients I’m thinking of were very close to death.
When is a person dead?
That’s not an easy question to answer … It also depends
on factors like body temperature. For cardiac surgery
or complicated aneurysm operations, bodies are often
cooled down because that extends the period of time
before processes of dying set in. Age plays a role as well.
And resuscitation makes a big difference. After sudden
cardiac arrest at a normal body temperature without
resuscitation, irreversible damage to the nerve cells will
begin in about five minutes. The person will die after
approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
So there’s no precise definition of the time of
death?
No, it is hard to pinpoint the moment a cell dies even in
an experimental setting. And it is even more complicated
with a living mammal like Homo sapiens. How quickly
one dies depends not only on factors specific to each
individual, but also on external factors like ambient
temperature. There is the famous case of the Norwegian
physician Anna Bågenholm described in The Lancet
medical journal. She went skiing with friends in a fjord
region, fell head-first into a gully and was wedged above
an underground stream. Her companions were unable
to rescue her because the ground was so unstable. They
called a helicopter, but when it arrived, she had been
suspended amid ice and icy water for around 90 minutes
and had no spontaneous circulation.
The emergency team started cardio-pulmonary resuscitation
(CPR) and airlifted her to a hospital, where
cardiopulmonary bypass blood flow was restored around
two hours later and where the lowest ever body temperature
for a living human being – 13.7 degrees Celsius –
was measured and documented. One year later, Anna
Bågenholm had made a complete recovery, and she and
her friends visited the site of the accident.
In light of medical advances, end-of-life decisions
are becoming ever more important in
industrial countries. When is the time to end life
support and switch off the machines?
I think that can only be decided by talking with the
individual people involved. It depends on the underlying
illness and whether the patient’s condition can be
treated in a reasonable way. There is no one-size-fits-all
solution. At the ICU, doctors and nurses talk with family
members and with patients if the latter are in a position
to do so. The wishes that the patient has expressed in
advance, or those that one assumes the patient would
express if they were still able to give information, play a
major role. Normally, it is a team decision as to whether
further treatment is indicated. An important question in
this process, of course, is whether a certain quality of
life can be achieved. But that, too, is a difficult question,
because how do you define quality of life? There have
been studies of people with locked-in syndrome who
were asked whether they wanted to live or die with their
condition. The vast majority want to keep living and have
accepted being in a state of nearly complete paralysis.
As the name suggests, patients with this syndrome are
essentially locked within themselves, perhaps only able
to move their eyes a little.
You have watched many people die. Do you
believe in the existence of an immortal essence
or soul?
As a scientist, I cannot answer this question. If asked for
my personal opinion, I would say that if there is someone
out there who thinks we should know, I would like to have
A moment during an enormous wave
(spreading depolarization)
106 DEATH JENS DREIER 107

THE
MORTUARY
WHAT DOES
HUMAN DIGNITY
MEAN BEYOND
DEATH?
The corpse is not a neutral object. On the contrary, people
all over the world have a desire to honour the deceased
through rites of passage and burial. The way a society
treats its deceased says something about its appreciation
of every part of its community. Maintaining dignity is an
elementary need not only in life, but also in death. What
happens to the body after death? What does dignified care
of a corpse mean?

LIVING WITH THE
DEAD. LIVING WITH
DEATH
Liv Nilsson Stutz
From the perspective of the Swedish bioarchaeologist
Liv Nilsson Stutz, death triggers a double
crisis for the bereaved: A part of social life is
lost – and there is a dead body. Here, she addresses
the universal significance of the ritual
care of the corpse and its different cultural
mani festations.
MY MOTHER’S HANDS
I sat next to my mother when she died. It was New Year’s
Eve. I could hear a piercing distant sound of fireworks
shooting through the air, lighting up the sky like ephemeral
lost little comets. When I touched her hand, it was
cold, soft and heavy in a way I had not felt before. Her
face had been changed by sickness and death – the
light was gone from her eyes and her features were
sunken. But her hands were the same as the ones that
held my hand as a child, combed my hair, kneaded the
dough for the Sunday morning buns, knitted complicated
patterns and left beautiful words in writing on casual
notes and postcards and in diaries and letters. A ring my
father had given to her when they were both young was
on her finger and my siblings and I decided it would remain
there when she was buried a few weeks later. When
the funeral directors came to take her away the next
day, I peeked into the room where she was resting and I
was moved when I saw one of them respectfully adjust
the sock on her foot before lifting her up to place her on
the stretcher. They wheeled her out of her home to the
hearse parked in the driveway in the cold January gloom
and bowed in silence before closing the hatch. At that
moment, I felt sadness, but also comfort. The respect
they showed her reassured me that they would care for
her and treat her with dignity until it was time for us to
bury her. In that moment, it was clear that how we treat
our dead matters because they are, despite it all, still
people to us. I returned to the house to join my siblings,
but it felt empty. She was no longer there.
THE DUAL CRISIS OF DEATH
Death is a universal human experience. We will all die,
and before we do, most of us will experience the death
of others close to us. But even if death is common and
predictable, it is difficult. It tears us apart. It leaves a
hole in our lives – where our social networks and relationships
will need to be mended. For life to go on, responsibilities
need to be reassigned, property redistributed
and relationships reconfigured. This process often
unfolds through a range of structured practices, some of
which are regulated by law, and others that are private.
But death is not only the loss of a social being. It also
results in the emergence of a human cadaver – a dead
body. This body needs to be cared for in a way that reassures
the survivors. Beyond posing a practical problem
to be solved, the dead body is potentially also problematic
because after death, the natural processes of decay
and decomposition will radically transform the body of
our loved one to the point of becoming unrecognizable
to us. This can be traumatic and human cultures have
a range of different practices to deal with it. In some
cultures, such as in the present-day United States, the
natural processes are often controlled through complex
techniques of embalming to replace the body fluids
with chemicals in order to halt the decay. This practice
became common during the Civil War, when the bodies
of dead soldiers needed to be transported long distances
for burial at home. Today, the tradition still holds
a central place in the part of the culture that practices
open-casket viewing during the memorial service. Embalming
allows the mourners to see the body as if it were
still alive and simply resting peacefully in the casket
before final disposal. The practice of halting the natural
decay of the body can be traced back to mummification
in a range of societies around the world, from the Stone
Age onward, with Egyptian mummies probably the most
familiar in popular scientific knowledge and culture.
Some cultures prefer to accelerate the process of
decay, for example through cremation, which has been
practiced by humans throughout our long prehistory
and history. While it may appear to be a clean and quick
process of immediate combustion, a closer look reveals
that the burning of a human body requires an intense
and practical engagement with the dead and often involves
several steps in handling the cadaver, both during
the burning itself and after the body has been reduced
to burned bone fragments by the fire. The cremains are
often picked over, burned bone is separated from the
wood ash and charcoal and then redeposited. In our
contemporary culture, the cremains are passed through
a grinding mill to reduce them to a fine ash that can be
scattered in the wind or transferred to an urn as a siltlike
gray matter. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
But, then again, not all cultures shy away from decay
and decomposition. In fact, the natural processes of
decomposition can be given a central place in the understanding
of death as a process. In his seminal 1907
essay on death, 1 Robert Hertz describes how the Dayak
people in modern-day Indonesia conceive of the decomposition
and putrefaction of the human body as a longer
process that is a part of death itself, terminated only
once the bones are clean and dry. The gradual decay
gives form to the gradual transition to death and is thus
embraced by the culture as meaningful. This practice
is not unique and is found in many different cultures in
Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Here, in a very
tangible sense, the culture engages with death, not as an
event but as a process that affects people and society in
the longer term. The gradual transition to death can also
take other forms. In Tana Toraja, on the Indonesian island
of Sulawesi, the dead person is often kept in a coffin in
the house until the family has saved up enough money
to pay for the funeral. This can take up to a year, for the
funeral is a costly affair involving the ritual slaughter of
animals (in particular, buffalo). In addition to being a ritual
of death, the funeral is also an arena for each family to
display wealth and status in life. In the period leading up
to the funeral, the deceased is not considered dead but
merely “sick” or “asleep” – even hypervigilant – and the
relationship with the living is maintained in tangible ways
through symbolic offerings of food. Death thus remains
embedded in life, entangled in sensory experiences and
affect. 2 The natural processes of decomposition and
putrefaction will, of course, begin to set in, and in order
to control these processes, the family traditionally uses
herbs and smoke – formalin being more commonly used
today. The relationship with the dead continues even
after the funeral. The dead are usually placed in collective
burial sites that can be re-entered – both for the
deposition of new dead and for visits with loved ones,
which often involve gifts of food and drink. Outside the
burial cave, effigies of the deceased take on a more
lifelike shape of the people whose remains have been
deposited inside, marking the cave as a resting place of
ancestors.
These few examples only scratch the surface of the
diversity that we find in human responses to death
around the world today. To cope with death, humans turn
to ritual practices that enable us to make sense of death,
find comfort and eventually move on in life. The ways
in which different cultures handle this universal human
experience vary greatly. The reason for this diversity
is that in order to provide meaning and consolation, a
ritual must fit into the overall cultural value system. It
needs to make sense and be connected to other cultural
values and concerns. What the various rituals all have in
common, however, is that they simultaneously deal with
both the loss of a social being and the emergence of a
cadaver.
Why is it that the practical handling of the dead body
tends to be so structured by cultural concerns? Why is it
so meaningful? Why can we not just throw the corpse out
with the trash? The mere suggestion makes us recoil –
and it is somewhere in this reaction that we can begin to
look for answers.
112 THE MORTUARY LIV NILSSON STUTZ 113

CARE FOR THE
DEAD
The jewellery worn by a deceased person
during his or her lifetime is gently removed
from the body during the care of the corpse and
presented to the surviving relatives in a pouch
as a keepsake.
The aim of mortuary care is to bring the
corpse into a hygienic, aesthetic and dignified
condition before burial. The person treating the
corpse wears disposable gloves.
What happens to the human body after death?
A corpse is the object of care for the dead – from
hygienic washing to the last garment and finally to
burial. Beyond the hygienic care of the dead, thanatopractical
treatment prepares the corpse for laying
out. Selected utensils used in the care of the deceased
are presented here.
A comb is used to give the hair of the deceased
an aesthetic form. A photo of the person before
death is helpful when arranging the hairstyle.
The jaw muscles of the corpse are loosened
by means of massage. A transparent plastic
support is concealed almost invisibly under the
corpse’s graveclothes and holds the chin of the
deceased in place.
118 THE MORTUARY CARE FOR THE DEAD 119

A chin support is positioned under the jaw
in such a way that the mouth remains closed
during the laying out of the deceased.
The sponge is used to cleanse the body of the
deceased.
Gauze dressing is used for wound treatment
of the deceased. Open areas or wounds are
bandaged.
Cotton wool is used in mortuary care to both
clean and close body orifices, such as the
throat, nostrils or anus. This prevents body
fluids from escaping.
The large curved needle is used in thanatopractical
care to close the mouth. The smaller,
curved needles are used, among other things,
to close wounds.
Wet razors are gentler and more thorough than
electric shavers. They are used to carefully
shave the face of the deceased for the last time.
The eyes are closed by using moisturizer to
place contact lens-like eye caps with small nubs
onto the eyeballs and pulling the eyelids over
them. This prevents post-mortem drooping of
the eyelids as well as possible reopening of the
eyelids due to dehydration.
Mouth shapers are used to correct the form of
the mouth and to preserve the natural features
of the face of the deceased. If necessary,
sunken cheeks are filled in, and mouth formers
can also replace dentures.
120 THE MORTUARY CARE FOR THE DEAD 121

THE NAMES BEHIND
THE NUMBERS
A wallet, a toothbrush, a picture of a saint, a mobile
phone, and some soil from the homeland – personal
things as the last evidence of a past life. The owners
of these objects were victims of a ship disaster in the
Mediterranean Sea on 18 April 2015, in which almost
1,000 refugees drowned. In June 2016, Italy had the
wreck lifted and ordered the identification of the deceased.
The forensic anthropologist Cristina Cattaneo
is still working with her team to identify the deceased.
The personal belongings are relevant documents in
their efforts to trace the identity of the dead. They can
lead to a name, address or country and are also shown
to people searching for missing relatives.
136 THE MORTUARY THE NAMES BEHIND THE NUMBERS 137

138 THE MORTUARY THE NAMES BEHIND THE NUMBERS 139

CREDITS
COLOPHON
PHOTO CREDITS
Cover: Getty Images/fergregory
pp. 2–3: NASA/ESA/Antonella Nota (ESA,
STScI), Hubble Heritage Project (STScI, AURA),
Westerlund 2
pp. 4–5: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Levay
pp. 6–7: NASA/JPL-Caltech
pp. 8–9: NASA
p. 31: Félix Ayoh’Omidire
p. 33: Jan Zappe
p. 35: picture alliance/NurPhoto/Morteza
Nikoubazl
p. 37: iStockphoto/Eillen
p. 39: iStockphoto/Manaswi Patil
p. 41: iStockphoto/NgKhanhVuKhoa
p. 43: iStockphoto/EugeneTomeev
p. 45: Atthapon Kulpakdeesingworn/Alamy
Stock Photo
p. 47: iStockphoto/texturis
p. 49: iStockphoto/maogg
p. 51: iStockphoto/Ale-ks
p. 53: © Murray Ballard
pp. 55–67: © Klaus Bo/deadandaliveproject.com
pp. 76–98: Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner
Schloss
pp. 107, 109: © 2013, American Academy of
Neurology
pp. 119–121: Stiftung Humboldt Forum im
Berliner Schloss, photo: Sebastian Eggler
pp. 124–135: Infografiken: © Ole Häntzschel
pp. 137–147: Mattia Balsamini/contrasto/laif
p. 169: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN),
inv. no. http://coll.mfn-berlin.de/u/93e2c4,
photo: digitalisation team MfN
p. 170 left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
(MfN), inv. no. ZMB_LEP_T 078_11,
photo: digitalisation team MfN
p. 170 right: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
(MfN), inv. no. http://coll.mfn-berlin.de/u/117d39,
photo: digitalisation team MfN
p. 171: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN),
inv. no. http://coll.mfn-berlin.de/u/98cb42,
photo: digitalisation team MfN
p. 172 top left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Mam_47159, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 172 top right: © Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin, inv. no. ZMB_Mam_5539,
photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 172 bottom: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Mam_31624, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 173 top left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Mam_36877, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 173 top right: © Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin, inv. no. ZMB_Mam_105471,
photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 173 bottom left: © Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin, inv. no. ZMB_Mam_16032,
photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 173 bottom right: © Museum für Naturkunde
Berlin, inv. no. ZMB_Mam_23707,
photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 174: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, inv. no.
ZMB_Crust_9979, photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 175: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, inv. no.
ZMB_Moll_20892, photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 176 left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Mam_4622, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 176 right: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Mam_3568, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 177 left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Herp_29895,
photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 177 right: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Herp_30755, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 178 left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, inv.
no. ZMB_Herp_2131, photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 178 right: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Herp_8948, photo: Johannes
Kramer
p. 179 left: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, inv.
no. ZMB_Pisces_3933, photo: Johannes Kramer
p. 179 right: © Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
inv. no. ZMB_Pisces_33225, photo: Johannes
Kramer
pp. 192–199: © Manfred P. Kage - Kage GbR
TEXT RIGHTS
pp. 180–183: Unaltered reprint of the essay
“People of Corn, People of Light”, in Robin Wall
Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous
Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the
Teachings of Plants. Copyright © 2013, 2015
by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Reprinted with the
permission of The Permissions Company, LLC
on behalf of Milkweed Editions, ww.milkweed.
org
Published by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im
Berliner Schloss
This book has been published to accompany
the exhibition in_finite. Living with Death at the
Humboldt Forum, Berlin, 31 March – 26 November
2023
An exhibition by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum
im Berliner Schloss (SHF)
General Director Humboldt Forum
Hartmut Dorgerloh
Curatorial Team Exhibition
Detlef Vögeli – Lead Curator
Gesine Last, Jan Zappe – Co-Curators
Kathrin Haase, Lydia Heller, Yvonne Zindel –
Curatorial collaboration and research
Sibylle Kußmaul, Marc Wrasse – Curators of
Education and Outreach, SHF
Project Team Exhibition SHF
David Blankenstein – Project management
Frank Meißner – Project assistance
Maria Mazgaj – Technical project management,
SHF
Noelle von Galen, Bryn Veditz – Registrars, SHF
Johanna Kapp, Maike Voelkel – Conservation, SHF
Isabel Meixner, Sarah Lindemann, Franziska
Lukas – Project collaboration
Head of Exhibitions, SHF
Anke Daemgen
Exhibition Design
Tom Piper/Alan Farlie
Exhibition Graphics
BOK+ Gärtner GmbH
Lenders
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
Grieneisen Bestattungen, Berlin
Bestatter-Innung von Berlin und Brandenburg
KdöR/Bestatter-Verband von Berlin und
Brandenburg e.V.
European Biostasis Foundation
Publication Project Management
Susanne Müller-Wolff, SHF
Concept
Detlef Vögeli, Jan Zappe
Copy Editing
Danko Szabó
Picture Editing
Barbara Martinkat, SHF
Translations from the German into English
Gérard Goodrow, Bram Opstelten, Marlene
Schoofs
Interviews, recordings and translations:
Contemporary Notions of the Hereafter
Yıldız Aslandoğan, Lydia Heller, Gesine Last,
Manvir Kaur Mahidwan, Cora Säbel, Detlef
Vögeli, Antje Zemmin, Yvonne Zindel
Interviews, recordings and translations:
World Death Conference
Menny Aviv, Kathrin Haase, Manvir Kaur
Mahidwan, Thuy-Trang Nguyen Ngoc, Takin
Yasar, Antje Zemmin
Layout, typesetting and cover design
Sahar Aharoni
Typefaces
ABC Oracle, SangBleu Versailles, Star Pro
Paper
Arctic Silk
Cover Illustration
Candy skull for “Day of the Dead” in Mexico
The Stiftung Humboldt Forum sincerely thanks
the authors, the interview partners and the
lenders. We would like to thank the staff of the
Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss as
well as all those not mentioned here by name who
have contributed to the success of this project.
© 2023 Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner
Schloss, Schloßplatz, 10178 Berlin, and E. A.
Seemann Verlag within the E. A. Seemann
Henschel GmbH & Co. KG, Leipzig
ww.seemann-henschel.de
ww.humboldtforum.org
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner
for Culture and the Media in keeping with
a resolution by the German Federal Parliament.
External links contained in the text could be
reviewed only up to the publication date. The
issuer and publisher have had no influence
on later changes and can therefore accept no
liability.
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this
publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data is available on the
Internet at ww.dnb.de.
Publishing
E.A. Seemann Verlag
Project Management Publishing house
Caroline Keller
Image Processing
Bild1Druck GmbH, Berlin
Printing and Binding
feingedruckt – Print und Medien, Neumünster
All rights reserved
ISBN 987-3-86502-507-4
188 CREDITS COLOPHON 189