GERMANY: Grieving Berliners are having their dead family members returned to them as diamonds, writes Derek Scally in Berlin
Shirley Bassey was right: diamonds are forever. Now a Berlin undertaker can make sure of that, by turning your recently deceased into a diamond.
"I'd be very proud to inherit a watch from my grandfather as an heirloom, but just imagine a diamond," says René Andree (25), Berlin's youngest undertaker and the man behind this gem of an idea.
"Everyone mourns differently but everyone should be satisfied with a funeral and not bound to tradition." Andree's firm, Christ-All, has organised eight diamond funerals since the first, last December.
"The widow was crying at the funeral but when she saw the diamond for the first time she was very still but happy. It was a beautiful moment.
"She had the feeling she had her husband again," he says.
With inquiries from Scandinavia and Hungary, Andree has since signed up 170 people in the last two months to so-called "pre-need" contracts.
The diamond funeral costs from €3,000 to €7,000, depending on the size of diamond required, from 0.25 to 1 carat.
The process, carried out in Switzerland to get around German burial laws, filters the carbon out of the ashes, compressing it into a synthetic diamond.
It improves on existing procedures in the US by creating a diamond solely from the carbon of the deceased, says Andree, but he warns that the colour of the diamond cannot be influenced as it depends on factors including diet and environmental factors.
"The stone is unique, like every person," he says, drawing on a cigarette.
"You could put it in a display for the whole family, perhaps add diamonds and make a family tree."
In two weeks the latest Berliner will have her 75-year- old mother returned to her as a diamond, which she plans to wear embedded in a gold nugget on a necklace.
"Her mother didn't know that she would become a diamond. But now my partner will have her mother in her heart and on her heart," said the woman's partner yesterday.
Andree says his non- traditional funeral business has been helped by the decreasing influence of religion in German life and the fact that 70 per cent of Berliners are cremated anyway.
Other memorial options he offers include a traditional death mask and a lead tube containing the deceased's DNA. A recent addition is the space burial and, this year, he is moving into firework burials.
Half a century ago, Marilyn Monroe purred: "I prefer a man who lives and gives expensive jewels." Now it seems the diamond funeral is a girl's best friend.