Berlin Review

What is owed to the dead, and by whom?

Four researchers explore the increasing phenomenon of lonely deaths, asking how cultural engagement with isolation, ageing and dying shifts between Germany and Japan. 
In deutscher Übersetzung von Katharina Wicht.

“Today, more than half of all households in both Tokyo and Berlin consist of a single person. In both countries, lonely death has become an object of fascination, appearing in books, films, television, and social media. At the center of this cultural imagination stands a figure from the service economy itself: the post-mortem cleaner, who encounters lonely death up close.”

«Heute besteht sowohl in Tokio als auch in Berlin mehr als die Hälfte aller Haushalte aus nur einer Person. In beiden Ländern ist der einsame Tod zu einem Gegenstand kultureller Faszination geworden und findet sich in Büchern, Filmen, Fernsehen und sozialen Medien wieder. Im Zentrum dieser Imagination steht eine Figur aus der Dienstleistungsökonomie: der postmortale Reiniger, der dem einsamen Tod aus nächster Nähe begegnet.»  

Read their essay (in English and German) at the link in our bio——and check all our new pieces from the ongoing No 19 on our website: 

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In our latest episode on Airlift, Palestinian writer reads her Berlin Review essay “Better Than Berlin”. Written during a residency last January in Berlin, the essay became a record of what it means to write when the possibility of being heard is no longer certain, following the cancellation of a public reading and defunding of the exile program that had invited her.

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