September 19, 2021

The Theft of the Lonely Funeral

By Bart FM Droog

In 2018, the 59-year-old Amsterdam poet and visual artist F. Starik died. He was known, among other things, for "the lonely funeral", the funerals paid for by the municipality at which no next of kin are present and where a poet recites a poem written especially for the occasion.  

In Starik's first book about the lonely funeral, very surprisingly titled De eenzame uitvaart (The lonely funeral, 2005), he wrote in the foreword: "It was Bart FM Droog, the poet from Groningen, who on his appointment as city poet [January 2002] resolved to visit those funerals where nobody else and else nobody would come. He decided that from now on, on behalf of the city, he would illuminate the so-called lonely funerals with a poem. I found that a moving thought and immediately knew: I want that too."

The first Groningen lonely funeral took place on 29 May 2002. The deceased was John Mulder (1961-2002). The poem written for Mr. Mulder can be read on page 11 of this booklet (pdf, 3.8 MB).

In the course of 2002, Starik asked the writer of this article, who happens to be that Groningen poet Droog, for permission to perform this concept in Amsterdam as well. Poets from Utrecht (Ruben van Gogh), Nijmegen (Merijn Hilte), The Hague (Henk van Zuiden) and later also from Louvain (Peter Mangel Schots), Leeuwarden (Monique Buising) and other cities asked the same.

Permission "free of charge", on conditions

They all received permission, "free of charge", under the conditions that in case of questions about the origin of this project, Groningen must be pointed out (after all, the municipality of Groningen had financed the experiment). Also, the names of the deceased must be published, so that unsuspecting next of kin can still learn about the death of their loved one through Google, for example. And, to prevent voyeurism, an absolute ban on film and TV recordings at lonely funerals.

All the poets complied with these conditions.

Fortunately, in Groningen, which at the time had about 180,000 inhabitants, there were relatively few lonely funerals, one or two a year. In larger cities, such as Amsterdam, Antwerp and Ghent, there are significantly more. In 2005 Starik noted: "In Amsterdam there are about fifteen 'lonely funerals' a year". He did not do all these himself. Like the poets who had approached me from Utrecht, Ghent, Louvain and The Hague, he asked other poets from their respective hometowns to participate in the project. The Amsterdam funeral poets' group was given the name “Pool of Death” ("Poule des dood").

The first Amsterdam lonely funeral took place on 20 November 2002.

Lonely funeral books

A number of years passed. The project grew. In January 2005, the first book of lonely funeral poems appeared, Voorgoed voltooide tijd, a bibliophilic edition in an edition of 200 copies (the booklet mentioned before). It was offered to me at my farewell as city poet of Groningen. The preface was written by F. Starik. My task as lonely funeral poet in Groningen-city was taken over by my successor as city poet, Ronald Ohlsen. In the autumn of 2005 Starik's first book on the project was published, the aforementioned De eenzame uitvaart, a commercial edition that was reprinted in 2006.  Somewhere between  1000 and 4000 copies were sold.

Later, more lonely funeral books were published by Starik, one of which - written with the Antwerp lonely funeral coordinator Maarten Inghels - also appeared in German and English translation, respectively  Das Einsame Begräbnis – Geschichten und Gedichte zu vergessenen Leben –translated by Stefan Wieczoreck - and The Lonely Funural - translated by David Colmer.

To this day I find it inconceivable that I wasn't asked to participate in these highly subsidized translation projects -  but, to speak with Kurt Vonnegut, "so it goes."


Names withheld out of fear

All of this was - to some extent - very nice, but somewhere after 2006, I noticed that in Starik's publications, the names of the dead were no longer mentioned. When I protested to him about this, he answered me that a subsidiser did not want the names mentioned, out of fear of possible inconvenience caused by relatives. I was flabbergasted. The publication of the names is the only way in which the news of someone's death can reach the next of kin. Why on earth would they make trouble?

In the meantime, Starik had set up a foundation in Amsterdam to apply for a subsidy; in other words, the Amsterdam lonely funeral had become a business model. And Starik now saw it as an art project and no longer as a societal implementation of the poetship, as I had once conceived it.

This business model meant that in the publicity surrounding the lonely funeral, the image of it as an Amsterdam event increasingly arose. This caused, for example, the Antwerp poet Maarten Inghels and the Rotterdam poet Rien Vroegindeweij to ask Starik for permission to carry out the project in their respective places of residence. Starik did not refer them to me, but gave permission himself, without explaining the conditions outlined earlier.

Rights on lonely funerals?

It went even further: I heard from a number of poets who, like Vroegindeweij and Inghels, had been led to believe that the Amsterdam foundation De Eenzame Uitvaart had the rights to the solitary funeral (they don't have them), and who went there to ask for permission. And that they were flatly refused permission, without being told that they should inform not in Amsterdam, but in Groningen.

On the website of the foundation it was also pretended that the lonely funeral was an Amsterdam idea and project: all information on the Groningen roots was simply absent.

Also, against all agreements, a TV documentary was made about the lonely funeral, titled Poule des doods by Astrid Bussink, broadcasted by the VPRO in 2012. My protest was ignored.

One can imagine that I was not overly amused by these developments. After repeated protests from my side, this passage finally appeared on the website of the foundation:

"The idea comes from Groningen, where the then city poet Bart FM Droog considered this part of his task as city poet. (...) In the course of time, the foundation extended its working area to The Hague and Rotterdam. In addition, similar initiatives were developed in Antwerp, Leuven and Utrecht, and numerous city poets count it their task to accompany the lonely dead on their last journey, among others in Nijmegen, Zaanstad, Hengelo, Arnhem, and of course still in Groningen."

This was okay to me. In February 2018 Starik and I had normal contact again. At the funeral of poet Menno Wigman, with whom we were both befriended for years, we discussed the problems that had arisen and had since been resolved and said, "Sand on it", a Dutch expression meaning that we should move on and consider the problems as solved.

Less than seven weeks later Starik died. At the St Barbara Cemetery in Amsterdam, I was among the many who threw a handful of sand on his coffin.

Amsterdam's new lonely funeral coordinator

As his successor as lonely funeral coordinator, Starik had appointed the Amsterdam publicist Joris van Casteren. A man who has been around in the literary world for more than twenty years. Once a month Van Casteren publishes a lonely funeral report, with a high voyeuristic content in De Volkskrant, one of the main Netherlands newspapers. The name of the deceased is not mentioned. I protested again and with the reason already mentioned: without the name, family members remain in the dark about the fate of a disappeared loved one. Now it was said that because of the "privacy" of the deceased, the name was not mentioned. I thought: bullshit. Anyone who uses that as an argument is obviously against death announcements and obituaries.

Be that as it may, Van Casteren recently published a book about loneliness, very surprisingly entitled Eenzaamheid (Loneliness). The book received quite some publicity. Van Casteren was interviewed for an hour by Volkskrant journalist Floortje Smit in the NPO Radio 1 programme Brainwash by public broadcasting company Human. Nice for Van Casteren, nice for his publisher, nice for De Volkskrant too.

What is less nice is that in that radio interview, which is partially dedicated to the lonely funerals, Van Casteren says: "But, just to explain the lonely funeral, it was founded by Frank Starik. In the year 2000, because he had heard that in Amsterdam as in most places in the Netherlands, people who die lonely, without any family or friends coming to the funeral or arranging it at all, yes, they are just put in the ground without any ceremony, yes, so to speak. And he said: can't we do something for that. Let's have a, yes, poets write a poem for these people."

This piece of historical distortion is not corrected by the interviewer.

Brainwash

A few days after the broadcast, several people alerted me on Facebook to this interview. People are indignant. I listen to it online. And am again not amused. I e-mail the Brainwash editors, requesting a correction, with a brief explanation of how the lonely funeral came about.

The reply from Brainwash followed almost immediately: we do not rectify.

Sigh. So I file a complaint with the Press Council (a hearing took place on Friday September 17, the verdict will follow in a few weeks time) and publish an article about the state of affairs: Brainwashing about the lonely funeral on public radio.

It is barely online when I discover that on the site of the Amsterdam foundation the text about the actual origins of the whole project has disappeared. Now it is:

"Since 2002, a special salute has been paid to those deceased in Amsterdam and beyond, where otherwise no one and no one else would visit their funeral. (...) Since 2006, the Amsterdam initiative has been incorporated into a foundation. (...) In the course of time, the Foundation expanded its working area to The Hague and Rotterdam. In addition, similar initiatives were developed in Antwerp, Leuven and Utrecht, and numerous city poets consider it their task to accompany the lonely dead on their final journey, among others in Nijmegen, Zaanstad, Hengelo, Groningen and Arnhem."

The erasure of Groningen's history demonstrably happened between March 3, 2021 and September 15, 2021, according to the preserved pages in the Internet Archive.

To be more precise, it happened between the beginning of August 2021, when one of my co-workers copied the original text with the true story from the foundation  site, and September 15, 2021 - or, in other words, after it became known that the Press Council had accepted my complaint, and started the procedure. In other words: everything indicates that someone tried to cover up evidence.

Because all this is in flagrant contradiction to the agreements that Starik and I made in 2002, I then wrote to the secretary of the Amsterdam foundation, Gina van den Berg, and to the spokespersons of Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema. The latter is "Patron" of this foundation.

I point out the agreements with Starik and ask them who is responsible for changing the text and why it was done in the first place.

They don't respond.

Joris van Casteren, asked by my co-worker why he was lying in that radio interview, did not respond either.


To be continued

 

This article is a translation of De diefstal van de "eenzame uitvaart". Femke Halsema beschermt bedrog. Reporters Online, Haarlem, 17-09-2021.
https://reportersonline.nl/de-diefstal-van-de-eenzame-uitvaart-femke-halsema-beschermt-bedrog/

Photo courtesy Oberhessische Presse.

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