{"id":243181,"date":"2025-02-20T16:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T16:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/20\/why-did-qr-codes-appear-on-about-1000-graves-in-munich\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T16:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T16:25:11","slug":"why-did-qr-codes-appear-on-about-1000-graves-in-munich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/20\/why-did-qr-codes-appear-on-about-1000-graves-in-munich\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did QR Codes Appear on About 1,000 Graves in Munich?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/20\/multimedia\/20munich-stickers-bwgk\/20munich-stickers-bwgk-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Why Did QR Codes Appear on About 1,000 Graves in Munich?\" title=\"Why Did QR Codes Appear on About 1,000 Graves in Munich?\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a wooded cemetery in Munich, a white sticker with a puzzling QR code appeared on a gravestone late last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Then, over the next few weeks, more and more stickers mysteriously appeared, until more than 1,000 graves were marked like goods in a supermarket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt\u2019s really strange,\u201d Bernd Hoerauf, who oversees the management of the city\u2019s cemeteries, said in an interview this week. \u201cWe thought, \u2018What could be the sense of this kind of sticker?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Each of the white rectangular stickers, measuring about 1 by 2 inches, bore a black QR code, a last name and a combination of letters and numbers, according to images published in the German press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Cemeteries in Munich allow QR codes as memorials on headstones, Mr. Hoerauf said, and for more than a decade, people whose loved ones are buried in cemeteries around the world have uploaded photographs and other digital keepsakes to create online memorials that can be viewed via QR code.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But those are usually etched into the gravestone or carved as a metal plate to form a deliberate part of the memorial to the deceased.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The recent appearances in Munich also raised eyebrows because in 2004, stickers appeared in a Jewish cemetery in Bochum, a city in western Germany. Those turned out to commemorate Rudolf Hess, a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/biography\/Rudolf-Hess\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">senior Nazi leader<\/a> who served as Hitler\u2019s deputy. The stickers appeared to be linked to a far-right demonstration in the town of Wunsiedel, in southeastern Germany, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worldjewishcongress.org\/en\/news\/nazi-stickers-found-in-jewish-gravestones-in-germany\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">according to the World Jewish Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In this instance, though, the graves were not linked by religion, ethnicity or any other discernible personal characteristic of the deceased, Mr. Hoerauf said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">City workers first came across the QR codes in December, and scanning them revealed only the name of the deceased and the grave\u2019s location \u2014 essentially repeating the information on the sticker, but providing no other useful information, Mr. Hoerauf said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The stickers popped up in Waldfriedhof cemetery, a wooded space with some 60,000 graves, and in the nearby smaller Sendlinger Friedhof and Friedhof Solln cemeteries, Mr. Hoerauf said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They seemed to be posted randomly, he said \u2014 on old and new graves, on carved tombstones and wooden crosses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Bewildered municipal workers initially recorded the sightings as they tried to figure out the source of the stickers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They were also looking at a steep price to remove them, Mr. Hoerauf said: anywhere from 100 to 500 euros (about $104 to $523) per sticker to strip the adhesive without damaging the graves, a total potential cost of roughly \u20ac500,000, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So this week, the municipality turned to the police to investigate a criminal case of property damage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They quickly found that a local business that had been contracted to clean and maintain certain graves was behind the QR codes, the police said on Thursday. The relatives of the deceased whose graves were marked with them would be notified during the inquiry, an investigating officer said in an email.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The police would not name the company or share details about how they had found the perpetrators, but the German news media identified a gardening company as being responsible.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sueddeutsche.de\/muenchen\/muenchen-friedhof-grabsteine-qr-codes-raetsel-li.3205352?utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=twitterbot&amp;utm_campaign=3205352\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung<\/a> newspaper cited Alfred Zanker, a senior manager at that company, as saying that the stickers were simply a way for employees to keep track of which headstones they had maintained.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cWe are a large company,\u201d he told the newspaper. \u201cEverything has to happen in an orderly manner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The police declined to comment further, citing the continuing investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/02\/20\/world\/europe\/germany-munich-qr-codes-graves.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a wooded cemetery in Munich, a white sticker with a puzzling QR code appeared on a gravestone late last year. Then, over the next few weeks, more and more stickers mysteriously appeared, until more than 1,000 graves were marked like goods in a supermarket. \u201cIt\u2019s really strange,\u201d Bernd Hoerauf, who oversees the management of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/02\/20\/multimedia\/20munich-stickers-bwgk\/20munich-stickers-bwgk-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189056,181716,19085,4791,37244,37218,185449,189055],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243183,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243181\/revisions\/243183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}