Within the wooded cemetery in Munich white sticker with a puzzling QR code appeared on a tombstone late final yr.
Then, over the following few weeks, an increasing number of stickers appeared mysteriously, whereas over 1000 graves weren’t marked as items in a grocery store.
“It is actually bizarre,” says Bernd Hooraf, who runs town’s cemetery administration in an interview this week. “We thought,” What may very well be the sensation of one of these sticker? “
Every of the white rectangular stickers, measuring about 1 in 2 inches, carries a black QR code, a surname and a mixture of letters and numbers, based on pictures revealed within the German press.
Munich cemeteries enable QR codes as tombstone memorials, mentioned G -n Hoeraf, and greater than a decade, individuals whose family members are buried in cemeteries around the globe have uploaded photographs and different digital shares to create on-line monuments that may have been thought of by way of QR code.
However they normally match into the tombstone or are carved as a metallic plate to type a deliberate a part of the deceased memorial.
The latest appearances in Munich additionally raised their eyebrows as a result of in 2004 the stickers appeared in a Jewish cemetery in Bohum, a metropolis in West Germany. These turned out to be famous by Rudolf Hess, a senior Nazi leader who was Hitler’s deputy. The stickers appeared to be related to a far -right demonstration within the metropolis of Vansiedel, in Southeast Germany, According to the World Jewish CongressS
On this case, nevertheless, the graves weren’t associated to faith, ethnicity or different noticeable private attribute of the deceased, mentioned G -n Hoeraf.
Metropolis staff first got here throughout QR codes in December and their scanning revealed solely the identify of the deceased and the situation of the grave – it basically repeated the details about the sticker, however supplied different helpful info, mentioned Gn Hoeraf.
The stickers jumped into the cemetery of Waldfiridhof, an afforestation area with about 60,000 graves, and within the close by smaller Sendlinger Friedhof and Friedhof Solln Cemetious, mentioned Hoerauf.
They appear to have been revealed on a random foundation, he mentioned – on previous and new graves, on carved tombstones and picket crosses.
Puzzled municipal staff initially recorded the observations as they tried to know the supply of the stickers.
In addition they watched a steep value to take away them, d -Hoeraf mentioned: from 100 to 500 euros (about 104 to $ 523) per sticker to undress the adhesive with out damaging the graves, a complete potential value of about 500,000 Euro, he mentioned.
Thus, this week, the municipality addressed the police to analyze a felony case for property.
They shortly discovered {that a} native enterprise that has been signed to wash and preserve sure graves are behind QR codes, police mentioned on Thursday. The kin of the deceased, whose graves have been marked with them, will likely be notified throughout the investigation, an investigative worker mentioned in an electronic mail.
Police is not going to identify the corporate or share particulars of how the perpetrators discovered, however German information media have recognized a gardening firm as accountable.
Thehe Süddeutsche Zeitung The newspaper quotes Alfred Zanker, a senior supervisor on this firm, saying that stickers are only a technique to hold an worker watching which tombstones have maintained.
“We’re a giant firm,” he informed the newspaper. “All the things has to occur in a tidy method.”
Police refused to remark additional, citing the continuing investigation.
