"You have to dare to do something."

When Gerold Eppler speaks in his own unique, mysterious way about objects and their stories from the Museum of Sepulchral Culture, a hush falls over the room. Children, adults, seniors – this man captivates his listeners. The trained stonemason, who worked at the museum as a museum educator, but also as deputy museum director and managing director of the Working Group for Cemeteries and Monuments, is now retiring. With him goes someone who established an unparalleled approach to conveying the concept of mortality, but above all, a valued colleague with whom (almost) anything seemed possible.

A trained stonemason, a university-educated art teacher, a man of creative energy and extensive experience – since 1992, he has been weaving together the threads of his studies, training, and personal life at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture. For 34 years without a break, and with great courage. After all, his job was primarily about making people aware of mortality without, above all, frightening them. "It's the exchange with people that brings joy; they get to know us, and we get to know them. You have to meet them where they are, and not be overly academic. I've always tried not to speak like an expert, but like a person who has something to say." It's about listening, perceiving reactions, and gauging interest: "What catches their eye? That's where you need to connect," says Eppler.

Many ideas emerged from these encounters, which in turn inform his own work. Like recently, when it came to burying a skeleton from the school's biology collection—which consisted of real bones—together with students. "A student approached me and told me about the burial ritual in Lithuania: that she had to kiss her dead grandmother one last time, which was very strange for her. That was new to me, and at the same time, this encounter showed me once again that customs often don't meet people's needs." There are so many things he still doesn't know—even after many decades of working with sepulchral culture. Perhaps the most important aspect of his work has been the feedback: "When I had the feeling that what I was conveying resonated with people."

Each target group needs its own approach, an individualized approach. He was once taken aback by a woman's question about whether he would offer a guided tour for a group of people with intellectual disabilities. "That's not a question," he replied. "And then I walked through the permanent exhibition with these people and received remarkably candid and direct reactions to my words." A valuable experience that will stay with him.

Garlic as protection against the creepy

There are numerous examples of Gerold Eppler's willingness to take risks. He speaks enthusiastically about the accompanying program for the exhibition "Dead Wedding with Wreath and Crown" (2007), which focused on people who died unmarried. He secured the film rights to Tim Burton's "The Corpse Bride" for three evenings and, together with his colleague Ulrike Neurath, screened the film for elementary school children and their parents. To ensure that the children could handle the film's gruesome scenes, they distributed garlic cloves strung together beforehand. "The whole cafeteria smelled of garlic," he says. No one bit into them, as the children had been advised to do to protect themselves from the scare. Some of the parents found the film even more frightening than the children. Nevertheless, they followed the flyers Gerold Eppler distributed in the elementary schools and came to the museum – two out of the three film evenings were sold out.

A prerequisite for working at the Museum of Sepulchral Culture is developing one's own perspective. "Only then can you engage with the subject without letting it get too close to you." This naturally raises the question of Gerold Eppler's perspective. He completed an apprenticeship as a stonemason and worked with a weather-resistant material. "I don't believe in an afterlife, but something of me will remain." Some of his pieces turned out "quite well": "That's how I survive." Besides the objects themselves, it is also the countless encounters with people at the museum and during his projects outside that keep him alive even after his death. "You leave an impression."

Whether during guided tours, projects, or interactions with students seeking his expertise for their theses, he never imposed anything or used his own aesthetic preferences as a benchmark. Instead, he tried to draw out their inner selves, their own unique perspectives. This also included gaining his own experiences. For example, during a visit to a crematorium, the technical processes of which initially shocked some of the young people before helping them to see things in a new light. He tried a similar approach with his son, who is now 27. "I never wanted him to conform to my expectations." And that didn't happen. While he himself refused military service after graduating from high school in order to perform alternative civilian service in an institution with flat hierarchies, his son now works for the Federal Police. He happily nurtured his son's childhood interest in history with visits to castles, palaces, and museums. "In second grade, he was supposed to give a presentation on Richard the Lionheart and was abruptly interrupted by the teacher after 45 minutes," Gerold Eppler recalls proudly. He himself, by the way, never saw himself in school; the grades there played far too big a role. "Here at the museum, learning success is measured by how engaged students are with the subject matter." Thanks to playful formats, this has been very successful: "It has often happened that a teacher came to me at the end and realized they hadn't even recognized a student."

“Irritation generates food for thought”

If one were to speak of a mission, it would probably be to move and open people of all ages. The path that led there was anything but conventional. A conversation with Thorsten Teubl, then a dance dramaturge at the Kassel State Theatre, resulted in a fashion show featuring dancers who moved among gravestones on a catwalk, clad in clothing adorned with skulls. The men wore, among other things, lingerie with memento mori motifs, and laypeople were encouraged to display their tattoos. All of this took place alongside the exhibition "Buy now, die later" (2015). "The extreme isn't the approach, but provocations generate food for thought," says Eppler, who, within the museum team, is primarily the one who simply says, "Let's try it out." His openness to new formats and approaches to the topic, his receptiveness to the enthusiasm of his colleagues' ideas—this, incidentally, was a great asset in their collaboration. The fashion show made the audience smile – and that in turn could be a door opener.

He himself always found himself in the tension between feeling and personal empathy, maintaining distance and reflecting. It is thanks to this ability that Gerold Eppler developed a museum pedagogy during his time working there that has a real impact. Sometimes, however, maintaining boundaries is also a challenge. For example, remaining grounded in sadness when bereaved parents recount their experiences. The exhibition "...and the stars began to shine," a small cabinet exhibition, dealt with deceased children. The exhibition aimed, among other things, to show the range of products available for parents of deceased children. Eppler and his colleagues addressed this by furnishing a child's and teenager's room, displaying objects with memento mori motifs, from erasers to bed linens – thus making the topic tangible without being overwhelming. It was a successful, small exhibition – but what followed was far more valuable. From this initial contact with bereaved parents, a regular program developed. And so, to this day, the museum continues to work with... World Wide Candlelighting Every November, a large memorial event is held at the Museum of Sepulchral Culture, culminating in a long chain of candles shining from the museum's terrace into the sky.

Finding points of connection to people's current lives is one of the museum's strengths. "Children should have fun at a birthday party, and those affected by loss need to be made aware that they are not alone." It's the tension between life and death. "I don't know if other museums are as successful at maintaining this tension." According to Eppler, it's not about putting a sandbox in the cemetery, but about creating programs that build bridges for the sake of conveying the topic.

The sky under the car roof

Helpful in this regard is his attitude of simply trying things out, daring to try something new, and observing. Incidentally, this is a trait he possesses as credentials for Regarding his connection to his South Hessian roots, he says, "It's about interpreting regulations as recommendations." However, he's already lived out the extroverted implementation of this, perhaps even his life motto. Like driving his buddy's unregistered VW Beetle along the Rhine. "There's a picture of me lying on the roof while driving, holding onto the window frame." Or camping illegally in nature with his friends from his advanced art class and then riding to school the next day in a moped convoy – just one of countless images that come to mind when Gerold Eppler thinks about his youth. "Once, we painted a sky under the roof of a friend's car. It took the headmaster a moment to realize it was a school project."

He still keeps in loose contact with his friends from the advanced art class. They've all settled down now: married, with kids, houses. They have a reunion every five years in Gernsheim; otherwise, they keep in touch via WhatsApp. "But I'm not much of a WhatsApp writer. Often I don't know what to write and then I don't, or my messages are very formal." WhatsApp is also the channel they use to communicate when someone in the group has died. Besides the good old days with Super 8 film and motorcycles, what connects him and his friends from the advanced art class is their school days with a teacher who greatly influenced him. "Back then, we were the first year group to have the reformed upper secondary school system with its course system. We wanted an advanced art class, but the schedules were all already written, all the class times assigned." So they took matters into their own hands and created additional class times outside the existing timetable. "We then had free periods in the morning and advanced art classes in the afternoon." Thanks to his teacher's good contacts, he visited many exhibitions and even exhibited his own work at the Darmstadt State Museum. A few of his paintings are still in the attic, Eppler says. "I liked to paint representational art."