The Institute
And how the little FLOWER relates
to grief and research
The TRAUERFORSCHUNGSINSTITUT kleine BLUME e.V. / The BEREAVEMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE little FLOWER e.V. was founded in February 2023 on the initiative of the sociologist Prof. Dr. Miriam Sitter.
As a non-profit association, the Institute promotes science and research in accordance with its statutory purposes. As part of this mission, the local institute carries out social science research in order to generate new knowledge about the causes, expressions, places and course of grief, as well as the various ways of coping with it, which are never detached from society. With these results, we want to visualise what grief can mean for people of all ages and what diverse experiences and life-world challenges are associated with it.
By the way
The kleine BLUME / little FLOWER stands symbolically for transience and refers to an interdisciplinary research that deals with the accumulated (non-)knowledge about the temporal finiteness of human life as a result of dying and death. The liaison between transience and death, between loss and grief, is as old as humanity. Unstoppable and difficult to influence, it is sometimes unwelcome, not infrequently challenging.
We take a look at what is challenging about this liaison …
in order to open up new perspectives and ways of dealing with it. Our view of dying, death and bereavement is socially critical and reflective, challenging us to consider how the seemingly impossible becomes achievable.
Dealing with transience as an affected person in society, opening up to the value of mourning, always means encountering different views in everyday life that may conflict with one’s own. The work at the TRAUERFORSCHUNGSINSTITUT / BEREAVEMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE therefore consists, among other things, of exploring how ways of acting and thinking, as well as normative routines of how society deals with the fading of being, affect and influence people in various ways as they come to terms with their loss.
Coming to terms with loss, however, is not limited to dealing with the transience of human and animal life. Loss also challenges people in other areas as well, beyond dying and death. For example, the loss of a friendship or love relationship, of trust, of a sense of security, of being young, healthy and employed, or of a parental home, can give rise to feelings and needs similar to those experienced during the grieving process following a loss due to death.
The BEREAVEMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE therefore sees itself as a place, …
in which the interrelationship between loss and grief is transposed into a variety of life contexts. From this perspective, the little FLOWER is closely linked to the adventurous biography of the fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805 – 1875). Anyone who reads or remembers his fairy tales and stories will be able to discover the grief that »lies over his texts despite all exuberance« and is »a melancholy signature of Andersen’s position« (Detering 2011, p. 39; Institute’s own translation).
Carried by its fairy tales and stories, which often tell of adverse living conditions, the Institute does not want to locate grief concretely, especially not exclusively in the context of dying and death. It therefore looks at social developments and phenomena that have so far been little discussed in terms of how they affect losing and grieving. We address this gap in our research fields on Trauern in sozialer Ungleichheit / Mourning in Social Inequality or Trauer und Biografie / Grief and Biography. This contextual consideration allows not only for a contextual re-examination of the conceptual understanding of loss and grief, but also for a different and critical view of the mechanisms of social conditions and institutional orders in their impact on loss and grief. Grief and loss can thus be understood as individualised results of life circumstances, such as poverty or domestic violence. At the same time, these living conditions in the functionally differentiated house of society are shaped by cultural, institutional orders, which in turn can structure experiences of loss and mourning.
At the BEREAVEMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE little FLOWER e.V., …
these observations are intended to sharpen perspectives and complement forms of dialogue about loss and grief, thus opening up new spaces for discourse. For this reason, it is a central concern of the Institute to motivate people who are grieving with their experiences of loss to participate in Participatory Research in order to derive new needs for practical grief counselling based on their subjective experiences and stories, and to show other perspectives on socially determined forms of grief. As basic and practice-oriented research, which is interested in disparate forms of coping with grief, it is oriented towards the lifeworld; thus, among other things, it introduces sociological approaches to thinking and research in order to analyse loss and grief in a broader, socio-structural context.
In order to make the origins and results of the analyses visible to the public, various collaborations play a central role. In this respect, the BEREAVEMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE is also a place for intervening social science grief research.
Would you like to know more about why Hans Christian Andersen and his works are so closely associated with the little FLOWER? Then read on here.
Andersen was born on the 2nd of April 1805 in Odense (Denmark). He has worked tirelessly on his everyday and lifelong stories of suffering because of his social background, his gender orientation and the stigmatisation he experienced as a result of his perceived girlish appearance in his work. According to Gisela Perlet (2005, p. 110; Institute’s own translation), for example, he described his fairy tale The Ugly Duckling / Das missratene Entchen (2019) in a letter to Georg Brandes »as a ›reflection‹ of his life«. Biographical parallels can also be seen in the story of The Little Match Girl / Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (Andersen 2019), which is characterised by childhood poverty. In his texts, Andersen often expresses things that would have been unspeakable for him in social reality (cf. Detering 2011, p. 53). This is why most of the castles in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales often appear as ice palaces.
Andersen’s problems as a perpetual bachelor who never found a loving relationship are probably also reflected in his story The Butterfly / Der Schmetterling – (self-)ironically packaged and with biographical references. He »wanted to get himself a sweetheart« (Andersen 2019, p. 342; Institute’s own translation), only to end his quest discovered, admired and impaled on a needle. When, on page 344 (Institute’s own translation), Andersen lets the butterfly speak in his lost search for a loved one in the stormy autumn: »›Life is not enough! […] You must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower!‹«, it is not only his »incessant self-expression« (Detering 2011, p. 11; Institute’s own translation) that is practised here, but also his desire for something more in life – in other words, for individual fulfilment of needs. Where there is a need for affection and togetherness, there is also loss. And where there is loss, there can be grief.
Hans Christian Andersen died on the 4th of August 1875 in Copenhagen at the country estate of the Melchior family in Rolighed.
Here you can find further reading to learn more about Andersen’s biography and how he worked:
- Andersen, Hans Christian: Reisebilder aus Schweden und England. In Schweden. Ein Besuch bei Charles Dickens. Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Gisela Perlet. Leipzig/Weimar 1985
- Andersen, Hans Christian: »Ja, ich bin ein seltsames Wesen …«. Tagebücher 1825-1875. Ausgewählt und übersetzt von Gisela Perlet. Zwei Bände. Göttingen 2000
- Bredsdorff, Elias: Hans Christian Andersen. Des Märchendichters Leben und Werk. Aus dem Englischen von Gertrud Baruch. München/Wien 1980
- Wullschlager, Jackie: Hans Christian Andersen. The Life of a Storyteller. Chicago 2000
For reference or further reading, you will also find full details of the bibliography already listed:
- Andersen, Hans Christian: Das missratene Entchen, in: Ders.: Märchen und Geschichten. Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt und herausgegeben von Heinrich Detering. Stuttgart 2019, S. 131-141
- Andersen, Hans Christian: Das kleine Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, in: Ders.: Märchen und Geschichten. Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt und herausgegeben von Heinrich Detering. Stuttgart 2019, S. 206-208
- Andersen, Hans Christian: Der Schmetterling, in: Ders.: Märchen und Geschichten. Aus dem Dänischen übersetzt und herausgegeben von Heinrich Detering. Stuttgart 2019, S. 342-344
- Detering, Heinrich: Hans Christian Andersen. München 2011
- Perlet, Gisela: Hans Christian Andersen. Frankfurt am Main 2005
Did you know how diverse the fairy tales, stories and poems by Hans Christian Andersen are that were published between 1835 and 1872?
The Princess and the Pea
The Child in the Grave
Thumbelina
The Little Mermaid
The Emperor’s New Clothes
The Flying Trunk
The Swineherd
The Sweathearts (Top and Ball)
The Fir Tree
The Snow Queen
The Galoshes of Fortune
The Drop of Water
Heartache
The Brave Tin Soldier
Clumsy Hans
The Last Dream of the Old Oak
The Evil Prince
The Snowman
The Gardener and the Noble Family
The Bond of Friendship
Aunty Toothache
A Rose from Homer’s Grave
The Snowdrop
…
Non-profit status
We rely on financial support to carry out our charitable grief research.
We would therefore be very grateful for a donation, which
you can make here.