15th anniversary of the shooting
“No day like any other” – Winnenden remembers the victims
White roses stand at the “Broken Ring” memorial at a school in Winnenden. This is to commemorate the 16 people who died in the shooting spree. photo
© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
The first emergency call was received by the police at 9:33 a.m. Every year since then, the church bells in Winnenden have rung at this time in memory of the victims of the rampage.
What feels like an eternity passes while the two girls read out the names at the microphone. Another one, another one. They read slowly, take breaks, take turns. The two students never met the people behind the names. They are still too young for that.
They are the names of the 15 people who attended one 15 years ago at the Albertville secondary school and also in Wendlingen were murdered in a rampage. Students, teachers and three other purely coincidental victims, a technician from the state psychiatric clinic, a car salesman in Wendlinger and his customer.
The shooter, a former student, broke into the school and opened fire with his father’s pistol before killing three other people and himself as he fled. Winnenden’s church bells ring every year at 9:33 a.m., the time the first emergency call from the school was received by the police.
School wants to keep memories alive
At the “Broken Ring”, the mighty memorial within sight of the school, hundreds of people commemorated the murdered on Monday morning, exactly 15 years later. Most of the victims were 15 or 16 years old. Their names are affixed to the eight-ton steel sculpture, which can be accessed through a narrow gap. On one side, the ring symbolically rebels against violence.
“This brutal act shows that non-violence is unfortunately not a given, and that violence between people can break out at any time, even without a war,” warns Winnenden’s mayor Hartmut Holzwarth in his short words after the commemoration. “The ring also calls on us not to accept violence, but to rebel against it.” Meanwhile, the younger classes of the secondary school form a human chain around the school. None of them are contemporary witnesses, but they all know what happened back then.
Because the school prepared them well for the day. It is important to keep bringing the memory back to life, says headmaster Sven Kubick. The students need to learn who is being remembered and why. “For us, this day is not like any other day,” says Kubick. The year after the shooting, he moved to the Winnender School, northeast of Stuttgart. Since then, he has seen how memories change. Students increasingly asked questions because they couldn’t remember the day because of their age.
“This act shaped life in the city”
In the entrance hall of her secondary school, dozens of folded, colorful fabric flowers create a curved path, through the hallway, up the stairs that the perpetrator also climbed at the time, to the school’s memorial room, room 1.10. Here, in this former classroom, six young people died at the hands of the skilled marksman. There are 15 gray, knee-high memorial desks in this room, one for each victim. A large photo on each desk, a memorial candle, personal memories, stuffed animals, a fresh flower here or there, a small Albanian flag.
Not only former students are welcome here on this day, the school is open to everyone. Interest has certainly decreased, many new people have moved to Winnenden, others are no longer there. “But this act shaped life in the city,” says mayor Holzwarth. “Remembrance Day gives us the opportunity to remember. And the opportunity to reflect.” It is primarily the relatives of the victims who decide how long the celebration will remain in the Winnenden calendar. There was clear interest in meeting again this year, says the CDU local politician.