A university town has been hit to the core: a student is shot dead in the middle of a class. Helplessness and shock are still great a week after the killing spree.
Heidelberg – Heidelberg stopped a week after the killing spree with one dead and three injured: Exactly at 12:24 p.m. on Monday, the visitors to a funeral service were silent for a minute for the shot student, the people in the city and beyond.
Meanwhile, the bells of St. Peter’s Church, decorated with white flowers and candles, rang.
Exactly at this point last Monday, the first emergency calls came in from a university lecture hall, in which an 18-year-old shot himself with a gun. A 23-year-old was brutally torn from life, including from the lives of her friends and relatives. The parents of the deceased did not accept the university’s invitation to the funeral service. On the same day, her daughter was buried in Essingen, Palatinate.
Commemoration of killed student
The young woman, who was born in Landau, had just started her studies in biological sciences, for which she had to do particularly well, as Heidelberg’s Mayor Eckart Würzner (independent) emphasized. “How much joy that may have given the young woman and her family,” said Würzner, who, in his own words, as a father of four children, can empathize with the situation of the desperate parents.
In addition, face-to-face events were recently possible again, such as the tutorial attended by the 23-year-old, in which an older student introduced the newcomers to organic chemistry. For the student, the return to personal teaching had fatal consequences.
Baden-Württemberg’s Justice Minister Marion Gentges (CDU) said shortly before the service: “I think of the relatives of the young woman who came to the university in the morning full of hope and had to fight for her life in the afternoon – and unfortunately lost the fight. Several speakers also remembered the 18-year-old, who shot himself after the crime. The question of the origins of their son’s deadly aggression also arises for his parents.
“Why?”
“Why” was the most used word. “The abysses of the human soul are incomprehensible,” said Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU) in front of around 220 mourners. Investigators are also currently investigating whether a mental illness contributed to the crime. So far, however, nothing is known about the motives of the young man, who, like his victim, studied biology but did not know it. “Maybe we’ll never understand it,” Strobl summed up.
In the obituary for the dead, the question of “why” is also raised: “Unfortunately, there will be no explanation why such a wonderful person like you had to give up his life.”
According to Science Minister Theresia Bauer (Greens), the killing spree affected the university as a whole. “It has been shaken as an open place for encounters, also as a safe place for students and teachers to come together.” Nevertheless, the doors of the universities must remain open.
Permanent memorial desired
University rector Bernhard Eitel described the assassination as an attack on the scientific way of life. “But we’re not retreating into our snail shell, we’re moving closer together.” Strobl also warned that walls and fences shouldn’t be allowed, as that contradicts the motto of Germany’s oldest university, “the living spirit”. He hopes that people can trust each other again and go to university without any worries.
The students are still a long way from being carefree. “The pain is still there,” said the chairman of the student body, Peter Abelmann. “One of our ranks has left us forever, and others have experienced things that can hardly be described.” Around 30 students were present at the course, who had to watch how their fellow student was so badly injured by a shot in the head that she died she died in hospital a few hours later. “They are at the center of our thoughts and feelings.”
For the student representatives, the processing of the crime is not yet complete with the funeral service. They want a permanent memorial that commemorates the incomprehensible events of January 24, 2022. dpa
