Germanwings Memorial Service Held at Cologne Cathedral
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Version 0 of 1. COLOGNE, Germany — The leaders of Germany on Friday joined hundreds of mourning relatives in one of the country’s most hallowed cathedrals to honor the passengers and crew members who died when a jet smashed into a French mountainside last month, a crash that horrified the world after investigators said the co-pilot had deliberately brought down the plane. President Joachim Gauck, once a Lutheran pastor in Communist East Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the state and national leaders who gathered in the Cologne Cathedral for the two-hour, nationally televised memorial service. Although the crash of the Germanwings flight on March 24 has been the subject of intense discussion, the memorial service on Friday marked the first time in which Germany mourned as a nation. Mr. Gauck articulated many of the emotions that arose not only from the loss of life but also from the revelation in the days after the crash that the co-pilot had almost certainly responsible for it. “We lack words for this deed,” Mr. Gauck said, noting that it gave rise to a “dreadfully oppressive burden of feelings.” “There was this unbelievable shock, this incomprehension, the sadness, which for many turned to rage and anger,” he said. There have been many memorial services in Germany, Spain and elsewhere since the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. But the ceremony in Cologne, watched by hundreds of people on large screens outside, illustrated the extent to which Germany has been affected more than any other. About half the people onboard the plane were from Germany, as was the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz. There were 150 candles burning in the cathedral on Friday, one for each person on the plane, including Mr. Lubitz. “We don’t know what was going on inside the head of the co-pilot in the decisive second, in the decisive minutes,” Mr. Gauck said, referring to the time in which Mr. Lubitz blocked the captain of the plane from re-entering the cockpit and set a course into the French Alps. But, Mr. Gauck noted, “we do know that his family also lost someone they loved on March 24.” The crash has also shaken confidence in Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, after the airline admitted it had known since 2009 that Mr. Lubitz had a history of severe depression. The heads of both Lufthansa and Germanwings were among the 1,400 mourners in the cathedral, most of them relatives of victims, including many from Spain and other countries, or invited dignitaries. Employees of Germanwings watched the service on a screen at a different church, which was closed to outsiders. The headquarters of Germanwings is less than 10 miles from the cathedral near the Cologne-Bonn airport. Montabaur, the hometown of Mr. Lubitz, is about 60 miles to the south of Cologne. The plane was bound from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, and more than a third of the victims were from the surrounding region in western Germany, including 16 high school students and two teachers from the town of Haltern am See, which is about 60 miles north of Cologne. The students were returning from an exchange program in Spain. The ceremony included a performance by three musicians from Haltern, who played John Williams’s theme from the movie “Schindler’s List.” Two members of the ensemble, the violinist Christel Decker and the pianist Peter Lauterbach, are music teachers at Joseph König Gymnasium in Haltern, the high school attended by the 16 students and two Spanish teachers who were killed. The other member, the violinist Daniela Hofschneider-Zoldan, is a parent with two children at the school. Ms. Decker said after the ceremony that some of the children who died had taken part in a production of “Peter Pan” that the musicians had helped stage. The choice of the theme from “Schindler’s List” had no special significance, Ms. Decker said. “We just chose something the students could relate to,” she said. The school and indeed all of Haltern remain in shock, Ms. Decker said. “We’re trying to get back to normal,” she said, “but it’s not easy.” Also killed were two acclaimed opera singers from the Deutsche Oper in Düsseldorf. Their colleague, the Romanian soprano Luiza Fatyol, sang “Pie Jesu” by Gabriel Fauré during the service. The Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, led the ecumenical service along with Annette Kurschus, head of the Lutheran church in the region of Westphalia. She summed up the national mood, at least in part, saying, “Something incomprehensible has happened.” During her remarks, she repeated the word “incomprehensible” over and over. The cardinal, noting that the cathedral sits on a spot used for Christian worship for 1,600 years, invited all mourners, including those he acknowledged might not have the habit of prayer, to “let yourself be carried by all those who pray for you and your loved ones.” Representatives of the Orthodox Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths also read short prayers, as did a young woman, identified only as Sarah, who organizers said had lost a sister in the crash. She choked back tears and was supported by others as she spoke. Mr. Gauck thanked France for its help at the crash site, an inaccessible ravine, and for caring for relatives of the victims when they visited. “Difficult times are when our people most pull together,” he said. Among the mourners on Friday were many of the workers who responded to the crash and dealt with the aftermath. On a windswept April day, the vast, hushed cathedral was chilly. People identified as emergency counselors were in the aisles; at each seat was a stylized wooden angel that mourners were encouraged to clutch if seeking comfort, and to search for sustaining angels in everyday life. Angels were presented to Mr. Gauck, ministers from Spain and France, including Jorge Fernández Díaz, the Spanish interior minister, and to Hannelore Kraft, governor of the state of North Rhine Westphalia. “We are left with only one question, Why?” Ms. Kraft said in remarks to the mourners after the ecumenical service concluded. Another angel was handed to Thomas Winkelmann, the chairman of Germanwings. The Dom, as the cathedral is known, is one of Germany’s oldest and most important cathedrals and one of the largest in the world. Construction began in 1248 on a site that had been used for Christian worship at least since the 600s. The cathedral with its signature twin steeples was not completed until 1880. Though badly damaged by bombs in World War II, the cathedral remained standing and has since been restored. |