German City Grieves Over Loss of 13 in Concorde Crash

Market Square on most weekends is a vibrant cacophony of produce hawkers, flower vendors and discerning shoppers. But on the first Saturday after the Concorde crash near Paris killed 13 local friends and neighbors, the square was an empty expanse of cobblestone and a fitting metaphor for the hole in this grieving city’s heart.

Out of respect for the dead and those who mourn them, the weekly open-air market bowed a dignified block back to a pedestrian walkway as more than 1,000 Moenchengladbach citizens filled the Evangelical Church on the square to overflowing.

“It happened so quickly that we still cannot deal with it. People we knew, with whom we shared joys and sorrows, are with us no longer,” Pastor Ulrich Meihsner told the somber townspeople, whose silence during an hourlong memorial service was broken by the stifled wails of one inconsolable mourner.

Tragedies like the Concorde accident mete out pain in uneven proportions, and the latest aviation disaster hit this industrial city near the Dutch border with uncommon brutality. Six local couples and the 8-year-old son of one pair died in the Tuesday conflagration, sending shock waves of sorrow to a wide swath of Moenchengladbach’s 250,000 residents.

There were the Frentzens, Margret and Klaus, schoolteachers who had many of Moenchengladbach’s children in their classrooms over the years and had met hundreds of parents at after-school activities and PTA meetings. More accustomed to the kind of vacation involving home repairs and lawn improvements, the couple were on a long-postponed honeymoon after raising three children and saving for this once-in-a-lifetime indulgence--a flight aboard the Concorde and a cruise to follow.

There were the Tellmanns, Werner and Margarethe, owners of a furniture store that had done business with old-timers and newcomers for decades, who had made friends and customers of thousands here who might otherwise have been strangers. A sign hangs in the store window: “Closed for family reasons.”

And there were the Kahles--51-year-old Kurt, wife Marion and their 8-year-old son, Michael. Kurt Kahle ran a private business school that had helped hundreds from Moenchengladbach learn new skills as this city on the edge of the heavily industrialized Ruhr River Valley shifted during the last two decades from mining and steelworks to information technology and small business.

“I’ve known his mother for 40 years. He was her only son, and she’s devastated,” one elderly neighbor said. “I, too, have just one son, and it would kill me if I lost him.

“[Kahle] did a lot for this community--more than most people know or appreciate. He made a lot of money with his business, but he made it possible for so many others to help themselves,” added the distraught family friend, who declined to give her name, considering it unseemly to discuss death or misfortune in public, a common view among German women her age.

The fate of Kahle’s successful business school hints at the steely fortitude running through this city--a conviction that life must go on.

Kahle’s daughter from an earlier marriage, Silke Prochel-Kahle, announced that she would take over the school, where she has assisted for several years, to “carry on in the spirit and energy of my late father to ensure his goals are achieved.”

Perhaps the desire to honor the dreams of the dead persuaded 17 other Moenchengladbachers booked on a Caribbean cruise with the ill-fated Concorde travelers to stay with the ship, the Deutschland, when it set sail from New York on Thursday. Ninety-seven Germans, including the 13 from here, made up the vast majority on board the Concorde when it crashed in a fireball less than a minute after takeoff. In all, 114 people were killed, including five on the ground.

“There must be a terrible shadow over the whole cruise. I can’t imagine that anyone from here could really enjoy it after what has happened,” said Albert Damblon, local deacon of the Aachen diocese that provides the spiritual leadership for this part of western Germany. “It must be a terrible weight to carry.”

One of the lucky ones from among the local residents booked on the cruise was Bernd Coentges, an aide to Mayor Monika Bartsch. Coentges initially was presumed by his colleagues to have been among those who chose to travel on the Concorde for an unusually low surcharge of $1,500. The shaken aide telephoned his boss Wednesday upon learning of his friends’ deaths, and Bartsch said afterward that Coentges explained that the ship’s captain had appealed to the travelers to reflect on what the dead would have wanted.

Damblon said that, to his knowledge, none of the Moenchengladbach vacationers booked on the Deutschland took up the cruise line’s offer of a full refund if they wanted to cancel.

The mood aboard the ship was far from festive, German media have reported. The usual grand ball to celebrate the first night of the sailing was canceled and replaced with a classical music performance in view of the reflective mood of the remaining Germans, the DPA news agency reported from New York.

In Moenchengladbach, the grief has been both magnified by the scope of the loss and salved by the news that others had been spared by the fluke of last-minute flight changes because the doomed Concorde was overbooked.

“People are grieving in different ways. This tragedy has cut through the city, shattering some beyond consolation, while others feel a little sorrow because something painful has happened to someone they didn’t know but might have,” Bartsch said. “What people here need now, most of all, I think, is to be left in peace to deal with their grief.”

Saturday’s service in the Rheydt neighborhood of Moenchengladbach united the city in its sorrow, as religious and political leaders urged the tearful congregation to comfort one another and let their lost neighbors and friends live forever in fond memories.

“I’m sure this has been a help for some people,” said Ernst Schwanhold, a North Rhine-Westphalia state official who hails from this city. “But there is still a lot of pain to be overcome.”

As Meihsner read out the names of the 13 local victims, relatives of the dead carried a crystal basin to the altar, and Chaplain Heiko Jung intoned during each of the six processions: “God, please gather up the tears.”

Like much of Germany throughout this summer, Moenchengladbach has been drenched with rain for weeks, and Saturday morning proved no exception. But as the mourners left the ornate church at midday, the empty Market Square was dappled with sunshine, and many who had wept during the service embraced the pastor’s call to cherish the time they had had with those lost to this city but alive in its citizens’ hearts.