Both residents and politicians visiting Magdeburg are shocked and unsettled after Friday’s deadly attack at a Christmas market in the city.
A former church became a meeting place for mourners in the difficult hours following the attack on a Magdeburg Christmas market on Friday that left several dead and many more injured.
St. John’s Church is the oldest parish in the city; Martin Luther preached here around 500 years ago. But residents of the eastern German city tend to be atheists, and the church no longer holds services after it was deconsecrated. However it is just a few meters away from where the attack took place and has become a meeting point for people seeking solace in the aftermath. A sea of flowers and candles surrounds the entrance.
Terror becomes “dense and tangible”
“I am stunned. The terror has somehow always been there, abstractly. But now it’s very dense and tangible. I just feel sad and powerless,” says Jutta, who declines to give her surname. Many of her friends are doctors, she tells DW. “Many helped where they could yesterday.”
Everything changed for hundreds of locals when a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia identified as Talib A. allegedly deliberately drove a rental car into a group of people at the Christmas market in the city center. As of Saturday, five people, including a nine-year-old child, had died in Magdeburg, the capital of the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. More than 200 were injured, some very seriously.
The morning after, the Christmas market in the city of 240,000 is closed. It will remain so. A few police cars are still parked on the road but the shopping center nearby, a refuge for many people who sought help on Friday evening, is already open again. Traffic flows past on the main road in front of the market.
Still, the city seems strangely quiet — perhaps in a state of shock. It is often journalists and camera teams from many countries who are seen out and about in the city center, keen to report on what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has to say, as he visits the site of the attack.
In the late morning, Scholz walks through the alley that the alleged perpetrator turned into a crime scene just a few hours earlier. The Chancellor is accompanied by Saxony-Anhalt state premier Reiner Haseloff, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, and Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democrats and candidate for chancellor in the upcoming election. All wear dark clothing and somber expressions. They place white roses in front of St. John’s Church and remain for a moment of silence.
Then they move on for private meetings with first responders and victims’ families. Afterwards they appear at the cordoned-off market to offer a few words to residents.
Not everyone likes the fact that the politicians are here. A few protesters in front of the barriers shout that they’re only campaigning for February’s elections. State premier Haseloff speaks first, visibly affected. Today he wants to mourn, he says, “then we’ll talk about security.”
A call for solidarity
Chancellor Scholz speaks of a “terrible, insane act,” calling on the nation to stand together in “solidarity.” Scholz, not known for being particularly emotional, has clearly been moved by his conversations with those affected by the attack. People will “have to struggle with this event,” he says, but they will not be left alone. “Togetherness” will prevail over “hatred,” Scholz adds, saying that Pascal Kober, federal commissioner for the victims of terrorist attacks, will take care of those impacted.
Resident Mandy Bode tells DW tearfully that she remains in shock, having left the Christmas market just minutes before the attack. She came to St. John’s Church on Saturday to “show that the people of Magdeburg are standing together.” She says that she doesn’t care whether politicians are on the scene. “The fact that people died is the fault of politicians,” she says.
Amid the mourning, the question of how such violence could occur is on many minds. Far-right supporters also stand in front of St. John’s Church.”Deport these people now!,” they shout. One of them wears a bracelet with a Nazi flag.
But people like Jutta and Mandy Bode don’t want to allow this day to be taken over by extremists and they shoo them away. Instead, they and other likeminded residents will attend a service in the Magdeburg Cathedral in the evening to honor those killed and injured in the attack.
