Coffee beans fall into the drum roaster, and there are marble cakes on the counter. The café in the former chemistry hall of the Albertville Realschule is well attended. Nothing indicates what happened here ten years ago.
Daniel Herfort remembers exactly. As a student, he had to watch as a few meters next to him a trainee teacher was shot. The young woman was the victim of a gunman who arbitrarily murdered in his former school. "I know that I was very fortunate not to get hit, and I'm thankful I'm still alive," says the 24-year-old.
March 11, 2009, a sunny Wednesday, starts unobtrusively at the Albertville Realschule in Winnenden, Swabia. Daniel Herfort, a pupil of the 9b, has come by bus from nearby Berglen every morning and is sitting in the school yard with classmates until the gong calls her. Also Nina Mayer, 24, has arrived. German, art and religion are her subjects, the ambitious trainee teacher does not want to miss a day. "Actually, my daughter should have stayed home that day, because she was ill, and her younger sister asked her to help out at home, but her sense of duty was victorious," says Nina's mother, Gisela Mayer.
photo gallery
12 pictures
Rampage of Winnenden: "We have superimposed"Baden-Württemberg's chief of police, Erwin Hetger, will start his working day about 25 kilometers away. The lawyers in the police headquarters in Stuttgart like every morning waiting for a briefing with his senior staff.
The culprit fired through the door
At about 8.50 clock in the Winnenden suburb makes hamlet to the stone Tim K., 17, on the way to school, which he had completed the previous year with the middle maturity. He has a semi-automatic weapon and several hundred rounds of ammunition. When he enters the building about half an hour later, the third lesson is already in progress. In his former classroom upstairs, the 9c has German lessons. The offender opens the door and shoots three girls. During a break, the teacher can close the room from the inside. He moves on and murders six other teens in another classroom.
Trainee Nina Mayer has had a free time since nine o'clock and is in the copy room when she hears noise upstairs. With two colleagues, she decides to look. As they arrive on the floor, the gunman notices the three women. One manages to escape, the other two have no chance. "My daughter and her colleague stood with their backs to the culprit, turned around, and in that moment he shot them, it was tenths of a second that cost them their lives," says her mother Gisela Mayer. She was able to reconstruct the last minutes of her daughter's life from testimonies.
Stefan Puchner / DPA
Daniel Herford's class has chemistry lessons. When there is a crash around the corridors around 9.30, the teacher decides to bring the young people to safety in an adjoining room. Trainee Sabrina S., also in the class, meanwhile closes the door from the inside. In search of new victims, the gunman fires repeatedly from outside through the door of the chemical hall. A schoolgirl is shot, the trainee teacher fatally injured. "Some of us were still trying to provide first aid, but it was soon clear that the situation was hopeless," remembers Herfort.
Erwin Hetger moves back to his office after the briefing in the Stuttgart police headquarters, but soon the situation center announces an amokalarm. Together with his inspector, he leaves for Winnenden.
"Executed with headshots"
The Winnender police is already on site. Four officials deliver a shootout with the offender. The fact that emergency forces act directly and do not wait for a mobile task force is part of a then new strategy. "The perpetrator shot twelve people in the space of a few minutes, he was a savvy shooter and can not imagine what would have happened if he could have continued to operate undisturbed," says Hetger.
The teenager escapes across the grounds of the neighboring psychiatric hospital and shoots a gardener there. At 9:50 am, he forces a motorist to bring him out of the city at gunpoint at gunpoint. On the upper floor of the school are dead and injured in the hallways. Daniel Herfort and his classmates fled in fear of death into the adjoining room of the chemical hall: "We were partially overlapping each other, through the windows we saw students from other classes, who escaped via fire escapes or just jumped out of windows, it was terrible."
Gisela Mayer experiences in a supermarket from the first media reports about the killing spree. By telephone, she does not reach Nina and drives with her younger daughter to secondary school, in front of the now volunteers, journalists and onlookers frolicking. The police have set up an information center in the adjoining town hall. There Mayer inquires about her daughter. "Then I got the answer: It does not look good, I kept asking, but it did not stop there, it was my younger daughter who asked," Mom, do not you get it? "They want to tell you that Nina Then everything in me collapsed. "
While the death news is delivered in the Stadthalle, Erwin Hetger gets a picture of the crime scene. "I saw young people sitting on the desk, looking as if they were bending over their notebooks, but they had been executed with headshots." It is important for the top policeman of the country to personally inspect the school. In the coming weeks, he will hold talks with forces that will be on location on this day, and would like to credibly assist them in the follow-up.
Towards 12:30 pm, the culprit's escape ends in a business park in Wendlingen about 30 kilometers to the south. After the driver of the hijacked car was able to flee, Tim K. suddenly shoots two more people in a dealership. In the parking lot of an aluminum company, the last shot of his Beretta falls: At half past twelve, the projectile pierces his skull.
Too many legal firearms
That's more than ten years ago. Previously, there had already been a series of rampages at German schools. For example, at a high school in Erfurt in 2002, a 19-year-old former student shot 16 people and himself; In 2006, at an Emsdetten secondary school, an 18-year-old injured 37 people and then killed himself.
In Winnenden, investigations later revealed that the perpetrator came to the gun in his own home. His father had not kept her under lock and key. A court sentenced the shooter in 2013 for negligent homicide to a prison sentence of 18 months probation.
In the following weeks Gisela Mayer and 14 other families had to bring the victims to their graves. Many parents who lost their children joined forces in an action alliance. Among other things, they fought for a tightening of the weapons law and were able to achieve the first partial successes. Thus, the age limit for shooting with large-caliber sporting weapons was increased to 18 years.
In November 2009, the Foundation for Action against Violence in Schools emerged from the Action Alliance. It regularly provides training against aggression and bullying, to help bring about peaceful coexistence. In addition, the Foundation has set up a nationwide telephone consultation with the University of Gießen, which is to help in the early detection of potential amoks. Gisela Mayer continues to lead the foundation with great commitment.
Erwin Hetger retired from the police service in the summer of 2009, now heads the national association of the victim protection organization "White Ring" and has to do with the act to this day. Still survivors of the killing spree and ask for support. Like the foundation, the "White Ring" continues to see a need for action in weapons. "In Baden-Württemberg alone, we still have several hundred thousand legal private firearms, which I think is far too much, " says Hetger.
This is also the view of Daniel Herfort, who attended the school until after graduation and then completed a nursing education. Although he has now fully processed the experience, he still avoids returning to the Albertville junior high school.
There has changed a lot since the killing spree. The building was rebuilt. There is no more teaching in any of the classrooms that became crime scenes. Instead, a library, a memorial room and a café have sprung up there. So students can decide for themselves whether they want to enter the rooms. There are also initiatives to strengthen the school community and improve social coexistence. This includes the student company that operates the café in the former Chemistry Hall.