Germany Mourns Concorde Victims

B E R L I N, July 26, 2000 -- Germany is in shock over the Concorde crash that claimed the lives of nearly 100 of its citizens who were en route to a dream cruise on the other side of the world.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder attended a hastily arranged memorial service in a dark-walled chapel on the grounds of the World’s Fair in Hanover,where the Cabinet was holding its last regular meeting before summer break.

Schroeder extended his deepest sympathies to all the families. “Today Germany is shaken,” he said. “Germany is stunned.”

Air France Flight AF4590, carrying 100 passengers and a crew of nine, slammed into a hotel just outside Paris and exploded shortly after takeoff Tuesday, killing 113 — including four on the ground. The Concorde was en route to New York, where passengers were to meet up with the cruise ship Deutschland.

The memorial service, led by a Protestant and a Roman Catholic bishop, was carried live on Germany’s national television network. The two religious leaders spoke of “the silent cries of the dead.”

“We think of those who flew off on vacation full of hopes and expectations, and how they were dragged into terror and death,” Evangelical Bishop Horst Hirschler said. “How can this happen?”

Catholic Bishop Josef Holmeier asked, “God, where were you in Paris?”

Flags across the country were lowered to half-staff, and some television announcers on the morning newscasts wore black. Crisis centers were set up at the Munich and Duesseldorf airports. A memorial service was planned for Thursday in the Baltic port town of Neustadt in Holstein, where the cruise ship company is based.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair have sent messages of condolence to Schroeder.

113 Lost Lives

The Foreign Ministry identified the victims booked for the charter flight as 49 men, 47 women and three children. All were from Germany except for two Danes and an Austrian. The list was broken down by states, but a spokeswoman today said no further identifying information would be released.

Air France said nine crew members and a retired Air France employee — an American — on board also were killed.

News of the crash dominated German media. “At the start of a dream vacation, 96 Germans burned to death in Concorde,” the B.Z. tabloid headlined its front page. “Germany is in mourning.”

But the crash affected few communities more drastically than Moenchengladbach, a small western city that was home to 13 of the victims.

“He and his wife are dead,” city police spokesman Michael Muehlenbroich said somberly as he paged through the morning newspaper and picked out two of the victims from the area.

“He and his wife are dead,” he repeated, pointing at another photo. “He and his wife are dead. It’s terrible.”

Residents in this quiet bedroom community of 270,000 in Germany’s industrial heartland said the crash cut a swathe through the ranks of its leading citizens.

“These people are the upper-class people of Moenchengladbach,” Muehlenbroich said. “They’re known to everybody in town.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. One of them was my boss,” said an older man, turning away from a television team who tried to interview him.

The manager of the travel agency that booked the trip said two of the couples were longtime friends and customers who booked annual trips together — usually cruises in warmer climates.

“What can one feel when you get such a report about such longtime customers?” said Christian Stattrop, sitting in the Clemens Travel Agency office in the shadow of city’s cathedral, where a memorial service is planned later in the week.

Among the victims identified by the B.Z. were Kurt Kahle, 51, the head of a private business school, his 37-year-old wife and their 8-year-old child; Harald Ruch, 45, owner of a building cleaning company and security service, and his 46-year-old wife; and Werner Tellmann, 69, a furniture store owner, and his wife,Margarete, 66.

The Tellmann store kept its doors closed this morning. A notice in the window said “Closed because of bereavement.”

“I myself bought furniture from him,” Muehlenbroich said.

ABCNEWS’ Sue Masterman in Vienna, Merlin Koene in Hamburg and Heather DeLisle in Berlin, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.