More than 100,000 people on Friday attended a memorial service in Erfurt, central Germany, for the victims of the rampant shooting in a secondary school just one week ago.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, most of his cabinet members and leaders from the main opposition parties attended the service on the old city square, which is not far away from the Gutenberg school where an ex-student killed 16 people including 13 teachers and himself.
The killing has been regarded as one of the bloodiest shooting incidents ever happened in a school campus and shocked Germany, which has a comparatively low crime rate in the world.
Thuringian State Prime Minister Bernhard Vogel said at the service that "Erfurt feels sad, Germany feels sad and the world feels sad" for the bloody school shooting.
Germany President Johannes Rau called for more mutual respect among people and urged the society not to look down upon the students with poor study results or undesirable behaviors.
Although school achievements are indispensable parts of education, "for us it is always clear that the judgment of school reports is not the judgment on a human being," he said.
The perpetrator of the Gutenberg school shooting, the 19-year- old Robert Steinhaeser, who once failed the graduation examination and was expelled from the school for falsifying sick leave certificates, has been believed to commit the crime out of revenge on school teachers.
Meanwhile, the call is growing loud in the German public for more strict control of gun sales as well as prohibition of TV programs and video games full of violence.
Schroeder met with TV executives on Thursday and urged them to heel the public concern.
(People's Daily May 4, 2002)
