Grief

Summary

On 19 December 2016, a terrorist drove a lorry into the Christmas Market on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin. Twelve people were killed, and many were seriously injured. The shock soon gave way to grief. A service was held to commemorate the victims, and one year later, a monument in their memory was unveiled. This chapter examines the two purposes of public grief: to say goodbye to the victims and to remember them and why they died. After the First World War, family members built memorials for fallen soldiers to document their personal loss and to admonish society to act as the dead would have wished. With the Day of National Mourning, introduced in 1925, this commemoration became official. The National Socialists reinvented it as a heroes’ memorial day. Centrally governed countries have the power to prescribe a period of national mourning, as the GDR did after Stalin’s death in 1953, when public life came to a standstill for several days. The Federal Republic has nothing of the kind. Yet numerous people expressed their sorrow and sympathy in the wake of the terrorist attack in Berlin.