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The screams of children from the sports field broke into the damp autumn green that surrounded the Carl von Ossietzky school in Kreuzberg. Several children play table tennis with a red and blue basketball on a concrete table. Some young people are shooting goals on the large soccer field next door. Their loud calls sound sometimes proud and sometimes angry.
But at 11:15 am on Monday, silence returned, at least for a brief moment: the director Michael Dahms has announced a minute of silence, in memory of the murdered teacher Samuel Paty. Like at the same time in France and in many places in Germany. Soon after, the break bell rang. The youths immediately rushed to the area, one of them stopped in front of the door.
Mariam, 15, says the minute of silence went well. “We show respect for the person who died.” She believes that he deserves that respect. A child interrupts them and makes jokes. He calls himself Travis Scott, probably after an American rapper, and found the minute of silence “great because it was only a minute.” If it had lasted longer, the mood would have turned sad, says the sixteen-year-old, suddenly serious.
Most of her class participated in the minute of silence, says Selina, 14. Only one partner intervened, but not on purpose. “He did not realize”. Perhaps like Ahmad, who informally reports that he did not participate because he was in the bathroom at the same time. Wasn’t he still silent? The 16-year-old looks outraged. “You don’t do that in the bathroom!”
Ilayda learns of Paty’s death that she must also be dealt with in this country. “So don’t pretend that nothing happened.” And you shouldn’t joke that someone was killed. But didn’t the Muhammad cartoons also make fun of something, well, sacred? “But he was a teacher and he dealt with the subject in class,” emphasizes the sixteen-year-old. “That’s no reason to rip someone’s head off.”
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A child joins the conversation: “What kind of world do we live in, friend?” Asks. “We are writing the 21st century.”
Ilayda and her friends say that Paty’s case is a matter that divides opinions. In their personal environment, however, most of them have the same opinion and basically see it as them. Ilham (15) also expresses his condolences for the death of the teacher. “It is not his fault,” he said.
Why is the murderer killed by the police not also being considered? Tim asks
Seventeen-year-old Tim sees it differently. “I do not understand why there is not a minute of silence for Chechens,” he explains. “He was also killed by the police.” Tim thinks it was the teacher’s fault. “I don’t think it’s good for him to be killed,” he says. However, he thought the minute of silence was “useless” and did not participate in it. His classmate Jonas (16) agrees: “If the teacher hadn’t shown the cartoons, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Antar is still eleven years old, but tomorrow he will turn twelve, according to his companions. The great opportunity is over, he has to go back to class. Before that, however, he quickly gets rid of his opinion of the French teacher: “It’s a shame you killed him,” says Antar, “instead of talking to him about it.”
“Every attack is an attack on the culture of tolerance”
What is still evident here in front of the door of the German-Turkish European school in Kreuzberg: The students mostly supported the minute of silence. This is how Principal Dahms felt when he walked around his school at 11:15 am But this attitude in the student body is not a coincidence, but was worked out by the staff, emphasizes Dahms.
This is also confirmed by the home page, in which the school community clearly says: “No to terror and violence” and that “every attack is an attack against the culture of tolerance, against the diversity of people in all countries. and the variability of the world that is also visible through migration ”.
Other schools have also thought about the French teacher who was killed. “Our experiences with the minute of silence were basically positive,” says Andreas Huth, principal of the Ernst Reuter School in Mitte. At the Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium in Neukölln, participation in the minute of silence was voluntary: “Today was a normal school day for us,” says Principal Karin Kullicke.
Paris had suggested the minute of silence in due course
As reported, the brief nature of the minute of silence was criticized. An exchange with the students was not possible beforehand because the schools had not learned of the action until Friday afternoon.
When asked, the Permanent Conference of Ministers of Education and Culture (KMK) announced that the French commemoration suggestion had been sent by the French embassy on Wednesday. The letter from KMK President Stefanie Hubig (SPD) did not reach the Senate Education Department until Friday.
“Despite the very short preparation time, there were no complaints, but there was a lot of approval,” Martin Wagner, principal of Johann Gottfried Herder primary school in Lichtenberg, said at noon. The teachers would have taken the information from Friday on the weekend and integrated it into their lessons on Monday.
