The World From Berlin

School Shootings 'Can Happen Anywhere'

Germans used to think that school violence was a distinctly American phenomenen. Now, after a massacre in a small town that took 15 lives, commentators ponder what could be done to prevent the next tragedy.

Germany grieved on Wednesday for the 15 lives lost in the shootings in Winnenden. Meanwhile, thoughts turned to the painful fact that this is the country's third school shooting in less than a decade -- in 2002, a shooter in a high school in the eastern German city of Erfurt killed 16 people as well as himself. And in Emsdetten in 2006, an 18-year-old gunman injured 11 before committing suicide.

In Thursday's papers, commentators reflect on gun violence, the vulnerability of school buildings and whether the country is destined for more terrible incidents in the coming years.

The left-leaning Tageszeitung writes:

"Why can't we prevent these tragedies? We have to be able to! That's what teachers, parents and students all demand. They're right, but we also have to confront ourselves with the lessons revealed by the incidents in Winnenden and Alabama, Erfurt and Littleton: It can happen anywhere, even in the confines of a small German town. Schools are very vulnerable, easily wounded places -- not least, because we don't want to turn them into soldiers' barracks."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"Schools are existentially formative places and thus seem to become objects of longing and hate for those who, for whatever reason, feel inferior. Of course, this is not the schools' fault. But they somehow attract the exterminating furor of the murderers. That's why we need to do a better job of protecting our schools. We allow ourselves to be scanned at every airport and many businesses -- but we leave every German classroom unprotected. Locked doors and security guards wouldn't transform schools into high security zones. Instead they would provide the care that we owe our teachers and students."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"Maybe perpetrator Tim K.* gave signals. His strange introversion might have been a clue -- though probably only in retrospect. Who can really know when danger might threaten? We can't look into each of the millions of souls in this country and flood society with warnings of attack. Everyone has to deal with humiliations, fears and crises. Everyone does it in his own way and some people don't manage. It's always going to be a shock if someone suddenly directs violence against others or himself. But that doesn't mean we can prevent it."

The business daily Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Seven years ago, when a young man went on a rampage in a high school in Erfurt and randomly killed 16 people, the shock was so great because hardly anyone believed that such an act could be perpetrated in Germany. People had registered the news of incidents like the massacre in Columbine High School in 1999 -- but most Germans considered such tragedies to be an American problem that had to do with the lax gun control laws in the United States. But an honest analysis has to do away with the fairy tale that these rampages are only a problem for other countries. All the possible motives that ground these grisly acts are no less common in Germany than in other industrialized countries."

*German privacy laws prevent us from immediately giving his full name until circumstances have been clarified

-- Cameron Abadi, 1:30 p.m. CET