How Marburg reacted to the terror of September 11, 2001

Marburg. “Since yesterday, nothing is as it was.” A sentence that dominated the editorials in many countries around the world on September 12, 2001, in one form or another. A collective shock gripped the world after terrorists flew several hijacked passenger planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11 – an attack on the Western world of unprecedented dimensions, which was attributed to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. US President George Bush responded with the military operation “Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden was liquidated by a special unit.

It was early afternoon in Marburg when the first television images of the planes hitting the towers of the World Trade Center went around the world. The news spread like wildfire, and shortly afterwards the OBERHESSISCHE PRESSE distributed a special edition in Marburg and other communities in the district. Horror and dismay alternated with the fear of a world war.

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“Visibly fighting back tears”

The Bundestag was surprised by the events across the Atlantic in the middle of a budget debate. The Reichstag was immediately evacuated for security reasons because it could not be ruled out that European cities could also become terrorist targets in the event of war. Buildings in Frankfurt, such as the European Central Bank, were also evacuated.

Brigitte Lange, a member of the Bundestag from Marburg at the time, was just as shocked as the rest of the world. OP editor Till Conrad had planned to visit the Social Democrat in Berlin that very day for a background discussion. The appointment took place, but of course there was only one topic left to discuss.

“Pale, horrified, visibly fighting back tears: This is how Brigitte Lange sits two hours after the first impact on the World Trade Center in her Berlin parliamentary office in the Paul Löbe House right next to the Reichstag,” wrote the OP reporter about his meeting with Brigitte Lange. “What do they want to provoke? War?” The question that the SPD parliamentarian raises is one that the whole world is asking at this point.

Search for answers

Immediately after the attacks, Marburg political scientist Wilfried von Bredow, among others, sought answers. When asked by OP, the America expert expressed his incomprehension that the attacks could have happened at all: “Why does the CIA actually exist?” asked von Bredow. Experts had debated such possible scenarios over and over again – “and now we see the complete powerlessness that prevails.”

Meanwhile, peace and conflict researcher Ernst-Otto Czempiel was already looking at the consequences and warned: “If Arab radicals are the perpetrators, the USA will definitely act very soon.” Since the terrorism cannot be localized, “blind, military actions are being carried out.” And Czempiel quickly made the prophetic statement: “This type of terrorism cannot be dealt with unless the conflict in the Middle East itself is resolved.” He was to be proven right.

The Seed of Evil

While scientists and politicians also tried to explain the previously unimaginable scale of the terrorist attacks of September 11, most people were paralyzed by the events. Would prayers help in such a situation? Maik-Dietrich Gibhardt, then media representative of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck and now on the board of the Hephata Diakonie, sent the OP a prayer that was published on the front page on September 13. It said, among other things: “Shocked and helpless, we are faced with what has happened in America.” The suffering exceeds our imagination, and the hatred behind the attacks frightens us. (…) We pray that the seeds of evil do not grow.”

Catholic and Protestant Christians also meet in the chapel of the Marburg Philippshaus to pray together.

Muslims position themselves

Meanwhile, the public in the city and the country had also reacted: a condolence book was drawn up in Marburg's town hall, and dozens of citizens signed it on the first day. In Stadtallendorf, soldiers and schoolchildren remembered the victims of the attacks, and in the Amöneburg administration a planned company outing was cancelled.

The Muslims in the district took a clear stance: “The Koran explicitly states: Thou shalt not kill,” explained Dursun Özdemir, then chairman of the Stadtallendorf Foreigners' Council. Özdemir continued: “Religion can never be used as an excuse for such a crime.”

Up close

In the days following the attacks, messages also arrived from people from Marburg-Biedenkopf who had been in the USA on September 11th or at least wanted to go there – like the Argenstein couple Heinrich Weber and Marianne Dabrowska-Weber: Both wanted to go to New York, but they were redirected to Newfoundland due to the events.

But there were also people from Marburg who experienced the attacks up close: Christian Heck from Dilschhausen, who was 25 at the time, was doing an internship at the Hessische Landesbank in New York when the Twin Towers were attacked. He reported in the operating room: “I live in Midtown, where I witnessed the attack on the World Trade Center yesterday.” He had just come out of the elevator when he saw the first tower burn and the second plane fly into the other tower: “It's a real theater of war.”

Return to a new normal

Less than a week later: Life goes on. Robert Fischbach is re-elected as district administrator, folk festivals and fashion shows are taking place again, and after a minute's silence in the stadiums, the battle for points in the Bundesliga is back on.

Since September 11th, nothing has been the same? Hardly, but the date definitely marks the beginning of a new era with terrorist attacks committed and foiled that would have been hardly conceivable before “Nine Eleven” – from Anis Amri's truck attack on the Berlin Christmas market to the 2015 massacre in the Paris club “Bataclan” to the canceled Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna this year.

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