Hundreds of mourners have paid their last respects to Tuğçe Albayrak, the German student teacher whose name has become synonymous with civil courage after she defended two girls who were being harassed in a fast-food restaurant and paid with her life.
At a mosque sandwiched between a railway track and a lumber yard on a windswept industrial estate 50 miles east of Frankfurt, an estimated 1,500 people joined in communal prayer and politicians and religious leaders praised Albayrak’s moral fortitude for intervening to help others in difficulty.
“Her warmhearted and generous nature set a worthy example for others to follow,” said Volker Bouffier, the prime minister of the state of Hesse, standing next to Albayrak’s coffin, which was flanked by German and Turkish flags in acknowledgement of her heritage.
Many in the crowd wore black and white photographs of the student pinned over their hearts. Some held banners bearing messages she had posted on social media.
From the mosque a funeral cortege of buses and cars travelled under police escort to the graveyard in Albayrak’s birthplace, Bad Soden-Salmünster. Along the route onlookers stood outside their houses and on the roadside holding candles, some bowing their heads as the hearse passed.
At the cemetery, friends and relatives took it in turns to carry the coffin towards the grave. Towards the close of the ceremony mourners threw handfuls of soil on to the coffin, which was then covered in wooden planks, in accordance with Islamic funeral rites.
Visiting the mosque for midday prayers before the funeral, 49-year-old Reyhan Kiyak said that although she had not personally known Albayrak she felt a duty to keep her memory alive. “Her death is a tragedy for us all,” she said. “I want my daughter to know what it is to be good, though at the same time I am scared for my daughter that she might die if she shows such courage as Tuğçe did.”
Outside the prayer room of the mosque, friends and relatives huddled together laughing and crying as they pored over photos of her as well as messages she had written on Facebook.
Albayrak died after being hit on the head by a man in the car park of a McDonald’s in Offenbach in an apparent revenge attack after she went to the aid of two girls who were being harassed in the restaurant toilets.
She was in a coma for two weeks after the attack, and last Friday – her 23rd birthday – her parents Ali and Sultan Albayrak took the decision to turn off her life-support machine after doctors told them their daughter was brain dead.
The attack on 15 November sparked an outpouring of national sympathy when it was first reported, with vigils held across Germany – most prominently at the clinic in Offenbach where Albayrak was being cared for.
Albayrak’s actions at the McDonald’s have prompted debate about a perceived lack of public spirit. A petition has gathered more than 150,000 signatures asking the president, Joachim Gauck, to award her the order of merit.
“Our angel has gone to paradise,” Yasin Albayrak, her 51-year-old uncle, told the Guardian. “God always takes the ones he loves the best first, and we have to accept that this was his will.”
Her cousin, Tutku, 17, said: “She’ll be looking down at us from high and wagging her finger because she didn’t like people to show sympathy for her.”
