In many ways it seemed like just a normal school day in Haltern am See as students began arriving just before 7.30am Tuesday morning. Streams of teenagers walked towards the Joseph-Koenig Gymnasium, many wheeling bikes, others arriving from the nearby train station.

“We’re here to make today easier, to help these children mourn,” said one policewoman as she talked quietly with members of the media, who stood behind red and white cordoning tape.

As pupils arrived, they paused to look at the rows of candles that had been set up around the school.

One sign read “Yesterday we were many, today we are alone”. Below the words were 16 white crosses, symbolising the 16 students who lost their lives in the Germanwings plane crash on Tuesday.

Haltern is a town left devastated by Tuesday’s crash. Eighteen of its citizens – 16 teenagers and 2 young teachers – have been lost. In a statement, the town council said the town of 37,000 people was stunned at the tragedy and “frozen in mourning”.

While the victims have not yet been officially named, details were emerging yesterday about those who lost their lives.

Fourteen girls and two boys, all understood to be 15, boarded Flight 4U 9525. They had begun learning Spanish this year, and a group from their Spanish partner school had spent a week in Haltern in December.

Two teachers

The two teachers who lost their lives in the crash were understood to be young females, one of them newly married within the past six months.

Speaking at a press conference organised by officials and the police yesterday at Haltern’s town hall, school headmaster Ulrich Wessel described how, when he had heard the news, he had hoped his students had not boarded the flight.

“I was at a school principal’s meeting and got a message to contact the school administration quickly, that there had been a plane crash en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf. My first thought was – it sounds stupid – ‘hopefully not the plane with our students’.

“Then it was clear: the flight number was the same, the time was the same. Sometimes there are two flights from the same airline with five minutes’ difference. But after half an hour it was clear this tragedy had struck our school.”

Looking drawn and upset, Wessel said that he called the parents and asked them to come to the school. The moment when he met the parents was “not something I’ll need twice in my life. Someone asked me yesterday how many pupils are in my school. Instinctively I said 1,283, but it’s 16 fewer than that.”

Germanwings had offered to fly affected families to the crash site, but no family members had decided to travel at this point, he said.

Crash victims

Some 50 councillors were on standby at Joseph-Koenig school yesterday to help support students.

Said Sylvia Loehrmann, the education minister of the North Rhine-Westphalia region: “I am a teacher too, so I know how terrible this is and how long it takes to get into people’s heads. Students I spoke to said they cannot understand how they lost their best friends. How they can lose someone close to them.”

Flags across Germany were lowered to half-mast on Wednesday, while schools across the state will hold a minute’s silence today in memory of the crash victims.

Overall, 72 German citizens lost their lives in the Airbus crash, higher than earlier estimates of 67. It represents the biggest loss of life in a single incident since the Concorde plane crash in Paris 15 years ago, which claimed the lives of the 100 German passengers.

With the identity of most of the German victims of Tuesday’s accident still unknown, public attention in Germany and across the world continued to focus on the Joseph- Koenig school.

Hundreds of international media representatives have descended on the tranquil town, about 50 miles north of Dusseldorf, since news of the crash broke.

Asked about the sudden influx of journalists to the town, the school’s headmaster responded quietly and respectively.

“I do not consider this interest to be cheap or sensationalist at all,” said Wessel. “I know that it’s the feelings of your readers and your viewers drawing you all here.”

The public support his school had received over the past few days had been a consolation, he added.

“People who have never had any contact with our school – people from all over the world – are expressing their sympathy.” However, he added: “At our school, all laughter has perished.”