The first time I went to Hanau, I was creeped out by how ordinary it was. This mid-sized city of 100,000 people right in the geographical centre of Germany, looked and felt like many other places in western Germany I had been to: built around a bombed and reconstructed old town, expanded by a soulless mall with a multiplex cinema, surrounded by a vast industrial area and neighbourhoods separated along class lines. What the city prides itself on is that the Brothers Grimm grew up here in the late 18th century before they started publishing folk tales such as Cinderella and The Frog Prince. Since 2020, however, Hanau stands for something else: it’s the place where a far-right gunman killed nine people he assumed to be immigrants, and afterwards killed his mother and himself.

The attack on 19 February of that year not only left a deep wound within immigrant communities throughout the country, it again raised questions about how seriously the German state takes rightwing extremist terrorism, even after the infamous murders by neo-Nazi terrorist cell the National Socialist Underground (NSU), which spanned most of the decade from 2000.

Emiş Gürbüz, mother of one of the Hanau victims, spoke at this year’s official commemoration, attended by the city’s highest-ranking politicians as well as Germany’s federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “This event is a stain on the history of Hanau and of Germany,” Gürbüz said, close to tears. “If everyone had carried out their duties, these nine people would still be alive.” Gürbüz’s son, Sedat, was killed during the attack at the shisha bar he had previously owned. He was 29 years old.

Hanau has dealt with this attack with some ambivalence. There were endless arguments, for instance, about whether the city centre was an appropriate place for a memorial to the victims, since the market place is reserved for a statue of the Brothers Grimm. Had it not been for the persistence of the victims’ families in pursuing justice , it has often felt like Hanau would have preferred to get back to normal within weeks of the massacre.

But what followed this year’s commemoration – which, unfortunately, coincided with the anti-immigrant and racist discourse of the final week of the federal election campaign – was frankly shocking.

The coalition of mainstream parties that runs Hanau’s city government issued an extraordinary statement laying into Gürbüz, accusing her of political agitation, disrespect and of “exploiting” the atrocity. It said that no such future commemorations would be held in Hanau to mark the victims. Citing another speech that Gürbüz made at the Berlin film festival, the statement further alleged that she had publicly expressed hatred for Germany and Hanau. “Why she applied for German citizenship in such a state of mind will probably remain her secret,” the statement added.

The alleged “hate” quotes from Gürbüz’s Berlin speech could not be verified by any of the guests who attended the event. But why would it be inappropriate for a grieving mother whose son was murdered by a racist and who now has to witness almost every political party campaigning on anti-immigrant manifestos, to express hatred for what Germany has become?

And, speaking of political agitation, why would Gürbüz’s personal naturalisation process be mentioned in an official statement? At a time when the expatriation of people with dual citizenship who commit a crime is being discussed in parliament, this remark seems more than insidious.

Gürbüz’s demand that the city council take responsibility for its structural role in the terrorist attack was not exactly unfounded. The perpetrator had been writing paranoid and racist letters to authorities for years, yet was allowed to obtain and keep his gun licence. At one of the crime scenes, a shisha bar frequently raided by the police for drugs and controlled by the regulatory office, the emergency exit was allegedy locked on the night of the attack. A campaign led by some of the victims’ families alleged that police had ordered the exit to be kept locked during raids. If the door had been open, they alleged, some victims could have been saved. In 2021 the public prosecutor’s office dropped its investigation into the locked door allegation in the absence of conclusive evidence.

On the night of the crime, the local emergency police telephone line couldn’t be reached by witnesses. Vili Viorel Păun, 22, followed the gunman in his car from the first to the second shooting attacks while trying to call the police several times. Eventually, Păun was fatally shot himself, before the gunman entered a kiosk and a bar and killed more people. It took the police another hour to finally reach the perpetrator’s home.

Days after the coalition’s public accusations against Gürbüz, the mayor of Hanau, Claus Kaminsky, downplayed the statement by claiming that the commemorative events would be smaller from now on and that this decision had nothing to do with Gürbüz’s speech. But the mayor highlighted for criticism a different part of the speech, in which Gürbüz claimed the city had received public funding in the aftermath of the attack and had used the money to “balance their own deficits”. True, Gürbüz provided no evidence for this claim. But a one-sentence rejection by the city council would have been more than enough of a response to a grieving mother. Instead, the city publicly defamed the victims of a devastating terrorist attack as “disrespectful”.

At a time when far-right support has reached historic levels, it’s a peculiar take on the term “respect” to treat survivors of a racially motivated right wing terrorist attack in this way.

Is this to be the fate now of anyone of migrant heritage who criticises public failings? How believable is the state’s investigation of the continuum of racist and right wing extremist violence, if it’s more concerned with exposing the victims than with protecting them from more violence?

Maybe this is why the mediocrity of Hanau is creeping me out – what has happened here, it seems, could have happened anywhere else in the country. The behaviour of office holders in Hanau seems to mirror the general message Germany is sending to its immigrants right now: just be grateful you are still alive – and still here.

• Fatma Aydemir is a Berlin-based author, novelist, playwright and a Guardian Europe columnist