A wooden coffin covered with white roses resting 50 paces from the goalmouth in the Niedersachsen stadium of Hannover 96 yesterday became the focus of a nation in tears. Ministers, a former chancellor, the national football squad, 45,000 fans and an estimated two million television viewers mourned the suicide of Germany’s goalkeeper, Robert Enke.

It was the biggest display of public mourning since the death in 1967 of Konrad Adenauer, the founding Chancellor of the former West Germany. Commentators were already talking of a “Princess Diana effect”, a kind of shock wave rippling through the country. It was prompted not only because Enke, 32, threw himself in front of a train at the peak of his career, but also by his perceived need to conceal clinical depression.

“Football isn’t everything,” Theo Zwanziger, chairman of the German Football Association, told the crowd. “We mustn’t let it be everything. Dear parents everywhere, please bear that in mind if you are determined that your talented children should become national players.”

Only a week earlier Enke was in goal, playing for Hannover 96 against Hamburg HSV. He let in two goals but it was still seen as a decent performance after weeks away with a stomach virus. He had been tipped to be Germany’s No 1 at the World Cup in South Africa next year.

Two days after the game he killed himself. Less than 24 hours later his widow, Teresa, and his psychiatrist revealed that he had been struggling with severe depression for more than six years. And by yesterday he was already regarded as a national martyr: the player who suffered in silence.

Mr Zwanziger stood in the middle of the pitch next to the coffin and called on Germany to draw conclusions from Enke’s death and “to show more humanity and more civic courage . . . don’t just look at the surface, try to imagine what is inside a person, the doubts and weaknesses”.

Enke had kept his illness secret at least since 2003 when he started to suffer anxiety attacks. FC Barcelona dropped him from the team, and a move to Fenerbahçe in Turkey, only deepened the crisis. “In really critical phases,” said Dirk, his father, a trained psychiatrist, “Robert became petrified that a ball, any ball would be shot at his goal.”

But Enke was equally afraid about making public his problems. This, he thought, would mean an end to his career and perhaps lead to the removal of Leila, his adopted baby. His first child, Lara, died from heart complications at the age of 2 in 2006.

Yesterday he was buried in a village cemetery outside Hanover, in the same grave as his daughter.

The mourning has been led by the football community. Fans held up club scarves and swayed to their anthem: “Never alone, we go hand in hand . . . Hannover 96, Old Love, Alte Liebe.” Some politicians, such as Gerhard Schröder, the former Chancellor, and his wife, Doris, stood on the terraces rather than in the VIP stand. But, remarkably, a football event — there had been minutes of silence in Lisbon, Barcelona and before several friendly internationals and World Cup qualifiers at the weekend — was transformed into a state ceremony.

Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, was represented by Thomas de Mazière, her Interior Minister, and the prime minister of Lower Saxony, Christian Wulff, took on the role of master of ceremonies, thanking Enke’s widow on behalf of the nation. There was an enduring ovation when Mr Wulff , addressing Ms Enke, said: “You have gone through so much more than has ever become public . . . the death of your daughter, the long years of your husband’s illness.”

Ms Enke, 33, a former pentathlete, has been hailed as the opposite of the traditional footballer’s wife. “She was his nurse, his mother, organiser, companion and protector,” said Enke’s father. The message for Germany, said Mr Wulff, was clear: “In future if someone has problems or weaknesses, we must learn as a society to give him or her time.”

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