How horrible. I’ve never heard of the Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy before.
There are so many ship sinkings besides the Titanic, and yet the Titanic is all that’s really spoken about. It’s sad, really.
The answers most often given to the question of “Why is Titanic the most famous shipwreck?” include that it was claimed to be “practically unsinkable” and then sank on its maiden voyage, that its passengers included many of the social elite of the day but also the poor - and so it was a floating microcosm of society - and that it happened at a time when newspapers were becoming more popular and this created a “media craze” around the event.
And I’d agree with all of that.
But I think the reason why people in 1912 were so interested in Titanic’s sinking was because, between c. 1874 and 1912, there was this surge of optimism - epitomized by the group of Italian artists known as “Futurists” - which saw the 20th century as a future of equal rights, no wars, no poverty, and all made possible by technological advances. Technology would create a utopia.
And, I think, Titanic was a symbol of this level of optimism - a floating society open to anyone who could buy a ticket, unsinkable owing to technology, impossibly grand. And then it sank. And then came World War I where technology was used to destroy instead of build the hoped-for utopia. And So I think people gravitated to the story in April 1912 and months - years - afterwards because that was the first big “Sorry! Wrong!” response from the Universe to the optimism of the Futurists and those who thought like them.
That all makes sense.