The recent accidental death of a German tourist along the Grand Canal has fed-up Venetians asking whether tourism has finally gotten out of hand. But they fear that the city has already sold out, and that politicians can do nothing to hold back the crowds.

On the day criminal law professor Joachim Vogel was carried to his grave at a cemetery in the southern German city of Tübingen, his daughter's pink shoe was still lying on the ground next to the Grand Canal in Venice. It was precisely the spot where Vogel was crushed and fatally injured on Aug. 17 while trying to save his daughter after the gondola they were in had collided with a water bus. His 3-year-old daughter survived. Her shoe, now decorated with flowers, has been left behind as a memorial.

At the very moment when a procession of 16 gondoliers marches in front of the coffin in Tübingen, the only signs of mourning in Venice are the black ribbons tied to the bow irons of the city's gondolas....