It's a media tradition. As the end of the year approaches, television stations, magazines and newspapers all take their eyes off the road ahead, preferring an extended look into the rearview mirror to look back at the year that was. The year in pictures. The stories of the year. Who made news in 2005? They're all there. But more than any other event, it's the disaster that wiped out last year's "this year in the news" specials that is on everyone's mind: the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that devastated the coasts of a dozen countries on the Indian Ocean and killed almost a quarter million people. And while the front pages on Tuesday are reporting on the memorial services held across Southeast and South Asia on Monday, the commentators are pondering just what we've learned in the year since the tsunami.

One lesson is clear: we humans really can be quite generous when catastrophe strikes. Some $10 billion was donated in the wake of the tsunami, and a large chunk of that came from private donations from people around the globe. But what, a number of papers are wondering on Tuesday, became of all that money?

The Financial Times Deutschland argues that the huge sum of money earmarked for the region was too much of a good thing. A number of the regions receiving the aid were not even capable of absorbing so much generosity, the paper writes. And, while schools, hospitals and orphanages were quickly rebuilt, less media-friendly projects like sewer systems have been neglected. Far worse than that, however, is the lack of donations for other world problems, and that, the paper argues, is an area where politicians have a role to play. "Who, if not prominent politicians, could better focus attention -- both of the media and the public -- on a specific problem?" Jeffrey Sachs did it by coining the term "silent tsunami," a reference to the many ongoing disasters that kill thousands around the world every day. The paper wonders if Germany's then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder might have done more good had he not offered €500 million for tsunami victims and donated the funds elsewhere instead. "An intelligent appeal to reason would not have hurt: Help, but let the experts decide how the money should be spent."

The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung likewise casts about for lessons learned from the world's overwhelming response to the tsunami tragedy. The first lesson is a positive one: Today's capitalist, money-hungry society is still capable of political engagement. But the use of tsunami aid money shows, the paper writes, how quickly well-intended charity can be misused. "All too often, aid workers are guided by the expectations of the public back home, which would rather donate for orphanages and fishing boats instead of funding reconstruction work determined by the locals." The paper also points out that the desire to cut out the aid bureaucrats resulted in a certain lack of professionalism in distributing the funds. The solution? The state should play a bigger role in guiding donations to the correct recipients. More importantly, the state should not allow huge pledges of aid to act as a replacement for preventative policies that might help the Third World become less vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters. "Instead of efforts to prevent causes or limit effects of disasters -- and instead of reacting to warnings from climate researchers and development experts with political initiatives -- aid has increasingly become a substitute for real political change."

The right-leaning Die Welt is in a slightly more generous mood than usual on Tuesday. Yes, it writes, people gave a ton of money for the tsunami victims while virtually ignoring the Pakistan earthquake victims. And yes, people react emotionally to images and media coverage, which leads to unfair distribution of donation money. But the aid agencies are just happy when the money flows in to the degree it did following the tsunami. Furthermore, the asymmetry of donations can be ameliorated. Indeed, such a donation pattern "doesn't exclude governments and other organizations from using their budgets for disaster aid in those regions that are ignored by donations from private citizens." Like the Financial Times Deutschland, the paper questions whether it was necessary for Schröder to have donated €500 million after German citizens had already given €670 million. "Politicians should not use the power of (disaster) images to increase their own popularity."