“The new Germany” is “a shame, a travesty,” says Kurt Caz.
In a video, the South African-German travel blogger presents Frankfurt’s notorious Bahnhofsviertel neighborhood near the city’s main train station as the new normal, which has been “completely taken over by crime, illegal migrants and drugs.”
Drug addicts lie around on the footpath, a suspected dealer threatens him, a woman throws a bottle: the video has more than 6 million views, paired with many xenophobic comments, on YouTube, and more than 10 million on TikTok.
There are many similar videos about crime in Germany and they seem to have hit a nerve. But do they reflect the reality on the ground?
Cities more dangerous than the countryside
Frankfurt’s Bahnhofviertel has long been a red light district, criminologist Susanne Karstedt told DW in a video interview.
“That attracts violence, that attracts also drug crime,” she said.
There are certain isolated districts across Germany with very high crime rates. Like in many other countries, there is more crime in cities than rural areas.
Crime rates are high in big cities like Bremen, Berlin and Frankfurt, for example, partly because social inequality is higher there than in rural areas.
Generally, Germany can be considered a “very safe country,” said Karstedt, adding that like in other Western countries “crime has gone down since the 1980s, 1990s.”
Technological advancement has driven some of this reduction in crime: a modern car is more difficult to break into than an older vehicle.
Where does Germany stand globally?
The best way to gauge how Germany compares internationally is by looking at the murder rate, according to Karstedt, who comes from the German city of Hamburg and now teaches and researches at Griffith University in Australia.
“Some of my colleagues call it the gold standard of comparison because we have the longest data series from, for example, the UN. And this is a good indicator of serious violence,” she said.
Germany, with 0.91 premeditated killings per 100,000 inhabitants, was in 147th place worldwide in the year 2024. South Africa and Ecuador have murder rates upwards of 40 per 100,000 inhabitants. The US murder rate is 5.76.
But 20 years ago, the murder rate in Germany was 2.5 per 100,000 — significantly higher than today. Despite the long-term reduction, Germany is experiencing a recent increase in some crimes, especially violent offenses.
Karstedt points out that it is mostly young men who resort to violence and because of this, migration also plays a role.
“And many Western European countries had an increase in the group of young men who are often in these countries without their families, without their social control. Many of them are deeply traumatized, through the experience of war, civil war and so on,” she said.
These challenges must be overcome, she said. Successful integration also reduces crime rates because factors such as unemployment and a lack of prospects, not a person’s country of origin, encourage criminality.
“Obviously there is a problem and I think that needs to be addressed. However, if we look generally at the relationship between migration and crime, we find that migrants less often commit crimes than the national population,” Karstedt explained.
Much remains unreported
A study from the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research concluded that along with gender and age, where people live plays a key role in criminality.
Gina Rosa Wollinger, a criminologist from the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in Cologne, explained that migrants live more often in cities than rural areas.
“And urban areas are much more strongly connected with crime. So, it is not the migration factor itself which explains criminality,” she said.
That was also shown in studies which are based not on police data but on surveys.
“The field of youth crime has been well researched and there it is very clear: the causes of violence are exactly the same between German and non-German youth. But the risk factors are heightened among migrant youth,” Wollinger said.
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These include the level of education, the experiences of violence, for example in the family home, or an affinity for ideas legitimizing violence as a norm of masculinity.
The main source of crime data in Germany is the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Each year they publish statistics — but these cover only the cases which are reported to police.
It is hard to determine how much crime remains unreported. That can be problematic if some offenses are reported less frequently than others.
Or when certain groups of people, for example racialized minorities, are reported more often than others. That can lead to some crimes being underestimated, for example the scale of domestic violence in rural areas.
Violence often committed by someone known
That is also true for cases of sexual assault. “With regard to sexual violence there is not much stranger violence,” Karstedt said.
“It happens much more often in a close relationship. An uncle, stepfather, teacher, coach, for example. There have been events like New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne where obviously strangers attacked people, but that is very rare.”
Karstedt herself left Germany 25 years ago, first living in England and now Australia. How does she feel when she visits her home city of Hamburg?
She says she has always felt safe there: “Even on the subway. All in all, Germany is a safe and friendly country.” She then qualifies her statement: it is safe, but perhaps not quite as friendly as Australia.
This article has been translated from German.
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