Your Weekly Navigator

 In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

How Safe is Germany?

This is a question that resonates not only abroad but increasingly among Germans themselves, as reports of knife violence, often resulting in serious injuries and fatalities, become disturbingly routine. 

A growing sense of insecurity grips the nation, evidenced by a survey from the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA), which reveals that more than half of the population feels uneasy using public transportation at night. Two-thirds of women actively avoid certain areas. Yet, the political sphere remains silent on the existence of so-called "No-Go Areas."

The statistics are grim. Violent crimes, especially group assaults and knife attacks, are on the rise. 

Migrants are overrepresented in these incidents—a fact that is often glossed over in public discourse. 

According to the BKA, cases of "dangerous and serious bodily injury" involving a knife have surged by 9.7% in the past year, totaling 8,951 cases in 2022, up from 8,160 in 2021 and 7,071 in 2020. Overall, violent crime, which includes murder, manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, and rape, has reached its highest level in 15 years, with 214,099 cases recorded in the past year—an 8.6% increase compared to the previous year. The primary driver is the rise in "dangerous and serious bodily injury" cases, which increased by 6.8% to 154,541 cases—the highest number ever recorded.

This alarming trend is the outcome of a failed internal security policy, compounded by a uniquely European ideological confusion. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel turned a blind eye to the consequences of the refugee crisis, the climate crisis, and the euro crisis—but let's not digress. 

The anticipated correction of past mistakes never materialized with the change in power. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency views any ethnically or culturally defined concept of "people" as inherently racist, despite the fact that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) once campaigned with the slogan "Children instead of Indians" (Kinder statt Inder) and ran a campaign against dual citizenship that excluded non-Germans. 

What were once positions of the CDU, constitutionally valid at the time, have now become the platform of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and are deemed unconstitutional.

The ideological battle between the left and right misses the point: the German people are weary of these debates. They don't want to be labeled as anti-Muslim or racist for perceiving a risk in the influx of migrants from different cultural backgrounds. 

At the same time, they have no appetite for the blood-and-soil rhetoric of far-right figures like Björn Höcke. People are fed up with political games that fail to improve their daily lives. 

They want to live in safety, to walk through a market square, attend a festival, or traverse a dark park without fear. Yet, in Germany, the simplest demands have always proven to be the most difficult to fulfill.

The Navigator said:

"Thousands of unemployed Germans could be retrained as security personnel, but where is the political will to implement such practical solutions"? 

Instead, the focus remains on ideological purity, while ordinary citizens are left to navigate a world where safety feels increasingly elusive. 

Germany, once a beacon of stability, now finds itself grappling with a reality that is anything but secure.