This is an incomplete list of mass stabbings in Germany. The casualty figures of mass stabbings below include violence-related deaths and injuries with a knife, hatchet and spear respectively, casualty inflicted by legal intervention (i.e., deaths caused by law enforcement and other persons with legal authority to use deadly force acting in the line of duty), as well as suicide.
Background on crime statistics
The list is incomplete, because no federal statistics on all stabbings in Germany are available (unlike in the United States, for example); the Bundeskriminalamt (Germany) started to track only knife attacks in 2020.[1] Knife attacks are defined as either mere threats with a knife or the actual attacks.[1]: 15
Data from the police crime statistics of individual German states show, that in several states the number of stabbings increased from 2013 to 2018 by over 30%.[2] In 2020 alone, there were at least 100 deaths from nearly 20,000 knife attacks. A large proportion of the crimes are related to domestic violence.[3]
The overall number of incidents of intentional simple bodily harm increased by 7.4% from 399,699 in 2022 to 429,157 in 2023. The number of non-German suspects increased more (13%) than the number of German suspects (4%). The highest increase of 20% was in immigrants in Germany, even though they perpetrated only 31.830 out of the 430,000 attacks.[1]: 15
As far as knife attacks are concerned: In 2023, 8,951 cases or 5.8 percent of acts of serious bodily harm (assault) were recorded as "knife attack", a rise in absolute numbers but roughly the same proportion as in 2022 (5.6 percent, altogether 8,160 cases). In 2023, 4,893 cases or 10.9 percent of robberies/theft were knife attacks, an increase in absolute numbers, but an unchanged proportion compared to 2022, with 11.0 percent (4,195 cases).[1]: 15
There is evidence that severe injuries have doubled from 2014 to 2023, per the statistics of the trauma registry of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie: From 2014 to 2023, 4,917 people with severe knife stab injuries were admitted to German hospitals out of a total of 212,628 admissions to an ICU due to serious injuries. Here, the overall proportion of knife injuries increased sharply from 2014 to 2023, from just under 2 to over 3 %, even though since 2018, patients have to give their written consent in order to be included in the statistics (which caused a high number of unreported cases ).[4]
39-year-old Ernst August Wagner killed his wife and 4 children by cutting their throat and chest with a blackjack and dagger. He was a teacher with severe endogenous depression and suicidal ideation, later diagnosed with paranoia. Hours later he shot 20 people, killing nine.[5]
57-year old Walter Seifert attacked a Catholic elementary school with a home-made flamethrower and a spear, killing eight pupils and two teachers, afterwards himself. Was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1954.[7]
A 48-year-old failed asylum seeker from Cameroon stabbed five police officers with a bayonet, killing two, before being shot dead by wounded officers.[9]
A 44-year-old man stabbed mayoral candidate Henriette Reker into the neck at a political information stand in the city, injuring four others. The motive was thought in protest of the CDU's pro immigration policies on refugees.[12]
A 27-year-old mentally disturbed man stabbed four men, one of them fatally at Grafing station, some 32 kilometres (20 mi) from Munich. As he reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" while stabbing the random victims, first reactions of the German and international media as well as the general public suspected an Islamist attack. On his arrest shortly after the attack, he proved to be a mentally disturbed, unemployed carpenter with drug problems and no known ties to Islamist organizations.[13]
A 21-year-old refugee of the Syrian civil war attacked his girlfriend and co-worker at his Doner kebab workplace with a knife killing her, wounding two other people, before being struck accidentally by a car and arrested by police. An asylum seeker who had arrived in 2015, he had been previously arrested for causing bodily harm.[14]
A 17-year-old former unaccompanied child refugee from Afghanistan wanted to avenge the death of a friend in Afghanistan. He had been in contact with the Islamic State.[15]
A 36-year-old asylum seeker from Kosovo, who had arrived in Germany in 2009 and was considered mentally ill attacked nine fellow passengers with an axe aboard a train. He jumped from a nearby bridge while attempting to escape capture, injuring himself severely. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[16]
26-year-old Ahmad Alhaw, a Palestinian failed asylum seeker took a 20 cm-long kitchen knife from a supermarket shelf to attack several people, killing one. He was known to have had contacts with Salafists, and had psychological and drug problems.[17]
34-year-old Patrick H., asked random passers-by if they are clairvoyant and then attacked with a 9 cm-long knife. He was labeled as schizophrenic and was placed in a closed psychiatric clinic.[18]
22-year old Iraki Jussif A. and 23-year old Syrian Alaa S. were taken into custody after a stabbing in Chemnitz, after which 35 year old Daniel H. died. A third suspect, an Iraki asylum seeker was fugitive.[20] This led to days long 2018 Chemnitz protests.
24-year-old homeless Abdirahman Jibril of Somalia killed three civilians with a kitchen knife in a Woolworth store and wounded seven others. The police shot him into his leg. He had arrived in 2015 as asylum seeker and had a history of violent altercations. He had lived in a homeless shelter since 2019. He admitted to Islamist motives. Another refugee accused him to be an al-Shabaab member. He had a questionable history of mental illness.[23]
26 or 27 year old Abdalrahman A. of Palestinian origin who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2014 claiming on the basis of residency in Syria. Attacked 4 passengers on an ICE high speed passenger train with 200 passengers from Passau to Nuremberg with an 8 centimeter folding knife while the train was near the city of Neumarkt. 3 passengers were "seriously injured".[24][25]
33-year-old Ibrahim A. of Palestinian origin stabbed nine people on a moving passenger train, killing two. He came to Germany in 2014 and by 2018 he had been convicted for dangerous bodily harm, two fines for theft and one drug offence.[26]
A 17-year-old male student at the Wilhelm-Dörpfeld secondary school went into the school armed with a knife and a pair of scissors and stabbed multiple pupils and one teacher.[27] He was suspected of suffering from mental illness.
