The debate over violence in German society and schools has reached a boiling point in the Bundestag, pitting Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his supporters against critics who accuse him of racism, including a Left Party politician who published a photo of herself on Instagram giving him the middle finger.
The controversy intensified following a session where Merz addressed the issue of digital and analog violence, particularly against women.
“We have exploding violence in our society, both in the analog and digital space, and we must do something about it together,” said Merz.
However, he said that one must then also talk about where this violence comes from, he said to applause from members of the CDU/CSU and the AfD.
“And then we must also address the fact that a considerable proportion of this violence comes to the Federal Republic of Germany from immigrant groups,” he added.
These remarks drew sharp condemnation from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Left Party. SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch argued that violence against women should be viewed broadly rather than being reduced to a single population group. Miersch stated, “I don’t think that was an adequate response from the chancellor.”
He added that “violence against women has no origin or religion, it is a problem of society and must be addressed clearly. It is about protecting victims, regardless of who the perpetrator is.”
Data on violence against women and foreigners
However, statistics tell another story from what Miersch asserted. Foreigners commit 65 percent of all sexual crimes on German trains and in train stations despite making up approximately 15 percent of the population. It must be noted that German citizens with a migration background are not included in this 65 percent figure.
As data from North Rhine-Westphalia showed, foreigners commit half of all gang rapes. However, when the first names of gang rape suspects are analyzed, it shows that at least half of the German citizens clearly had names from a foreign background, such as Mohammad. In total, that means 75 percent of all gang rapes are committed by a foreigner or someone with a foreign background.
Data presented by the German government last year shows that 63,977 women were victims of sexual violence in 2024 alone, and the perpetrators were disproportionately foreigners, making up 35 percent of all perpetrators, according to government data released as a result of an inquiry from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Bundestag.
German government data also shows there were 135,000 crimes by Syrian suspects against Germans since 2015 — one every 39 minutes.
The data, obtained by Freilich magazine, also shows large numbers of victims of crimes committed by suspects from other countries of origin, including 82,960 linked to Afghanistan, 69,946 to Iraq, 39,918 to Morocco, and 32,383 to Algeria. Altogether, more than 460,000 crimes were recorded in a 10-year period involving suspects from the 10 main countries of origin: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Eritrea.
The Left says migrants should not be blamed
In the educational sector, Saskia Esken, chairwoman of the parliament’s Education and Family Committee, also raised concerns about school-related crimes. While acknowledging that the number of violent crimes recorded by the police in schools has increased significantly in all federal states, she firmly rejected the migration narrative, despite clear statistical evidence showing there is a serious problem with violence from Germany’s foreign population.
“Migration is not the problem in our schools,” Esken asserted, arguing that violence arises where children neither at home nor at school learn other ways to regulate their feelings and resolve conflicts. She described school as a motley, quasi-forced community where social workers and psychologists are desperately needed to address underlying issues like poverty and lack of prospects.
Again, the data contradicts her, showing that 40 percent of all violent crime suspects in German schools are foreigners. This data shows that there were 4,254 foreign suspects and 7,309 suspects with German citizenship, the German government announced in response to a parliamentary inquiry from Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Martin Hess.
Of the 11,558 suspects in total, 1,236 had Syrian passports, representing one in ten violent incidents, according to the data, which was provided to Welt newspaper.
It must also be noted that a likely significant number of these suspects are German citizens with a migration background who are only counted as German in the statistics. Researchers, police, and society do not have a clear picture regarding the integration of previous generations of migrants and their role in crime due to this data reporting failure.
Middle finger for Merz
The Left Party member of the Bundestag, Cansin Köktürk, took a more provocative approach by posting a photo of her middle finger directed at Merz on Instagram.
She accused the chancellor of a “hysterical, constant whining” about migrants and suggested that he was serving a racist agenda.
“Hey Merz, I almost think you’d like to be part of us yourself. You’re so obsessed with talking about us,” she wrote.
Köktürk claimed that Merz instrumentalizes specific cases while ignoring the perspectives of those affected, describing his rhetoric as aggressive and hurtful.