German police have registered a record number of politically motivated criminal acts that occurred in the run-up to the country’s general election on February 23, 2025.
According to an internal report published by German news site RND on March 5, there have been almost 10,000 such offences in Germany since January 1.
Jochen Kopelke, leader of the Police Trade Union GdP, called the numbers “a new dimension for us police officers”.
He lamented that German politicians did not appreciate the police’s work enough. “Until today none of the party leaders has even said ‘thank you’ for the good and professional police work during the election campaign,” he said.
The majority of the 9,531 registered offences were for damage to property. Some 7,000 cases primarily comprised the destruction of election posters.
The second most widespread type of crime was “propaganda offences”, which included the display of forbidden symbols – such as swastikas – and the shouting of illegal slogans including “Sieg Heil”.
Violent crime accounted for 192 cases.
Two thirds of the total number of offences could not be attributed to a particular ideology – such as the political Left or Right – or religious beliefs.
Among those attributed to an ideological element, those relating to the Left far outweighed those attributed to others.
Police registered 2,172 criminal acts attributed to the Left while 1,130 offences were attributed to the Right. Other ideological motivations barely showed up in the numbers.
Out of the 192 violent offences, 118 were allegedly committed by left-wingers while 19 were described as “motivated by right-wing ideology”. Some 54 violent crimes could not be attributed to any political side.
In the run-up to the election there were several cases of violence against political representatives of Conservative and right-wing parties.
In early February in Marl (North Rhine-Westphalia), a 69-year-old canvasser for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) was hit by a metal ball shot from a slingshot and hurt in the leg.
In January, a biker allegedly threw a “solid object” at a CDU politician in Leipzig (Saxony), hitting him on the head. Also in January, an AfD canvasser in Berlin was attacked with a cobblestone by an unidentified masked offender.
According to numbers published by the German Interior Ministry, in 2024 AfD politicians were most often the victims of politically motivated violent crime with 93 cases – more than those targeting representatives of any other German party.
