Charité treats significantly more stab wounds
The data is clear: The number of knife attacks in Germany is rising. Particularly this year in Berlin, the situation seems to be extremely tense. The Charité is treating as many stab wounds in the first half of the year as it would in a whole year. The medical staff is suffering.
The Berlin Charité is reporting a significant increase in patients visiting the hospital with stab wounds. So far this year, there have been as many as in a whole year. "We normally have about 50 to 55 knife stab wounds per year, but we've already reached that number in the first half of this year," said Ulrich Stöckle on RBB. Stöckle is the managing director of the Centrum for Musculoskeletal Surgery at the Charité.
According to the doctor, his experiences match the crime statistics of the Berlin police. On average, the staff of the Charité treats two to four injuries per week. This is a worrying development for society and the city of Berlin, said Stöckle further. "We see in the increase of these injuries also a clearly lower threshold for these bodily injuries in society," the doctor also explained, referring to a Berlin case where a parking dispute resulted in a fatal knife attack.
Knife attacks have been recorded separately in the Police Criminal Statistics (PKS) since 2021. According to this, the number of cases of dangerous and serious bodily harm and robbery with a knife increased significantly until 2023 - from 10,131 to 13,844. A particularly brutal case occurred in May in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg: A 25-year-old Afghan man allegedly tried to kill an Islam critic and stabbed the intervening police officer Rouven Laur to death.
"Young, male, and non-German"
In several major German cities, discussions are taking place about weapon-free zones. In these zones, weapons whose possession is not generally punishable can be banned. Whether this can actually prevent knife attacks is unclear to criminal experts.
The social backgrounds are clear to the investigating authorities: "According to our figures, the violence in Berlin is young, male, and has a non-German background," explained Berlin's police president Barbara Slowik in an interview with ntv.de. "That also applies to knife violence." She advocates for a tightening of the weapons law.
Charité director Stöckle points out that the increase in knife violence is also increasingly stressful for medical staff. No one can simply move on after treating a fatal injury, he said on RBB. "It affects everyone when someone dies." Above all, younger employees need more psychological support: "If, like last year, a taxi driver's throat was practically cut in the morning at half past eight, it requires a completely different attitude and also a completely different working atmosphere."
The European Union, being a collective of various nations, has shown interest in addressing the rising issue of knife attacks in Germany, particularly in Berlin. Berlin's police president, Barbara Slowik, revealed that the perpetrators of these attacks have a common social background, often being young, male, and of non-German origin.
