Description
Over the past 20 years, reported far‑right crime in Germany has more than doubled. In 2023, an offence was recorded roughly every 13 minutes – and experts assume the true number is significantly higher. Yet despite the severity of the problem, there is still no clear understanding of how and where far‑right violence unfolds at the local level.
Far‑right activity is often deeply local: semi‑organised groups influence local politics and intimidate targeted communities. While Germany has systematically recorded politically motivated far‑right crime since 2001, most data are only published in aggregated form at national or state level. Detailed local information is only made available scattered across parliamentary inquiries and civil‑society monitoring projects, fragmented, inconsistent, and not readily usable. As a result, transparency breaks down at the municipal level.
We aim to close this gap. By systematically collecting, harmonising, and analysing these fragmented sources, we will build the first comparable municipality‑level dataset on far‑right crime in Germany. It will reveal where far‑right offences occur more or less frequently, how patterns evolve over time and also help identify the local factors that drive these differences. The dataset will thereby enable citizens, journalists, local officials, and civil‑society organisations to assess risks more reliably, detect local patterns, and evaluate institutional responses.
Our methodology will be designed to be reproducible, offering a model for other European countries facing similar data gaps.
“Institutional blind spots provide fertile ground for far‑right mobilisation.” – Chiara Swenson, freelance investigative journalist, project partner
Project Team
Media outlet
Krautreporter
Berlin, Germany
https://krautreporter.de/neue-artikel
Alisa Sonntag
Freelance investigative journalist
Germany
Research organisation
Universität Kassel
Kassel, Germany
https://www.uni-kassel.de/uni/en/index.html
Katja Salomo
Research Associate
Germany
