This is a question that has plagued Frankfurt for years, decades. The city has the reputation of being a crime riddled hotspot which, when you get out of the main station and walk in Bahnhofsviertal, seems plausible.

So what is the reality? I could tell you (touch wood) that I have never experienced anything beyond someone hitting my parked car and leaving the scene, but this is just my anecdotal experience. There are a few ways to judge crime levels though, on reported crimes, or perception of safety, on international standards or in comparison to other cities in Germany. There is also the question of whether to include crimes committed at its oversized airport – the biggest in Germany despite Frankfurt only being the 5th biggest city. Frankfurt airport saw 49 million travellers compared to 35 million in Berlin and 31 million in Munich. Hamburg had only 11 million in total.

One interesting measurement comes from Numbeo which looks at perception of crime and safety. And indeed Frankfurt tops the list for Germany scoring, predictably, but only marginally higher than Hanover and Berlin:

But this is kind of misleading and probably distorted by the fact that people have already heard so much about lack of safety in Frankfurt. Although look at Munich, happily at the bottom of the list!

A more reliable source of data must be the crime reports from the police. This makes for interesting ready actually. I downloaded the full 2022 crime statistics for any city with over 100,000 residents, and also then for the states. On a city comparison (including Frankfurt airport), Frankfurt indeed tops the list for crime. In fact, 14,363 crimes per 100k inhabitants. Berlin is in second place with 14,135 crimes and followed closely by Hanover. Shockingly for Frankfurt 68.8% of the crimes are committed by foreigners – we have lots of foreign nationals living here, but this really points to a distortion the airport connection. Few other cities register over 50% but the closest is Trier on 57% crimes by foreigners (probably because it is a border town).

But now take a look at the crime rate for Hessen below. This is most interesting because with the extra population in surrounding towns, Hessen is a lot more realistic. The airport has far less impact on the wider region.

Hessen has a population of 6 million, compared to Berlin’s 5 million but the majority are in small rural towns and villages so it really isn’t a fair comparison to line Hessen up against any individual city. The truth is somewhere in between. Frankfurt itself has a comparatively high crime rate, but probably not the highest in the country. Rural Hessen is almost certainly very safe (as anyone can tell you from experience). Funnily enough, Frankfurters often make fun of Offenbach for being unsafe, and yet it has a crime rate half that of Frankfurt.

The real comparison is actually whether German cities are unsafe in the first place. If we go back to Numbeo, this is where you see that Frankfurt is way down the list of European cities in 46th place. The list of unsafe cities is full of places in the UK, France and Italy. Germany is in general very safe, and its cities are only comparatively worse.

We should probably be cutting Frankfurt some slack and go enjoy the Christmas market!

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