Berlin Domestic Violence Deaths Hit Record High: 24 Killed in 2025

Berlin recorded 24 deaths from domestic violence in 2025, surpassing all previous tallies and rising sharply from 17 deaths in 2024. Of the 24 victims, 13 were women and 11 were men. Broken down by legal category, 17 were killed by murder or manslaughter, three died from assault resulting in death, and four from negligent homicide. The overall number of domestic-violence victims in the city reached 20,228 in 2025, up around 5 percent on the previous year; by comparison, the police counted only 14,600 victims in 2015. By the end of September this year, roughly 15,700 people had already been registered as victims. Around 70 percent of all victims are women. District-level hotspots include Mitte (covering Moabit, Gesundbrunnen and Tiergarten), Neukölln, and Marzahn-Hellersdorf. Among notable cases from 2025, a 27-year-old woman was found gravely injured in a lift at a building on Marzahner Chaussee on 25 January and later died; her 29-year-old former partner, who had stabbed her 85 times, was arrested. On 3 April, officers found a 56-year-old woman dead in a flat in Falkenhagener Feld, and her 60-year-old partner was detained as a suspect. On 16 April, police arrested an Afghan man suspected of killing his 37-year-old Afghan ex-wife in a flat in Britz. The figures come from the long-form police criminal statistics report for 2025, which Berlin police prepared and provided to Berliner Zeitung on request.