Why Has Violence Picked Up At German Train Stations In 2025?

 If you view German news in 2025....yeah, there is some 'up-tick' in the police being called or responding to violence at bahnhofs/train stations and on trains.

Oddly, journalists simply report the incident to the public....never asking the 'why-question'.

So I'll offer my gut-feeling.

First, if you go to the top twenty-odd stations around the country (Hamburg....both the main station and Altona, Frankfurt, Berlin, Hannover, Munich, Koln, etc)....they all seem to be 'magnets' for both the 'druggies' and the 'nutcases'.  

From my introduction era of 1978/1979....first arriving in Germany....train-stations fascinated me with the level of human traffic, automation, commercialization, and tidy nature. There weren't junkies or 'die Verrückten Leute' (German slang crazy people) hanging around.

Even on my second tour...84/85....things seemed safe and normal.

Early 1990s....after the wall came down and the country unified....you could sense a change.  Dealers were now common (especially around Frankfurt's station).   Junkies seemed to hang out at  stations, or within a block or two (particularly true in both of Hamburg's major stations).  I noted in the past month or two...for the Altona station....they enforced a 'dry' situation....no booze to be sold or consumed on the station grounds.

In my local area....Wiesbaden....there are two dealer hangouts (both within 500 feet of the station).  If you follow the police blotter....about every week, there's some type of robbery in the region around the dealers. You can assume it's a junkie without cash for the 'fix'....and a quick robbery solves the problem.  You can sit on a bench across across from the dealer (say 200 feet away) and observe the pick-ups...usually a customer every 10 minutes.

My belief? Junkies do their fix...remain in the vicinity of the station, and do stupid crap in the hours after the fix.  Police react....taking the individual down....jailing them for a day....releasing them, and a court-date occurs.   Even if the judge sends them to 30 days of jail-time....they eventually return to the same 'game'....doping-up, and staging another thrill near the station. Repeat....after repeat....after repeat.

I'm also of the belief that the nutcases are simply paranoid schizophrenics....triggered up to a higher level....by continued drug-use. 

Fixing any of this?  Other than getting really tough on dealers, and sending 'druggies' into a frustrated stage of hunting for new dealers...I can't really suggest much.  What could happen....once you get 50-percent of Germans of some town hyped-up....they might double-up/triple-up the police around stations and get really intense on loitering in/near a station.