Germany’s government on Wednesday condemned a night of New Year’s Eve violence in which police officers and firefighters were attacked with fireworks across the country, as Berlin alone recorded roughly 400 arrests and five men died in fireworks accidents nationwide.
In the capital, police said 30 officers and one firefighter were injured during confrontations and deliberate attacks, despite reinforcements brought in from other states. A powerful illegal firework detonated in Berlin’s Schöneberg district shattered windows and damaged building facades so severely that about 36 apartments were left temporarily uninhabitable; two people were taken to hospital. Berlin’s interior senator, Iris Spranger, said she condemned the acts in the strongest terms and expected consistent prosecution.
Key Points
- Five men, aged 20 to 50, died in separate fireworks accidents in North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Hamburg and Brandenburg, most involving homemade or illegal devices.
- Attacks on emergency services were also reported in Leipzig, Cologne, Munich, Hamburg and Kiel.
- Police and firefighter unions had called before New Year’s Eve for a nationwide ban on private fireworks; the industry blames illegal imports and homemade devices.
New Year’s Eve: a rough night in several cities
In Leipzig, groups set rubbish alight, built barricades and threw fireworks and bottles at officers, police said. In Cologne, two officers were hurt by firecrackers. Several hundred people rioted in Munich, according to police, while in Kiel a large crowd confronted officers who had come to protect a paramedic. Offences ranged across dangerous bodily harm, breaches of the peace and violations of the explosives law.
The dead were killed far from any riot. A 24-year-old near Geseke died when a homemade firework went off prematurely; men aged 45 and 50 died in Saxony handling fireworks that exploded in their hands; a 20-year-old in Hamburg and a 21-year-old in Brandenburg were killed by homemade devices. Officials stressed the night was, in most places, peaceful — but that the exceptions were severe.
Background: Germany’s annual argument with itself
Private fireworks are a fiercely defended New Year’s Eve tradition in Germany, where consumer pyrotechnics may be sold only in the last days of December and set off around the turn of the year. Every January the same debate returns: emergency services, doctors and animal-welfare groups cite injuries, fires, air pollution and traumatized pets, while the pyrotechnics industry argues that certified products used properly are safe and that the toll comes overwhelmingly from illegal, high-powered imports — so-called “ball bombs” — and homemade explosives no ban on shop-bought rockets would touch.
Police unions dispute that distinction. The Berlin branch of the GdP police union had demanded a nationwide sales ban before this New Year, pointing to a pattern, repeated over successive years, of fireworks being aimed deliberately at ambulances, fire crews and patrol cars in certain districts.
What happens next
The ban campaign gained sudden momentum within days: a petition organized by the Berlin police union passed 1.4 million signatures in the first week of January and was formally handed to the Interior Ministry. The federal government said attacks on emergency workers would be prosecuted with the full force of the law, and several states signalled support for tougher rules, though a nationwide ban remained politically contested. The argument, as ever, was scheduled to resume next December — with the emergency services braced for the same night again.
The debate is sharpened by how narrow Germany’s legal window is. Consumer fireworks may be sold only in the last days of December and only to adults, a compromise meant to confine the noise and danger to a few nights a year; everything more powerful is already illegal, which is why the industry insists the deaths and the worst attacks trace to contraband smuggled across borders and to homemade devices no shop regulation reaches. The unions answer that the distinction collapses on the street, where legal rockets are also aimed at crews. Meanwhile, municipal workers began the year’s least celebrated tradition before dawn: sweeping an ankle-deep residue of spent rockets, bottles and broken glass from the same streets, so the first working day of January could start on time.
Sources: Berlin Police and Berlin Senate Department for the Interior statements, Jan. 1, 2025; German federal government remarks; GdP police union petition.
