The honest answer first: there is no district in Frankfurt where burglaries never happen, and none where you are safe just because the address sounds nice. I sit at the phone and take the calls, every day, and this question almost always comes first. The trend from police reports and the Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik is clearer than any exact figure: it happens where offenders can get in and out fast. Not where the rent is high.
I explain it to people on the line with the same sentence every time. The burglar does not ring at your address, he rings at your weakest door. And the weakest door stands in Westend just as it does in Gallus.
Which districts show up in the reports
When I add up the calls of the last few years and compare that with what the police and the PKS trend show, a pattern emerges. Not a ranking down to the decimal, that would be dishonest, but a pattern.
- Bahnhofsviertel and Gallus: many rental blocks packed tight, little social oversight, short escape routes to the S-Bahn. Ground-floor flats are often the ones hit here.
- Nordend-West and Bockenheim: the beautiful old buildings. High ceilings, large windows on the raised ground floor, often still the original turn-latch from 1910. A dream to look at, a barn door mechanically.
- Sachsenhausen and Bornheim: less the front door, more the rear buildings, garden doors and patio doors facing the courtyard.
- Westend and parts of Niederrad: seen as quiet, and that is exactly the trap. This is where the least upgrading happens, because nobody feels at risk. A single poorly secured flat then stands out all the more.
- Ostend and Hoechst: a mixed picture, depending on the block. Hoechst has a lot of old buildings with ground-level access.
Do you see the pattern? It is never about the whole district. It is about the construction and about where the individual flat sits in the building. An attic flat in the Bahnhofsviertel is harder to crack than a raised ground floor in fancy Westend.
Why the location alone decides nothing
This is the point where I contradict people most often on the phone. They want a map with red and green zones. It does not exist.
What really counts is the effort an offender has to make. Most burglars in Frankfurt are not professionals with special tools. They are opportunists. They try, and if it does not open in two or three minutes, they move on to the next door. According to the PKS trend, a very large share of attempts fail at exactly that, at mechanics that hold for a few minutes. That is the most important number in the whole topic, and it has nothing to do with your postcode.
The typical invitations I ask about on the phone:
- a tilted window, even on the first floor, if a bin or a canopy stands next to it
- a cheap standard cylinder with no anti-drill protection and no protective fitting, sticking out past the door edge
- a patio or balcony door with simple roller cams instead of mushroom-head locking
- a cellar door or light well that nobody has thought about for years
Last week in Bornheim and in Gallus
Two calls that show it well. Last week a customer from Bornheim got in touch, quite shaken. Her neighbour in the same rear building had been broken into, through the patio door to the courtyard. Not her, although the flats are identical in layout. The difference: two years ago, on my advice, she had lockable window handles fitted and mushroom-head cams put on the patio door. Cost back then around 110 euros per window element. The neighbour had said she did not need that, it is quiet here after all.
The second call came from Gallus. A tenant whose building had two flats broken into within one week. Not his. On his door sat an ABUS cylinder to DIN EN 1303 with anti-drill and pull protection, plus a protective fitting that covers the cylinder flush. By the scratch marks, the offender tried and gave up. That upgrade had cost him around 140 euros at the time, parts and fitting. Two flats over, exactly that was missing, and there was a standard 12-euro cylinder from the DIY store in the door.
That is the whole difference. Not the district. The door.
Locked out and in a hurry?
Price quoted up front, vetted partner business, ~22 minutes on site.
When burglaries happen, not just where
Most people forget the time side. The PKS trend has shown the same picture for years, and I hear it in the calls: the dark season between October and February is high season. And the break-in often happens not at night but in the early evening, at dusk. Nobody is home, because the working day is not over yet, but it is dark enough that an unlit flat looks visibly empty from outside.
For Frankfurt that means: anyone living on the ground floor or raised ground floor who is regularly out on winter evenings has the higher risk. Completely regardless of whether the doorbell hangs in Westend or in Gallus. A simple timer switch for the living-room light, 8 to 15 euros, does more here than many think. A camera, by contrast, the offender only notices once he is already at the door. Deterrence works before someone starts, not after.
What I actually recommend on the phone
I am not a technician, I dispatch the jobs. But I have heard for years what our fitters report, and the order is always the same.
Start with the mechanics, not the electronics. A good locking cylinder with pull protection and a solid protective fitting come first. On the windows, mushroom-head cams and lockable handles. Only after that is the conversation about alarms or smart tech worth having.
A rough idea, so you are not surprised on the phone:
| Measure | realistic range |
|---|---|
| standard DIY-store cylinder (barely worth it) | 12 to 40 euros parts |
| good security cylinder with pull protection | 60 to 150 euros parts |
| protective fitting to DIN 18257 (ES1/ES2) | 30 to 90 euros |
| mushroom-head retrofit per window element | 90 to 140 euros |
| lockable window handle | 15 to 40 euros each |
Parts plus fitting, depending on the door and the effort. If you want to take a subsidy with you: the KfW has burglary-protection programmes, worth it above all if you are doing several windows and the door at the same time.
What the mechanical upgrade looks like in detail is in our overview on burglary protection. If you want to understand why multi-point locking on the door does so much more than a single bolt, the guide multi-point locking and extra bolts helps. And if you want to know what the DIN standards behind ABUS and the like actually mean, that is explained in DIN standards and resistance classes.
Common questions I hear on the line
Is my district too dangerous, should I move? No. I have never seen a Frankfurt district where a well-secured ground-floor flat was broken into in rows. Secure the door, then the address is secondary.
Is an alarm worth more than new cylinders? In the vast majority of cases, not first. The alarm goes off when the offender is already inside. The mechanics are meant to stop him getting in at all. Mechanics first, electronics second.
Will insurance pay if there was a break-in? That depends on the contract and on how the door was secured. What contents and building insurance require here is set out in insurance and locks. When in doubt, clarify with the insurer beforehand, not afterwards.
I have just been broken into, what now? Police first, then us. Do not touch the forced door until the evidence has been recorded. After that, our emergency service helps right away with a temporary fix or a new lock. If you only have questions about upgrading, you can reach us in the normal way via the contact page.
Bottom line, and I say this to everyone on the phone: do not look at your district's statistics. Look at your own door and your own windows. That is what counts, in Bornheim just as in Westend.
