1992 Mölln Arson Attack

On the night of 22 November 1992, two neo-Nazis set fire to two houses in Mölln, a town in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, that were home to Turkish families. The attack killed three people and injured nine, making it the first fatal case of far-right extremists burning migrants' homes in post-reunification Germany and one of the earliest instances of right-wing terrorism in the country's post-unification history.

The attack followed a sharp rise in racist violence against Turkish-Germans in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification. A series of arson attacks, bombings, and shootings had targeted members of the Turkish community in their homes, cultural centers, and businesses; several of these attacks, including the Mölln attack, caused multiple deaths and severe injuries.

The two perpetrators, 25-year-old Michael Peters and 19-year-old Lars Christiansen, firebombed two houses inhabited by the Turkish Arslan and Yılmaz families. Neighbors witnessed residents jumping from windows as the homes burned. The Yılmaz family was evacuated first, but fire blocked the Arslans' staircase and halls; seven-year-old Ibrahim Arslan was wrapped in damp towels by his grandfather and carried outside. Shortly after midnight, the town's fire department received an anonymous call reporting that an apartment building housing several foreign families was on fire; the caller ended the call with the words "Heil Hitler." Police and firefighters responded quickly, but the damage had already been done. Two girls, 14-year-old Ayşe Yılmaz and 10-year-old Yeliz Arslan, and their 51-year-old grandmother, Bahide Arslan, died in the fire. Nine others, including a nine-month-old baby, were seriously injured.

The attack prompted large public protests, with several thousand people marching quietly in Berlin and Hamburg. In Mölln, the town's mayor led a silent procession of several hundred residents. German courts convicted both Peters and Christiansen: Peters was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Christiansen, tried under juvenile law, received a nine-year sentence. Peters was released on parole in 2007, after serving 15 years, around the anniversary of the killings. Since his release, Christiansen has denied the extent of his involvement in the attack. The attack heightened fears among the German public, especially the Turkish minority, of further violence.

In 2025, a documentary titled The Moelln Letters, based on letters from survivors of the attack, was selected for the Panorama section of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival and premiered in February 2025.