Over 100 schools across North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Bavaria have been targeted by a wave of identical threatening emails. According to the newspaper’s report, citing the NRW Ministry of Education, both 56 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia and 63 schools in Bavaria received the same threatening email on the evening of Monday, May 4th, or the morning of Tuesday, May 5th, respectively. A spokesperson stated that in all instances, both police and school assessments determined that the threat posed no genuine risk, and consequently, no schools had to be closed.
Separately, the NRW Ministry of the Interior confirmed that according to police crime statistics, there were exactly 652 known cases in 2025 involving “disruptions of public peace through the threat of crimes” occurring on school grounds. These categories, according to ministerial data, also include phenomena such as bomb threats, threats of violence, or incidents where students threaten other students at school. If multiple schools are affected on a single day, they are recorded individually.
Dorothee Feller, the Minister of Education for NRW (CDU), assured the newspaper that the ministry supports schools with clear protocols to ensure effective and calm action during potential dangerous situations, noting that their detailed emergency binder is particularly helpful. She thanked all local personnel involved in responding to such situations, including those who recently reacted calmly in similar instances in Bochum while maintaining close coordination with local police. These efforts involved specialized crisis teams trained for such situations, along with the teachers and school counselors.
