A childcare summit is to take place next week in Berlin in a bid to stem the rise in parental abuse or neglect. Derek Scallyin Berlin reports
Raising children in Germany can be a public humiliation. Parents pushing a pram down the street soon learn that they are easy prey for anxious passersbys.
Isn't the child too warm? the stranger asks. Too cold? Too loud? Too quiet? Too thin? Too fat?
The need to give unsolicited child-rearing advice to complete strangers sits deep in the German mindset - or at least in women of a certain age. Behind closed doors, however, a culture of deference reigns: parents know best and no one wants to get involved.
This culture of deference has a price: at least 100 children under six years of age die every year in Germany as a result of parental neglect or abuse. And this figure only reflects the cases that come to light.
But a year-long series of disturbing child abuse cases has left Germans asking questions about their culture of childcare.
The series of horrific cases began last year when a woman was sent to jail after admitting giving birth to nine babies, leaving them to die, then hiding their bodies in flower pots on her balcony. Every few weeks since then brought fresh reports of dead babies, neglected babies and abandoned babies.
Two weeks ago, police in the Saxon city of Plauen swooped on the apartment of a woman identified only as Susan F. There they found the bodies of three newborn baby girls: one was born in 2005, another in 2004. Police found a third baby, known as Celine and born in 2003, in the freezer with a woolly hat on her tiny head. The cause of death remains unclear.
"They just died on their own so I disposed of them," said the 28 year-old mother to investigators. Her boyfriend said he had no knowledge of the pregnancies, the births nor the deaths. The neighbours said the same.
That case was knocked from the headlines after a few hours with the news that a 31-year-old woman suffering from schizophrenia in northern Germany had tranquilised and then smothered her five young boys.
Within minutes, experts and politicians were jostling for a spot on the news bulletins. Everyone, it seems, knows something is wrong, but no one knows what to do. While some consider it a civic duty to keep an eye on neighbours, others see it as unnecessary and unwelcome prying.
"We need to encourage a culture of keeping our eyes open," said Chancellor Merkel, announcing a "child care summit" next week in Berlin with the premiers of Germany's 16 federal states or Länder.
In Germany, child welfare is a matter for the Länder, which is the official way of explaining why there are 16 different ways of doing the same thing, with 16 different levels of success.
In Saxony, where the three dead babies were found last week, maternity hospitals are no longer required to register births with the authorities. Instead they send a form to the local health board which is pulled out only when the time comes to send children to school.
That's how the death of Celine was discovered, four years too late.
The other extreme can be found in the small western state of Saarland, where a new system of mandatory health checks for children has been introduced. When parents don't show up with their children for appointments, a social worker calls to the house. Other states are discussing whether they should introduce a similar system while the federal government in Berlin has rejected calls for uniform guidelines.
"One cannot place all parents under suspicion of neglecting their children in order to find individual children in neglect situations," said Ursula von der Leyen, the federal family minister.
The decentralised, state-by-state approach produces hair-raising statistics.
Berlin has the dubious honour of being Germany's child neglect capital. Ten times as many abuse cases are registered here - 14 per 100,000 people - as in Hamburg, with 1.4 cases per 100,000.
Over 1,600 cases of abuse and neglect were documented last year in Berlin where newspapers are filled with disturbing reports of children sent hungry to school or discovered in filthy apartments.
Social workers see a connection between these abuse cases and the doubling of child poverty in German in the last decade.
New figures show that 14 per cent of German children and teenagers - 5.9 million young people - are classified as poor. About 2.5 million - one in six - live in households dependent entirely on welfare.
Child welfare organisations attribute the rise in poverty to the social reforms of the last government, and believe this poverty has had a knock-on effect on child welfare.
In Berlin, a special child abuse commission was set up and a poster campaign started: it shows a grave with a simple wooden cross and a baby's bottle. Below it, the headline: "Born - Tortured - Died".
Gina Graichen, head of the Berlin child welfare commission, says that no control network can prevent parents abusing their children entirely. But she favours closer checks to identify problem cases and rescue children from abusive situations.
Despite the shocking posters, the horrific news reports and the grim statistics, she says, there is a positive trend.
"People here need to learn to trust their gut instincts and, slowly but surely, they are registering things and calling us," she says.
"Either it's a child sitting in the hallway because the parents aren't home or the sound of slaps from the apartment next door. Neighbours nearly always notice something."