AfD inquiry brings hundreds of child marriages to light - one wife was only eleven years old

In Baden-Württemberg, only eight child marriages have been legally annulled since 2012. At the same time, the Tübingen regional council, which is responsible for the country, documented 350 additional cases that were settled without a legally binding annulment of the marriage.

This emerges from a response from the state government to a small question from AfD members of the state parliament Nikolaos Boutakoglou and Emely Knorr. A total of 358 child marriages were recorded.

The state government documented the marriage of a twelve-year-old Afghan girl to an 18-year-old man for 2020. A marriage between a twelve-year-old Syrian woman and a 28-year-old Syrian man is also listed for 2022. In addition, the marriage of a twelve-year-old Afghan woman and a 21-year-old Afghan man is scheduled for 2023. The tables also contain several cases involving 13- and 14-year-old girls.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, no legal proceedings to annul child marriages were pending at the time of the response. The AfD MPs also wanted to know how many students in Baden-Württemberg had been forced into marriage since 2010 and then no longer attended classes despite compulsory schooling. The Ministry of Culture announced that no relevant data would be collected. The state government also does not have any information about the countries in which the affected marriages were concluded.

The Tübingen regional council only collects the data relevant to marriage annulment proceedings, in particular the age and nationality of the spouses at the time of the marriage. The state government provides further figures for the Yasemin advice center financed by the state. This registered a total of 271 consultation cases in 2025. 80 cases involved people who were at risk of forced marriage. Among them were 33 minors. Four of those affected were younger than twelve years old, five were twelve years old and two others were 13 years old. 46 of those affected were of legal age; in one case the age was not categorized.

According to the MPs, the trigger for the parliamentary question was an emergency questionnaire published at the end of July 2026 by the women's rights organization Terre des Femmes entitled "Forced marriage during the holidays - How can you help as a person not affected?". The document is aimed, among other things, at teachers and contains recommendations for action in cases in which students are at risk of forced marriage.