All over Europe, farm shops often feature an “honor system” where customers can enjoy self-service. The system mostly works, but in recent years, certain individuals have been taking advantage of the system more and more.
In one case in Kinttelfeld, a farmer’s shop was robbed for the third time, with the operator now publishing photos of the suspects. The robbery has prompted German commentator and journalist Anabel Schunke to lament that the high-trust societies seen throughout Europe are now turning into multicultural low-trust societies.
The family farm, run by Garbiele Eberhardt and her husband Benedikt, wanted to offer the self-service option to its “loyal customers,” but it has been targeted by a number of robberies in the last weeks.
Described as a “small, lovingly run farm shop” by the Austrian newspaper Heute, the shop sells homemade products twice a week, but because customers want to shop outside those hours, the Eberhardt family offered a freely accessible refrigerator with access to their products.
“This works well, but unfortunately, there have been several recent thefts,” an annoyed Eberhardt told Kleine Zeitung.
In the videos, the clearly foreign suspects, who are not speaking German, can be seen laughing as they rob the small farm store.
Remarkably, the thefts are a family affair, with the family publishing videos of the theft on their Facebook page. It shows a young man with two children showing up and emptying out the fridge in seconds while the children hold a bag to fill with loot. The fact that the farm shop was clearly labeled with signs that showed there were CCTV cameras did not appear to deter the thieves.
“It’s now the third time in a short space of time that they’ve completely cleared out the fridge for us,” said the farmers. After the first thefts, they even put up photos of the suspects next to their products, which means they saw that they were being filmed, but still kept robbing the hard-working farmers.
Gabriele Eberhardt wrote on Facebook: “How outrageous you have to be to go on thieving sprees like this with children.”
The police have been informed of the crime and are currently searching for the suspects. However, Garbiele wants to continue the self-service corner: “We won’t let something like that get us down.”
“The robberies have also sparked condemnation on X. German commentator and journalist Anabel Schunke wrote about the thefts, stating:
Small farm shops that also offer goods outside of their actual opening hours in a freely accessible refrigerator for their customers, who then leave money there, function exclusively in so-called high-trust societies.
High-trust societies are characterized, as the name already indicates, by a high degree of mutual trust. This is especially the case in ethnically homogeneous societies whose people share common values, views, and beliefs.
Multicultural societies are all low trust societies, especially since we are experiencing immigration predominantly from cultures that are diametrically opposed to ours, from people who mostly possess low education and high moral flexibility. A look at the children here reveals everything I need to know. That’s just the price for multikulti, here as in Austria and everywhere.”
Kleine Bauernläden, die auch außerhalb der eigentlichen Öffnungszeiten Waren in einem frei zugänglichen Kühlschrank für ihre Kundschaft anbieten, die dann Geld da lassen, funktionieren ausschließlich in sogenannten High Trust Societies.
High Trust Societies zeichnen sich, wie… pic.twitter.com/EnXa3cxMH7
— Anabel Schunke (@ainyrockstar) November 17, 2025Farmers are not only having to deal with small-scale robberies such as this one. Crimes against farmers in Germany have been on the rise, with half of farmers saying that they have to deal with the issue of theft, including farm equipment, livestock feed, and even animals such as sheep.
As a result, more and more farmers are turning to surveillance methods, including placing GPS chips in machinery or installing more surveillance cameras. There are no exact figures that Remix News was able to discover about the proportion of foreign suspects involved in crimes against farmers, although foreigners, especially those from Africa and the Middle East, are vastly overrepresented in serious crimes in Germany and Austria
However, many of the suspects are believed to be organized gangs from Eastern Europe, especially regarding some of the more high-profile thefts in the east of Germany.
A documentary from NDR highlights the many issues facing farmers when it comes to theft, and also the issue that in Germany, the perpetrators’ faces are not permitted to be published, even if a farmer captures them on surveillance camera.
