In Vienna on Wednesday a life sentence for murder was imposed on a man who is also known as a "beer host".

He had confessed to killing his ex-girlfriend with two shots from a pistol.

The proceedings at the Vienna Regional Criminal Court did not only attract a lot of public attention because the "Bierwirt" was already well known in the media through a legal dispute with a Green politician.

It is also considered symptomatic because in Austria there is a noticeably high number of murders of women, measured against the total number of murders. Often it is about acts of relationship, as in the case of the 43-year-old "Bierwirt". According to witness statements, he was often violent, especially when he was drunk. The 35-year-old woman with whom he has two children had ended the relationship. On April 29, the man came to the social building where she lived. The children and a neighbor with two children were present in the apartment or in the stairwell. He shot the woman first in the leg, whereupon the neighbor fled with the children, and then in the head. He then sat in the courtyard and drank two bottles of spirits before he was apparently arrested unconscious.

In court, he first said that he was already insane in the act. On Wednesday he admitted that this was a protective claim: "I am sorry, I admit that I am guilty of everything," he read aloud. “I don't want to admit that I'm capable of such a lousy act.” As a “beer host”, the defendant gained dubious notoriety when the Green politician Sigrid Maurer told her in 2018 that he was the author of very obscene messages and insults identified social networks.

In the past few years, the statistics in Austria mostly counted more murders of women than of men, which is atypical internationally.

However, according to an analysis by the Austria Press Agency, there are comparatively few murders overall.

Austria has a high general level of security in public, but there are different framework conditions in dysfunctional relationships.

Since 2010, there have been 319 feminicides and 458 attempted murders, according to a study commissioned by the Interior Ministry.

The vast majority of suspects were men, only 9.5 percent women.

In around 60 percent of the cases, the victim and the perpetrator had a family relationship, in a good 20 percent they knew each other.