Quick answer

Around 1–2% of individual adults in Germany have a net worth of €1.2 million or more , depending on whether you look at individual or household wealth and which study you use. The exact percentage isn’t published as a single official number, but it can be estimated from German wealth- distribution data.

Why there isn’t a single official percentage

Germany does not publish a simple “% of people with ≥ €X net worth” table in the way some countries do. Instead, key sources are:

  • The Bundesbank’s Panel on Household Finances (PHF) – the most detailed official survey of household wealth.
  • Academic studies using tax and survey data, e.g. from DIW Berlin , CESifo , and WSI.
  • International compilations like the ECB Distributional Wealth Accounts and research sites such as Tesseract Research.

These sources usually report:

  • Median and mean wealth
  • Wealth shares by top percentiles (top 10%, top 1%, sometimes top 0.1%)
  • Thresholds for entering those top percentiles

But they rarely give the exact share above an arbitrary threshold like €1.2 million. So we have to infer from the published thresholds and shares.

What the data say about high wealth in Germany

1. Overall wealth levels (household basis)

From the Bundesbank’s 2021 PHF results:

  • Median household net wealth : about €124,000 (2021).
  • Mean (average) household net wealth : about €316,500 (2021).

This already shows that €1.2 million is far above both median and average household wealth. The top 10% of households hold roughly 56% of total net wealth , and the top 1% holds a very large chunk of that.

2. Top 10% and top 1% thresholds

Research summarizing German wealth data (e.g. Tesseract Research, DIW, WSI) gives approximate net wealth thresholds:

  • Top 10% of adults : net wealth starting around €300k–€400k (varies by source and year).
  • Top 1% of adults : net wealth starting around €1.0–€1.3 million in recent years, depending on whether you use individual or household-equivalent measures and whether you include business assets at market value.

Because €1.2 million sits roughly in the top 1% band , the share of individuals with at least that much wealth will be somewhere near 1% , possibly a bit higher or lower depending on:

  • The exact year (wealth has risen since 2017–2021).
  • Whether business assets and real estate are fully marked to market.
  • Whether the statistic is per adult or per household.

3. What “1–2%” means in practice

Putting the pieces together:

  • If the top 1% threshold is around €1.0–1.3 million , then about 1% of adults have wealth at or above that level.
  • €1.2 million is near the middle of that range, so a reasonable estimate is that roughly 0.8–1.5% of individual adults have net worth ≥ €1.2 million.
  • If you convert to households and assume roughly 1.5–2 adults per household, the percentage of households with ≥ €1.2 million will be a bit higher in percentage terms (because each household represents multiple people), but the number of people covered stays consistent with the ~1% figure.

So in plain language:

About one in every 100 adults in Germany likely has a net worth of €1.2 million or more , with a plausible range of roughly 0.8–1.5% depending on the exact definition and dataset.

Individual vs household: why it matters

Most German wealth statistics are collected at household level , then sometimes converted to “per adult” or “equivalised” measures.

  • Household net wealth : all assets minus debts of everyone living together.
  • Individual net wealth : what one person legally owns; in couples, this may be split in various ways.

When people ask “what percentage of Germans”, they usually mean individual adults. But the underlying data are often household-based , so researchers:

  • Divide household wealth by number of adults, or
  • Assign each adult a share of household wealth, or
  • Model individual wealth distributions using tax data.

That’s why you see slightly different thresholds for the “top 1%” in different sources. For your question, the key point is: all credible estimates place €1.2 million in the top ~1% of the wealth distribution , so the percentage of individuals above that level is on the order of around 1%.

How this compares internationally (context)

  • Germany has high wealth inequality : the top 10% own around two-thirds of total net wealth , and the top 1% owns roughly a third or more , depending on the study.
  • Despite being Europe’s largest economy, Germany’s median household wealth is relatively modest compared to some peers, because a large share of wealth is concentrated at the very top and many households have limited financial assets.

In that setting, €1.2 million is not just “well-off”; it’s solidly in the very top tier of the distribution.

Bottom line (TL;DR)

  • There is no single official “% of Germans with ≥ €1.2m” figure.
  • Using German wealth-distribution studies and thresholds for the top 1%, a reasonable estimate is that about 1% (roughly 0.8–1.5%) of individual adults in Germany have a net worth of €1.2 million or more.
  • This puts such individuals firmly in the top 1% of the wealth distribution.

Bottom note: Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.