It is two in the morning, someone is unwell, and Germany offers you three different doors. They lead to genuinely different places, and picking the wrong one either wastes hours or wastes an ambulance.
Here is the decision, before any vocabulary.
The decision tree
112: the number if a life is at risk or permanent damage is possible. Chest pain, difficulty breathing, heavy bleeding, unconsciousness, signs of a stroke, a serious accident, a severe allergic reaction. This is the number for an ambulance and an emergency doctor.
116117: the number if you need to see a doctor today or tonight, the practices are shut, and it is not life-threatening. A high fever that will not come down, a child who has been vomiting all evening, a wound that probably needs closing, a prescription that cannot wait until Monday.
Die Notaufnahme, the hospital emergency department, if you can get yourself there safely and the situation sits between the two. You can walk in without calling. You may wait a long time, and what happens once you are inside has its own article.
110: the police, not medical. Worth knowing so you do not dial it by reflex.
And the rule that overrides all of the above: if you cannot tell which one you need, call 112. Dispatchers would far rather redirect a call than receive one too late. Nobody is annoyed by this and there is no penalty for it.
The words for the three services
der Notruf: the emergency call itself. Einen Notruf absetzen is to make one.
der Rettungsdienst: the ambulance service.
der Rettungswagen / RTW: the ambulance, usually shortened to RTW.
der Notarzt: an emergency physician who comes to you, dispatched alongside the ambulance for serious cases. Not every call gets one.
der ärztliche Bereitschaftsdienst: the on-call medical service. This is what 116117 actually is, and hearing the phrase on a recorded message is your confirmation that you dialled the non-emergency number.
die Bereitschaftspraxis: the on-call surgery, usually attached to a hospital, where 116117 may send you rather than sending someone to you. Often the fastest route to being seen.
der Hausbesuch: a home visit, which the on-call service can arrange if you genuinely cannot travel.
die Notaufnahme: the hospital emergency department. Also called die Rettungsstelle in Berlin and some other regions, which confuses people who learned only one of the two.
What you will actually be asked
A German emergency call follows a predictable shape, and knowing it means you can prepare answers rather than improvise.
Wo ist der Notfall? Where is the emergency. Give the address first, before anything else, and give it slowly. If the line drops, the address is the one thing that lets them come anyway.
Was ist passiert? What has happened.
Wie viele Verletzte? How many people are hurt.
Welche Art von Verletzung oder Erkrankung? What kind of injury or illness.
Warten Sie auf Rückfragen. Wait for further questions. Do not hang up. The dispatcher decides when the call ends, and they will often talk you through what to do while help is on the way.
The sentences worth having ready
Ich brauche einen Krankenwagen. I need an ambulance.
Die Adresse ist … The address is …
Er ist bei Bewusstsein. / Sie ist nicht bei Bewusstsein. He is conscious. / She is unconscious.
Sie bekommt schlecht Luft. She is having trouble breathing.
Er hat starke Schmerzen in der Brust. He has severe chest pain.
Es blutet stark. It is bleeding heavily.
Ich spreche nur wenig Deutsch. Sprechen Sie Englisch? I speak only a little German. Do you speak English?
That last one is worth memorising precisely because it may not work. Many 112 dispatch centres can find an English speaker; the 116117 line is German only, which is an odd gap in a service otherwise built for accessibility. Its website will find you practices where English is spoken, but the call itself will not be one of them.
The practical points nobody puts in a guide
112 is free from any phone, anywhere in the EU, with no credit and no SIM. Your children can dial it from a locked handset.
Have your address written down somewhere visible at home, in German, including the floor and any building access code. Under stress in a second language, an address is exactly what stops being retrievable.
Take your insurance card. Die Versichertenkarte is the first thing asked for at any Notaufnahme desk, and the vocabulary around insurance is in the article on German insurance.
Learning this before you need it
This is the one vocabulary set in the entire expat series where rehearsal genuinely matters, because you will be using it at your worst.
Save the phrases, not the nouns. Rettungswagen is a word. Ich brauche einen Krankenwagen, die Adresse ist … is a thing you can say while your hands are shaking.
Practise saying your own address aloud in German. Once a month is enough. It is the single highest-value drill in this article.
Then let repetition hold it. Twenty phrases you hope never to use, kept warm by spaced repetition, which is exactly what it is good at: low frequency, high consequence.
The short version
112 for life-threatening. 116117 for today but not urgent. Notaufnahme if you can get there. If in doubt, 112.
Learn to say your address in German before you need to say it in German.
Want the emergency phrases ready before you need them? Put them into Vokabulo tonight. Free to start on iPhone, iPad and in the browser. 🚑
