The 39-year-old defendant admitted to the court in Hanover on Monday that he had tied a rope around the neck of his 28-year-old ex-girlfriend before attaching the rope to his car and driving off.
The defence lawyer said that his client had attempted to kill the woman in this way. He added that the man, who stands accused of attempted murder, deeply regretted what he had done to the woman and their two-year-old son.
In November, police in the small town of Hameln arrested the man after bystanders found the badly injured woman lying on the street. She had been dragged around 200 metres down the street before the rope came undone. During the assault, the man and woman's young son sat in the car.
Prior to dragging her down the road, the man had attacked the woman with a knife and an axe, both hitting and stabbing her.
The young woman was immediately taken to hospital and remarkably survived the brutal assault, although to this day she suffers severely from the effects of her injuries.
The defendant claimed to the court that he had not planned to kill his ex-girlfriend beforehand. According to his account, he had the axe and rope in the car for gardening work. Originally he had intended to kill himself after giving back their son to his ex-girlfriend, he claimed.
According to media reports at the time, the man and woman belonged to two different Kurdish families from the Hameln area.