The court decided that Eric X. was guilty of the crime committed at the beginning of April. He was found to have used a saw to cut open the tent in which a young couple were sleeping in a nature reserve outside the former capital. He then forced the 23-year-old woman to follow him outside the tent, where he raped her.
He was also found guilty of stealing a speaker and six euros from the couple.
The prosecution had called for a sentence of 13 years, while the defence did not call for a specific ruling.
Although the 31-year-old disputed his guilt, investigators found his DNA at the crime scene and on the victim. His behaviour during the trial was also marked out by hostility to the victim, whom he described as a prostitute.
The police who interviewed the victim said that she acted in the correct way. She did not resist the attack and told her boyfriend to call the police rather than using the Swiss army knife he had taken with him.
The crime was notable for its brutality, but also for the fact that Eric X. was an asylum seeker from Ghana. People who have arrived in Germany seeking asylum are disproportionately likely to be suspects in rape and sexual assault investigations, police statistics show.
An increase in sexual assault, allied to a string of terrorist attacks last year, have soured the public mood against asylum seekers and likely contributed to the success of the far-right Alternative for Germany in recent elections.
READ MORE: Why refugees are more likely to be suspects in sexual assault cases