Matthias Ecke, the top candidate for the German Social Democrats (SPD) in the state of Saxony was seriously injured while campaigning for the upcoming European parliamentary elections, the party said on Saturday.

The 41-year-old politician was attacked by a small group of men who punched and kicked him on Friday evening in a well-heeled Dresden neighborhood while he was putting up campaign posters, police confirmed. 

The SPD said Ecke's injuries would require surgery.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) condemned the attack. 

"Such incidents are a threat to democracy, and for that reason a complacent shrug of the shoulders is never an option,"   he said.

What we know about the attack

The head of the SPD in Saxony, Henning Homan, told German newspaper Bild that three or four unknown assailants suddenly appeared, insulting the team hanging up posters with homophobic slurs before attacking them.

Ecke reportedly suffered broken bones and was unresponsive, according to Bild. Homan told the newspaper that Ecke would likely have to remain hospitalized for the next week.

Police say eyewitnesses claimed four attackers aged roughly 17-20 were responsible for the incident. They were described as having been dressed in dark clothes and appeared to be far-right extremists.

Saxony's Interior Ministry said an investigation into the incident was now in the hands of the State Criminal Office (LKA).

The attack on Ecke ocurred shortly after another 28-year-old man was beaten while hanging up posters for the Green Party in the same area, according to police. He, too, was injured but did not require surgery.

Authorities suspect the attackers were the same in both instances.

In the western city of Essen, police said on Saturday that they were investigating a separate incident when two suspects attacked Kai Gehring, a Green Party member of the Bundestag, and Rolf Fliss, a local politician on a major city street earlier this week.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier condemned the attack on Gehring and Fliss as "shocking" and referred to recent intimidation aimed at Green Party politician and Parliamentary Vice President Katrin Goering-Eckardt while she was campaigning in eastern Brandenburg as, "intolerable."

Steinmeier described "this explosion of violence" as a warning.

SPD and others condemn far-right violence

State SPD leader Homan and his regional party co-chair Kathrin Michel called Friday's attack on Ecke an, "unignorable alarm signal to everyone in this country."

"Violence and intimidation against democrats are the means of the fascists," the SPD shared in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. 

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, also from the SPD, warned that the country was experiencing a, "new dimension of anti-democratic violence."

"The complete situation and background of this brutal act of violence must now be investigated in detail, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice," she said after a phone call with Saxony's Interior Minister Armin Schuster, from the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Saxony's State Premier Michael Kretschmer (CDU) called the attack on Ecke "shocking," adding that attacks on political opponents were something from "the darkest epochs of our history." 

The head of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Tino Chrupalla, expressed condemnation of the attack as well, saying, "Election campaigns must be conducted in a tough and constructive way, but without violence."

"I wish Mr. Matthias Ecke strength and a quick recovery," he wrote on X.

An explosion of verbal and physical attacks on politicians 

Friday's incidents were the latest in a long series of verbal and physical attacks targeting local, state, federal and EU politicians from across the political spectrum, both in Germany's eastern and western states, according to a study conducted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

The federal government recently noted that although attacks in 2019 tended to target politicians representing the AfD, more recent attacks had seen a shift focusing on Greens. 

In 2023, 478 attacks on AfD members were recorded, while some 1,219 had targeted Greens.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, himself a representative of the Greens, slammed the attacks as a "disgusting and unforgiveable consequence of a brutalization of language and debate, and the disinhibition of so-called social media."

The Greens in Saxony have now taken the decision to ensure that those who hang posters for the party do not do so alone, but rather in groups. Other parties are considering a similar approach.

js,ab/dj,sms (DPA, Reuters)

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