Berlin Germany –
A candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left party in next month’s European Parliament elections was beaten and seriously injured while campaigning in an eastern city, the party said Saturday.
It was the latest in a series of incidents of violence and harassment that increased political tensions in Germany ahead of the election. Scholz’s Social Democrats, or SPD, launched their official campaign for the June 9 vote with a rally last week in Hamburg, Scholz’s former hometown.
SPD candidate Matthias Ecke was attacked on Friday afternoon while putting up posters in Dresden, the party said. He said he was taken to a hospital and required surgery for his injuries. Police said the 41-year-old was beaten by four men and that the same group had apparently attacked a Green Party worker minutes earlier on the same street.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who is also a Social Democrat, said that if the attack on Ecke is proven to have been politically motivated, it would represent “a serious attack on democracy.”
“We are experiencing a new dimension of undemocratic violence,” Faeser said. He promised “tougher measures and more protection measures for the democratic forces of our country.”
Government and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months and have called on police to step up protection of politicians and election rallies.
Many of the incidents have taken place in the country’s former communist east, where Scholz’s government is deeply unpopular. The far-right, anti-establishment party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is expected to make big gains across the region in both European elections and German state elections in the fall.
Last week, the car carrying the vice president of the German parliament, Katrin Goering-Eckardt of the Greens, was surrounded for almost an hour by protesters as she tried to leave a demonstration. The opposition Christian Democrats and The Left say their workers have also suffered intimidation and seen their signs torn down.
Mainstream parties accuse the AfD of having links to violent neo-Nazi groups and fostering an increasingly harsh political climate. A prominent AfD leader, Bjoern Hoecke, is currently on trial accused of using a banned Nazi slogan. Germany’s internal intelligence service has placed some party chapters under surveillance.
The branch of the Social Democrats in the state of Saxony, where Ecke is their main candidate for the European elections, said their campaign would continue despite “fascist methods” of intimidation.
“The seeds sown by the AfD and other right-wing extremists are germinating,” branch leaders Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel said in a joint statement. “These people and their supporters are responsible for what is happening in this country.”
AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla said his party “deeply condemns physical attacks against politicians of all parties. Election campaigns must be tough and constructive in terms of content, but without violence,” he said in a social media post. .
The AfD, whose demonstrations often spark counter-demonstrations, says its members also suffer attacks and harassment.
On Saturday, police said they detained a man who punched and slightly injured an AfD state lawmaker while he was campaigning in Norden, a town near Germany’s North Sea coast. The attacker also threw eggs at the legislator.