BERLIN — 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 have heightened political tensions in Germany ahead of the elections. 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 while putting up posters in Dresden on Friday night, 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 apparently attacked a Green Party worker minutes earlier in the same street.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who is also a Social Democrat, said that if it was proven that the attack on Ecke was politically motivated, it would represent “a serious attack on democracy”.
“We are experiencing a new dimension of anti-democratic violence,” Faeser said. She promised “tougher actions and more protective measures for the democratic forces in 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 for politicians and election rallies.
Many of the incidents occurred in the country’s former communist east, where Scholz’s government is deeply unpopular. The far-right, anti-establishment Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, is expected to make big gains across the region in both the 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 rally. The opposition Christian Democrats and the Left party say their workers also faced intimidation and saw their posters torn down.
The main parties accuse the AfD of links to violent neo-Nazi groups and of 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 in the European elections, said their campaign would continue despite “fascist methods” of intimidation.
“The seeds that the AfD and other right-wing extremists sowed are germinating,” said branch leaders Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel in a joint statement. “These people and their supporters are responsible for what is happening in this country.”
Tino Chrupalla, co-chair of the AfD, 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 rallies often attract counter-demonstrations, says its members also suffer attacks and harassment.
On Saturday, police said they detained a man who hit 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.
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