Matthias Ecke walks through the door with a smile on his face. In spite of everything. It is only when he approaches the podium to sustained applause that his injury becomes apparent. The left eye, still red-blue. The swelling in the face that is still going down. They bear witness to the attack in Dresden a week and a half ago, in which four young people beat the SPD politician to the point of hospitalization as he was hanging up posters. According to research by the South German newspaper There are traces of the right-wing extremist scene in three of them. Ecke had to undergo surgery after the attack. The incident caused horror nationwide and was just one of several attacks on politicians in the election campaigns for the European and local elections, with others immediately following.
Ecke is now using this Monday evening to make his first public appearance since the crime in Leipzig’s Ariowitsch House. “It hit me, but it didn’t blow me away,” says the 41-year-old about the attack. In the days that followed, he experienced “an enormous amount of sympathy” and drew strength from it. “I want to be clear: I will not be silenced.”
Faeser advocates quick criminal proceedings and police presence
Petra Köpping, who stands behind the corner during his lecture, nods. Köpping is the SPD’s top candidate for the state elections in Saxony. She invited people to the “Say times, Saxony” event and will later take part in a panel discussion with Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). First, the two politicians leave the stage to Ecke.
It is important to the SPD politician to focus on the social development behind the attack. On the brutalization, the “organized disinhibition”, for which the AfD and the “Free Saxony” party are primarily responsible. But Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) also gets his fat off. His insult, for example, that Green Party politician Annalena Baerbock is a “female Margot Honecker” shows that something has also “slipped” when it comes to cohesion among Democrats. This is needed even more urgently in this long election year, says Ecke. “We must now send a signal to stop this violence, this escalation.”
Federal Interior Minister Faeser pays respect to the previous speaker for appearing again so early. She sees the stop signal that Ecke spoke of as “that the punishment follows the foot”. Criminal proceedings against young perpetrators must also be dealt with quickly. Faeser promises the SPD members present a “visible police presence” in the election campaign and they should not allow themselves to be intimidated. “We urgently need your commitment.” We face the enemies of democracy together.
However, this requires trust in the authorities. But that’s exactly what has been disappointed again and again recently, says Petra Köpping. She reports on local politicians she met who told her about reports of attacks on them after which hardly anything happened. “They don’t run ads anymore.” Köpping still experienced the GDR. That’s why she knows “what we have is worth.” We have to defend that now, she says towards the corner. “To tell you dear Matthias: We stand together.”