Top candidate
SPD European politician seriously injured in attack in Dresden
MEP Matthias Ecke in June 2023 at the state party conference of the SPD Saxony in Chemnitz. photo
© Heiko Rebsch/dpa
Unknown people attack the Saxon SPD’s leading European election candidate while hanging up election posters – no longer an isolated case.
He wanted to put up election posters for his party, now the Saxon one is up SPD European top candidate Matthias Ecke in the hospital. On Friday evening he was attacked and seriously injured by four unknown people in Dresden. The group of perpetrators beat the 41-year-old, as the police and the party announced on Saturday. He had to undergo surgery in the hospital.
A few minutes before the attack, according to the police, a group of four had already attacked a 28-year-old campaign worker for the Green Party who was also posting posters. The perpetrators beat and kicked him, and he was also injured. The state security investigators assume that the perpetrators are the same because of the matching descriptions of the people and the proximity in time and location. Both incidents occurred in the middle-class Striesen district, which is primarily characterized by its old villas.
According to the Saxon Interior Ministry, the Violent Crimes Task Force of the State Criminal Police Office has now taken over the investigation.
According to police, the attackers were young men between 17 and 20 years old. According to witness statements, all four were dressed in dark clothing, a police spokesman said. A witness assigned the attackers to the right-wing spectrum. The investigation would show whether that was true.
Numerous attacks against politicians
The incidents in Dresden are part of a series of attacks on party members in the run-up to the local and European elections on June 9th. It was only on Thursday evening that the Green Party member of the Bundestag Kai Gehring and his party colleague Rolf Fliß said they were attacked after a party event in Essen. Last weekend, members of the Green Party in Chemnitz and Zwickau were attacked while putting up election posters. According to police, a member of the AfD state parliament was beaten at an information stand in Nordhorn, Lower Saxony, on Saturday morning.
According to a study for the Heinrich Böll Foundation, insults, threats and physical attacks affect women as well as men and people with and without a migration background to a similar extent, both in East and West German countries and across all party lines. What is striking, however, is a trend that the federal government recently revealed in response to a small question from the AfD in the Bundestag – not specifically to local politicians, but to all political levels: While in 2019 representatives of the AfD were primarily the target of hostility, the hatred has increasingly shifted on the Greens. According to preliminary figures, 478 cases were recorded nationwide for the AfD in 2023 and 1,219 for the Greens. According to government information, 10,537 crimes were reported for all parties together from 2019 to 2023.
Politicians condemn the attack
Numerous state and federal politicians condemned the attack on Ecke on Saturday. The attack was an “unmistakable alarm signal to all people in this country,” said the Saxon SPD state party leaders Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, according to the statement. “The series of attacks by thugs on poster teams of democratic parties are an attack on the foundations of our democracy. The violent actions and intimidation of democrats are the means of fascists.” The seeds that the AfD and other right-wing extremists have sown are growing; their supporters are completely disinhibited.
Saxony’s Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) said on Attacks and intimidation by political competitors are familiar from the darkest eras of German history.
Greens: An attack on democracy
The SPD federal chairmen Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil also strongly condemned the attack. “This insidious attack affects our entire party. It is an attack on all election campaigners who passionately support our democracy and the rule of law,” it said in a statement. The Green party leader Ricarda Lang wrote on Platform X that violence in the election campaign was an attack on democracy and therefore on all of us. Your full solidarity goes out to everyone. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) spoke of attacks on our democracy. “They are the disgusting and inexcusable result of a brutalization of language, debate and disinhibition in so-called social media.”
AfD leader Tino Chrupalla also blamed X: “We deeply condemn physical attacks against politicians from all parties. Election campaigns must be tough and constructive in terms of content, but without violence.” The federal party and parliamentary group leader, himself from Saxony, wished Ecke “a lot of strength and a speedy recovery.”
Faeser announces tough action
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) announced tough action by the constitutional state. Faeser said: “If a politically motivated attack on MEP Matthias Ecke is confirmed a few weeks before the European elections, then this serious act of violence is also a serious attack on democracy. We are experiencing a new dimension of anti-democratic violence here.” She added that extremists and populists who are fomenting an increasing climate of violence with completely unrestricted verbal hostilities against democratic politicians bear a share of the responsibility for the fact that attacks are becoming more and more frequent. “The constitutional state must and will respond to this with tough action and further protective measures for the democratic forces in our country. I will discuss this very quickly with the interior ministers of the federal states.”
The Greens in Saxony have already reacted to last weekend’s attacks and are no longer sending their members alone to post posters. Other parties now also have such considerations and guidelines.