Germany plans to increase the police presence at campaign events and consider new legislation to curb growing violence after a surge in attacks on politicians which one minister has said echoed the violence of Nazi stormtroopers.
The measures were agreed at an urgent meeting between Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, and her 16 counterparts in the federal states after Matthias Ecke, a Social Democrat MEP, was seriously injured by four teenagers in Dresden while hanging up campaign posters last Friday.
“We need a return to a political culture of respect,” Faeser wrote on Twitter/X after the conference. “Violence chokes off all debate and destroys the democratic discourse. We need a very clear stop sign.”
She said the federal police force would be deployed to assist regional forces. Ministers agreed to consider a new law creating a specific offense of threatening politicians, public officials and volunteers in local government.
Thousands of Berliners rallied for democracy at the weekend amid a string of attacks
REUTERS/Liesa Johannsen
Ecke suffered a broken cheekbone and eye socket and had surgery at the weekend. He posted a photo of his bruised and swollen face, thanking people for their solidarity after the assault prompted demonstrations by thousands in Berlin and Dresden.
“It’s not just about me, but about everyone who is passionate about politics,” said Ecke. “In a democracy, no one should have to fear speaking their mind.”
The assault was the latest in a rising number of attacks and acts of intimidation against politicians, campaign helpers and public officials that Boris Pistorius, the defense minister, said reminded him of images of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary arm of the Nazi party .
He blamed the violence on the far right and the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), saying: “We will not leave this democracy, our way of living in freedom and security, to fascists, right-wing extremists or those who do this business for others on the streets as the extended arm of the AfD.”
Four male teenagers are being investigated over the Ecke assault after a 17-year-old accompanied by his mother turned himself in to the Dresden police. At least one suspect is believed to be part of the “right-wing extremist spectrum”, a spokeswoman for the Saxony state criminal police office said.
None of the suspects have been remanded in custody.
The assault has heightened fears of spiraling violence before the European elections on June 9 and the September 1 state elections in the three eastern states of Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia where the hard-right AfD is in the lead.
While politicians from all parties have reported attacks, the Greens, part of the centre-left coalition of Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, have become a focal point of right-wing anger over environmental laws, the government’s liberalization of cannabis and support for fully decriminalising abortion.
An anti-fascist demonstration in Dresden on Monday
JENS SCHLUETER/GETTY IMAGES
A total of 2,790 attacks on politicians from parties represented in the Bundestag were recorded in 2023, an increase of 53 percent over 2022, according to government figures, with the Greens suffering 1,219 — more than any other party.
The same evening Ecke was attacked in Dresden, a Green Party campaigner was assaulted in the same district. A day earlier, on Thursday, Rolf Fliss, the Green deputy mayor of the city of Essen, was insulted and punched in the face by a group of men while walking home from a party event. The encounter, he said, had started out as a “typical, coincidental and initially friendly exchange”.
Last week another member of the Greens, Katrin Göring-Eckhardt, a deputy president of the Bundestag, was harassed by a group of 40 to 50 demonstrators who stopped her car from leaving after a campaign event in the eastern village of Lunow-Stolzenhagen. People banged on her car and police reinforcements had to be called. She was able to drive off after 45 minutes and criticized the police for being unprepared.
Walter Lübke was president of the central Kassel region when he was assassinated in 2019
UWE ZUCCHI/ALAMY
“It’s also affecting other parties but the Greens in particular,” Yvonne Magwas of the CDU, who is also a deputy Bundestag president, said. “It starts with words. And words turn into deeds. One reason is the incitement by the AfD against the Greens. That is the root of evil.”
A winter of discontent with strikes and farmers’ protests has stoked unrest in a country that for decades was known for a relatively sedate, consensus-driven politics.
A blockade in January by angry farmers who prevented a ferry from docking because it was bringing back Robert Habeck, the Green economy minister, from a winter holiday on a North Sea island has since turned out to be a harbinger of this year’s spate of aggression.
The violence has been simmering since the former chancellor’ Angela Merkel’s open border policy and the influx of almost a million refugees in 2015. In 2019 Walter Lübke, a CDU politician, was shot dead by a right-wing extremist after being targeted with online abuse for supporting the housing of refugees in the western city of Kassel.
Peter Goebel, an SPD councilor in the eastern town of Königstein, a hard-right bastion in Saxony, said the authorities mustn’t allow parts of the eastern state to become “no go areas” where politicians are silenced by intimidation.
“What began with torchlight marches in front of politicians’ private homes, dumping manure in front of their properties and threatening local politicians is now ending in naked, brutal violence,” he told the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost.
The ministers have said they will discuss increasing the police presence at political events and legislation to tighten penalties for violence against politicians. One idea has been to create a new offense of “political stalking” to stop demonstrations outside the private homes of politicians.
There have also been renewed calls to ban the AfD.
