Following an attack on a German member of the European Parliament in Dresden, his party has warned not to treat the incident as an isolated case, as hundreds took to the streets in the eastern German city in solidarity with the severely injured lawmaker.
“It is very clear that this willingness to use violence did not occur in a vacuum,” Saskia Esken, leader of Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), said ahead of a rally in Dresden on Sunday afternoon.
A 17-year-old turned himself in to police earlier on Sunday following the attack on Matthias Ecke, who represents the SPD in the European Parliament, during campaign work on Friday evening.
The teen reported to Dresden police early Sunday morning and told officers he had assaulted the politician, the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) said.
The investigation is ongoing and police are working to corroborate the teen’s statements, a LKA spokeswoman said.
Ecke was brutally beaten by a gang of four assailants on Friday evening while hanging campaign posters in the eastern German city.
He was hospitalized and underwent surgery on Sunday, the head of the SPD in the state of Saxony, Henning Homann, said.
Ecke suffered a fracture to his cheekbone and eye socket as well as haematomas to his face, but he was doing well given the circumstances, according to his party colleague.
Witnesses described the assailants as dressed in dark clothing and said they seemed to be part of the far-right extremist scene.
The three other suspects are still unknown, police say. They are believed to be young men between 17 and 20 years old.
Ecke is the SPD’s top candidate in the state of Saxony for June’s European elections. He has served in the European Parliament since 2022.
The attack shocked the country and prompted outrage in Germany, with politicians from a number of different parties decrying the violence and warning of a threat to German democracy.
In her address, SPD party leader Esken blamed the attack on the seeds of social division and messages of contempt for democracy from far-right parties and far-right extremists.
“In this respect, these people who have threatened to hunt us down, to clean up this country, to muck it out, also share responsibility for the social climate in which such acts are possible,” she said.
“We will oppose this as a constitutional state, but of course also as a society and as political parties.”
Minutes before Ecke was attacked, according to the police, a group of four assailants had also assaulted a 28-year-old Green Party campaign worker while he was putting up posters in the same part of Dresden.
According to a Green Party activist who had been with the politician at the time of the attack, he was punched several times before being kicked in the stomach and ribs while lying on the floor.
“He suffered injuries, mainly bruises,” Anne-Katrin Haubold told Der Spiegel news magazine on Sunday. According to her account, the attack took place on Friday evening some time after 10 pm while they were putting up election posters in the district of Striesen.
Police assume that the same perpetrators are responsible for the attack on Ecke, which took place shortly afterwards.
Protesters have called for demonstrations in Germany to denounce the attacks and defend Germany’s democratic values.
Some 3,000 people took to the streets in Dresden’s Striesen district on Sunday afternoon to protest again violence and for democracy, according to police and organizers. SPD party leader Esken, German Culture Minister Claudia Roth from the Green Party and Saxony’s state Justice Minister Katja Meier also joined the rally.
In Berlin, more than 1,000 demonstrators gathered at the German capital’s iconic Brandenburger Gate, according to initial police estimates.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, meanwhile, has reportedly sought an urgent meeting with her state-level colleagues to address added security measures to prevent further political violence in the lead up to June’s European Parliament elections.
There have been several violent incidents during election campaigns across Germany, including on Thursday evening in the western German city of Essen, where a Green Party member of parliament, Kai Gehring, was attacked along with his fellow Green colleague Rolf Fliss after a party event.
In the western German town of Nordhorn, a politician from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was beaten at an information stand on Saturday morning, according to police reports.
Interior ministers from Germany’s 16 federal states are expected to convene next week to discuss the attacks. Faeser, a fellow member of the SPD, called for the meeting on Saturday, not long after police disclosed details of the assault on Ecke, the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported.
The Greens in the eastern state of Saxony have already reacted after other attacks last weekend in Chemnitz and Zwickau and are no longer sending their members to put up posters on their own. Other parties are now also making similar considerations and guidelines in the wake of the assault on Ecke.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for united action against right-wing extremism.
“Democracy is threatened by something like this, and that is why shrugging our shoulders is never an option,” Scholz said on Saturday evening. “We must stand together against it.”
