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Former Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey on Tuesday afternoon she was attacked by a man while she was in a Berlin library: Giffey, who is part of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), was hit on the head with a bag full of hard objects and was then taken to hospital, where she was checked and released soon after. The same evening, a Green Party activist who was hanging election posters in Dresden, the capital of Saxony, was insulted and pushed by a 34-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, now under investigation for assault. The two were part of a group that also gave the Nazi salute during the attacks.
Those on Tuesday are only the latest in a series of attacks and assaults, physical and verbal, which have occurred in recent days, especially against centre-left politicians, i.e. the Social Democratic Party, of which the current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also a member, and of the Green Party. Together with the Liberals, they make up the coalition that supports the government.
Although the phenomenon of attacks for political reasons is not new in Germany, the seriousness of some of these episodes and the fact that they occurred at close range have brought the topic back to the center of the German debate. Most of these attacks, similar to others that have occurred in recent months, also occurred in the east of the country, where according to polls the most popular party by far is Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the main far-right party of the country.
The most serious of these attacks took place on Friday evening in Dresden, where the SPD leader for the state of Saxony in the European elections Matthias Ecke was attacked by four people while he was attacking an election poster for his election campaign. Ecke, who is forty-one years old and already a member of the European Parliament, had been seriously injured in the cheekbone and eye and had undergone emergency surgery in hospital. Also on Friday, a Green Party activist who was putting up posters was also attacked in the same neighborhood.
The next day a 17 year old boy he intruduced himself in a Dresden police station, accompanied by his mother, and turned himself in, saying he was among those responsible for the attack on Ecke. On Sunday police searched the homes of three other boys, all aged between 17 and 18, suspected of taking part in the attack. According to the police reconstruction, at least one of the four has links to far-right groups in the area. According to Southgerman newspaper the suspects are part of a group called Electric mixer volts (“Uprising in the area around the Elbe River”), affiliated with a neo-Nazi youth organization.
Franziska Giffey speaks to journalists the day after her attack at an event in Berlin (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
According to provisional data widespread by the German police, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, an increase compared to those that occurred in 2022, but in line with those of 2021, when the last legislative elections took place. Some of these attacks, around 480, were also directed against AfD activists and politicians: but centre-left activists and politicians still remain the most affected, even seriously. These attacks have also increased in recent months.
In September 2023 a man had thrown a stone against Green leaders Katharina Schulze and Ludwig Hartmann during a rally in Bavaria. In January, a crowd prevented German vice chancellor and Green politician Robert Habeck from getting off a ferry, and shortly thereafter Katrin Göring-Eckardt, vice-president of parliament and Green politician, was blocked after an election event by a group of 40 protesters who had surrounded his car. Last week, a day before the attack on Ecke, the deputy mayor of the city of Essen Rolf Fliss, also from the Greens, was shot in the face.
After the attack on Ecke, thousands of people demonstrated in Berlin and Dresden, blaming the AfD and its nationalist and violent rhetoric for the increase in these attacks. On Tuesday evening after the attack against Giffey, the interior ministers of the 16 German states and the federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, met to discuss the issue, saying they were in favor of toughening penalties against those who attack politicians or activists.
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