Last week, Matthias Ecke, a politician with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and member of European Parliament, was hanging campaign posters for the upcoming European Union election in the eastern German city of Dresden when he was allegedly approached by a group of four young men and pummeled.
Ecke suffered fractures to his cheekbone and eye socket, among other injuries, and was hospitalized.
In the same part of Dresden that evening, the group of youths also allegedly attacked a Greens campaigner. One of the attackers punched him twice in the face, and after the victim fell to the ground, the attackers repeatedly kicked him, according to witnesses.
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This past Tuesday evening in Dresden, local Greens candidate Yvonne Mosler was out with a television crew putting up campaign posters when a man pushed her aside, ripped down the posters, and a young woman spat on her.
Additional attacks this week — including one on the former mayor of Berlin, SPD politician Franziska Giffey, assaulted in a public library by a man who struck her from behind on the head with a “bag filled with hard contents,” according to police — further raised alarm across the country.
“We are experiencing an escalation of anti-democratic violence,” said Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, also of the SPD.