Protesters have called for demonstrations in Germany to denounce recent attacks on politicians and campaign workers in street violence that shocked the country.
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.
Matthias Ecke, a Social Democrat (SPD) and member of European Parliament since 2022, was brutally beaten by a gang of four assailants on Friday evening while hanging campaign posters in the eastern German city of Dresden.
Minutes before Ecke was attacked, according to the police, a group of four unidentified assailants had assaulted a 28-year-old Green Party campaign worker while he was putting up posters in the same part of Dresden.
According to the police, four young men believed to be between 17 and 20 years old attacked Ecke.
A police spokesman said witnesses described the assailants as dressed in dark clothing and said they seemed to be part of the far-right extremist scene. Police are still investigating the crime and have not identified suspects.
There have been several violent incidents during election campaigns across Germany, including on Thursday evening in the western German city of Essen, where the Green Party member of parliament Kai Gehring and his party colleague Rolf Fliss were attacked 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.
Two activist groups called for demonstrations on Sunday in both Dresden and Berlin to denounce the violence.
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.
Ecke, 41, was severely injured in the attack and required an operation in hospital, according to his political party.
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.
"The constitutional state must and will react to this with a tough approach and further protective measures for the democratic forces in our country," Faeser said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, also condemned the recent attacks on Sunday.
"Brutal attacks on committed democrats, campaigners & politicians are attacks on the foundation of our democracy: free elections," the minister, currently on a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
"The reports about this are frightening. Violence is never a means of democracy."
