At least one of the four suspects of the attack on a German member of the European Parliament is part of the right-wing political scene, the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in Saxony said.
It is believed that the suspect belongs to the "politically-motivated right-wing category," a spokeswoman for the LKA announced on Monday.
Matthias Ecke, who represents the Social Democrats (SPD) in the European Parliament, was brutally beaten by four assailants on Friday evening while hanging campaign posters in the eastern German city of Dresden.
Police have identified four young men, aged 17 and 18, as suspects. As there are no grounds for arrest, they are at large, according to the public prosecutor's office.
Evidence was seized during house searches and is now being analysed.
The motive for the offence is currently under investigation. It will take some time before the investigation is finalized, the statement by the police and the state's public prosecutor's office said.
Ecke himself sent a message of thanks from the hospital: "I am overwhelmed by your sympathy and solidarity," he wrote on X.
It does him good and gives him strength, he wrote on Monday, adding that it's not just about him. "In a democracy, nobody should have to fear speaking their mind!"
Ecke also posted a photo showing him with a black eye and plasters on his face and what appears to be a hospital room in the background.
Ecke, who is the SPD's lead candidate in the state of Saxony for the European elections, underwent surgery on Sunday. The 41-year-old suffered a fracture to his cheekbone and eye socket as well as haematomas to his face, said Saxony's SPD leader Henning Homann.
Witnesses described the assailants as dressed in dark clothing and said they seemed to be part of the far-right extremist scene.
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.
The deputy government spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, said in Berlin on Monday that attacks on politicians and voluntary campaigners "threaten our democracy."
The attacks triggered a debate about the escalation of violence during election campaigns.
Several thousand people demonstrated to denounce the attacks and defend Germany's democratic values in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has described the recent attacks on politicians as a major threat to democracy itself.
"If local politicians - and this applies equally to members of state parliaments, the German Bundestag and the European Parliament - no longer dare to run for office, no longer dare to put up posters or attend election rallies, (...) then democracy is dying from the ground up," Pistorius said on Monday.
Nothing worse could happen to democracy, the minister added.
"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," he said, referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
He said the attacks on Friday are reminiscent of Nazi Storm Troopers "beating people on the streets before 1933." Parts of the AfD are right-wing extremist, he added, "and that is how we must finally treat them."
