A young man confesses to the attack on the SPD politician Ecke. More attacks are known. Demonstrations for democracy will be held on Sunday.

SPD MEP Matthias Ecke attacked while putting up posters in Dresden Photo: Heiko Rebsch/dpa

DRESDEN (taz/dpa/afp) | After the brutal attack on SPD MEP Matthias Ecke in Dresden, a young man reported to the police. The 17-year-old said he had knocked down the 41-year-old, police said Sunday.

Ecke was attacked on Friday night by four perpetrators and was seriously injured. The main candidate of the Saxon SPD for the European elections has since been in hospital and needs surgery. Shortly before, police said, the same group had allegedly attacked and injured a 28-year-old Green Party campaign worker nearby.

The attacks caused widespread horror throughout the country. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) strongly condemned the attack on Ecke and another attack on two Green politicians in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia: “It does not matter whether in the east, west, north or south, in the countryside or in the city: all democrats must “confront this growing climate of violence,” Faeser demanded.

The federal and state interior ministers are expected to discuss protective measures very soon. According to a media report, Faeser proposed a special conference next week. The same request was made to the current president of the Conference of Ministers of the Interior, the head of the Brandenburg department, Michael Stübgen (CDU), as reported by the “Tagesspiegel” citing government circles.

Let's solidify on Sunday

Meanwhile, two alliances called for spontaneous demonstrations in Berlin and Dresden this Sunday under the slogan “Violence has no place in our democracy!”

In Berlin, protests will take place in front of the Brandenburg Gate starting at 6:00 p.m., and in Dresden starting at 5:00 p.m. on Pohlandplatz, as indicated in Instagram posts published on Saturday evening by the portal Internet “Together against the right” and the alliance “. We are the firewall of Dresden.” The alliances had already called for demonstrations against the right in February.

The incidents in Dresden are part of a series of nationwide attacks against party members ahead of local and European elections on June 9. Only on Thursday afternoon, after a Green Party event in Essen, Bundestag member Kai Gehring and his party colleague Rolf Fliß said that they had been attacked and that Fliß had been beaten.

The greens draw conclusions

Green Bundestag Vice President Katrin-Göring-Eckardt was aggressively harassed and prevented from leaving after an event in eastern Brandenburg a week ago. According to the police, a member of the AfD regional parliament was beaten on Saturday morning at an information stand in Nordhorn, Lower Saxony. According to the police, another AfD campaign post was attacked in Dresden on Saturday.

The target group of the attackers has changed somewhat in recent years: in 2019, AfD representatives were mainly the target of hostility, but now it is the Greens. According to preliminary figures, in 2023, 478 cases were recorded nationwide for the AfD and 1,219 for the Greens. Between 2019 and 2023, a total of 10,537 crimes were reported across all parties, according to a government response to a short question from the AfD parliamentary group.

The Minister of the Interior of Thuringia, Georg Maier (SPD), speculated in the editorial network Germany: “In the case of the recent attacks against people who, for example, put up election posters, we must assume that these are acts planned that are not carried out spontaneously, but in a specific way. This is a new level of escalation with the stated objective of intimidation.

This is not without consequences: The Greens in Saxony already reacted to other attacks last weekend in Chemnitz and Zwickau and no longer send their members alone to post posters. Other parties now also have these considerations and guidelines.