Candidate for Germany's Ruling Party Attacked During European Election Campaign

A candidate for Germany's key party was beaten up while campaigning for European elections

A candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left party in next month's election for the European Parliament was beaten up and seriously injured while campaigning in an eastern city, the party said Saturday.

It was the latest in a series of incidents raising political tensions in Germany ahead of the polls. Scholz's Social Democrats, or SPD, launched their official campaign for the June 9 vote with a rally last week in Hamburg, Scholz's longtime home city.

Matthias Ecke, an SPD candidate, was attacked while putting up posters in Dresden on Friday evening, the party said. It said he was taken to hospital and required surgery for his injuries. Police said the 41-year-old was hit and kicked by four men and that the same group had apparently attacked a Green Party worker minutes before in the same street.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who is also a Social Democrat, said that if it's proven that the assault on Ecke was politically motivated, it would represent "a serious attack on democracy." "We are experiencing a new dimension of anti-democratic violence," Faeser said. She promised "tougher action and further protective measures for the democratic forces in our country." Government and opposition parties say their members and supporters have faced a wave of physical and verbal attacks in recent months and have called on police to step up protection for politicians and election rallies.

Many of the incidents have occurred in the former communist east of the country, where the far-right and anti-establishment Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, is expected to make gains in the European elections and in German state elections in the fall.

Last week, the car carrying the vice-president of the German parliament, Katrin Goering-Eckardt of the Greens, was surrounded for nearly an hour by protesters as she tried to leave a rally. The opposition Christian Democrats and The Left party say their workers have also faced intimidation and seen their posters ripped down.

Mainstream parties accuse the AfD of links to violent neo-Nazi groups and of fomenting an increasingly harsh political climate. A prominent AfD leader, Bjoern Hoecke, is currently on trial accused of using a banned Nazi slogan. Germany's domestic intelligence service has placed some chapters of the party under surveillance.

The branch of the Social Democrats in Saxony state, where Ecke is their lead candidate for the European elections, said their campaign would go on despite "fascist methods" of intimidation.

"The seeds that the AfD and other right-wing extremists have sown are germinating," the branch leaders, Henning Homann und Kathrin Michel, said in a joint statement. ''These people and their supporters carry responsibility for what is happening in this country."

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