A PROMINENT Berlin politician was violently assaulted and suffered injuries to her head and neck, police said today, in the latest attack on elected officials that raises concern over rising political violence in Germany.
Franziska Giffey, the city’s top economic official, a former mayor and an ex-federal minister, was attacked at an event in a Berlin library on Tuesday by a man who approached her from behind and hit her with a bag containing a hard device, police said.
Ms Giffey was taken to a hospital and treated for head and neck pain, police said. A 74-year-old man was detained by the police.
Last week, a candidate from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party was beaten up in the eastern city of Dresden while campaigning for next month’s EU parliamentary election.
Police detained four suspects, aged between 17 and 18, and said that the same group had apparently attacked a Green Party worker minutes before they attacked Matthias Ecke.
At least one of the teens is said to be linked to far-right groups, security officials said.
Also on Tuesday, a 47-year-old Green Party politician was attacked by two people while putting up election posters in Dresden, dpa reported.
The incidents have raised political tensions in Germany.
Both 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.
In February, the German Parliament said in a report there were a total of 2,790 attacks on elected representatives in 2023.
Representatives of The Greens were disproportionally affected in 1,219 cases, those from the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), in 478 cases and representatives of the SPD in 420 cases.
The country’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, who is a member of the Greens, was prevented from disembarking a ferry for hours by a group of angry farmers in January, and the vice-president of the German Parliament, Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also from the Greens, was prevented from leaving an event in the state of Brandenburg last week when an angry crowd blocked her car.
Germany’s federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said after a special meeting of the country’s 16 state interior ministers on the issue of violence on Tuesday that possible measures included tightening Germany’s criminal law in order to “punish anti-democratic acts more severely.”
Many of the incidents have taken place in the former communist east of the country, where Mr Scholz’s government is deeply unpopular. The Interior Ministry in the state of Saxony said it had registered 112 election-related crimes so far this year, including 30 against elected officials or representatives.
Mainstream parties have accused AfD of links to violent neonazi groups and of fomenting an intimidating political climate. One of its leaders, Bjoern Hoecke, is currently on trial for using a banned Nazi slogan.
AfD, which campaigns against immigration and European integration, is expected to make gains in the European polls as well as in elections in Saxony and two other eastern German states in the autumn.
