A suspect approached Franziska Giffey from behind at the library Tuesday afternoon and struck her in the head and neck before fleeing, police said in a statement.
Ms Giffey, now Berlin’s Land Economy Minister and a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), was treated in hospital for minor injuries. Berlin’s current mayor, Kai Wegner, condemned the attack and said anyone who attacks politicians is “attacking our democracy”. “We will not tolerate this,” he said, vowing to consider “tougher penalties for attacks on politicians.”
The European Parliament lawmaker, also a member of the SPD, was seriously injured by four attackers last week while hanging European Parliament election posters in the eastern city of Dresden. Matthias Ecke, 41, required surgery for serious injuries sustained in the attack, which Scholz condemned as a threat to democracy.
On Tuesday, a new case of assault was again reported in Dresden. The politician, identified by police only as a 47-year-old member of the Green Party, was threatened and spat on. The politician was putting up campaign posters for the European Parliament elections when a man approached, pushed her aside and tore off two posters. The police reported that the man insulted and threatened the politician, and the woman who helped him spat on the victim. Both suspects – a 34-year-old German man and a 24-year-old woman – were detained, police said. They were both among a group of people who had gathered there and started to demonstrate the banned Hitler salute when the politician started hanging the posters.
According to police data, in 2023 In Germany, there were 2,790 crimes against politicians, up from 1,806 a year earlier, but down from 2,840 in 2021, the year of the parliamentary elections.
