The teenager presented himself to Dresden police early on Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who knocked down the SPD politician”, the police said in a statement. The 17-year-old did not provide any detailed information, according to Der Spiegel.
The SPD blamed the attack on Ecke on supporters of the far-right Alliance for Germany (AfD) party. “Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and apparently view us Democrats as a fair target,” the statement released Saturday said. Saxony is one of the AfD’s political strongholds.
On Saturday, police spoke of four suspects aged between 17 and 20 years old. The investigation into the other suspects is ongoing.
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Protests against the far right were called for Sunday in Berlin and Dresden.
“Democracy is threatened by these kinds of acts,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, also a member of the SPD, said on Saturday at a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin. He said such attacks result from “the discourse, the atmosphere created by pitting people against each other.”
Ecke is only the most high-profile victim of violence. On Friday, a Greens activist, who was also putting up posters, was attacked by a group of four people, according to the police.
Last week, two Green MPs were mistreated while campaigning in Essen, in western Germany, and another was surrounded by dozens of protesters in her car in the east of the country.
According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, compared to 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, during the parliamentary elections.
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