Those assaults are the latest in a string of attacks aimed at politicians across the country in recent days that have prompted outrage and fears about damage to the country’s democratic norms.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced them as “outrageous and cowardly”.

“Those who get involved deserve respect. Violence has no place in democratic debate,” Scholz wrote in a post to X. “The decent and reasonable people are clearly against it – and they are the majority!”

Elections to the European Parliament take place on June 6-9, and many candidates are busy campaigning and putting up posters. There are also regional parliament elections coming up in September in three states in the east of Germany.

“After the initial shock, I can say I’m fine,” Giffey said on Wednesday.

But in an Instagram post, Giffey said that violence against politicians cannot be justified.

“We live in a free and democratic country in which everyone is free to express their opinion,” Giffey wrote. “And yet there is a clear limit. And that is violence against people who hold a different opinion, for whatever reason, in whatever form.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a German politician from the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), condemned the attacks and demanded decisive action in a speech to her party in Berlin.

“When we talk about threats to our democracy, it’s not just about positions and content. It’s also about people,” she said. “If these people are no longer safe, then our democracy is no longer safe either.”

She said that perpetrators must “feel the full force of the law”.

“We must protect all those who stand up for our democratic society and our country from attacks – regardless of which party they belong to, whether privately, during election campaigns or in the exercise of their duties, day or night,” von der Leyen said.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner also condemned the physical attack on Giffey “in the strongest possible terms” and expressed concern about the recent rash of political street violence in Germany.

Wegner announced that the city’s governing executive would discuss responses to the assault on Giffey, including potentially tougher penalties for attacks on politicians.

The Green Party politician attacked in Dresden, Yvonne Mosler, was campaigning in the city with a fellow Green candidate, Cornelius Sternkopf, when she was shoved, insulted and threatened by a 34-year-old man, who also tore down two campaign posters.

A second suspect, a 24-year-old woman, joined in on the attack and spat at the politician, according to police in Dresden. Both suspects had been standing in a group that allegedly also chanted an outlawed Nazi slogan.

Mosler was accompanied by journalists from German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle and the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at the time. Police officers confronted both suspects in the immediate vicinity of the attack on Tuesday evening.

On Friday, also in Dresden, a Social Democratic member of the European Parliament named Matthias Ecke was brutally beaten by four assailants while putting up campaign posters.

Four suspects in the attack on Ecke – aged 17 and 18 – have since been arrested.

Berlin prosecutors announced on Wednesday that they had identified the 74-year-old suspect in Giffey’s assault and that he was placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Police said the man is known to law enforcement and there is reason to suspect political motive, but there are also “indications of mental illness”.

Giffey was injured after the man suddenly attacked her “from behind with a bag filled with hard contents and hit her on the head and neck,” according to Berlin police and local prosecutors.

The attack occurred at a library in the Rudow district of Berlin. Giffey “briefly went to hospital for outpatient treatment for head and neck pain,” police said.