By Leon Kuegeler and Matthias Inverardi
HERDECKE, Germany (Reuters) -The newly elected mayor of a town in western Germany was in critical condition after being found with multiple stab wounds, a security source told Reuters on Tuesday.
Bild newspaper reported that Iris Stalzer, a Social Democrat who is due to take office in November after being elected mayor of Herdecke in the Ruhr region a week ago, was found by her son.
Police searching for evidence have sealed off the road around her house.
A 57-year-old mother of two teenagers, Stalzer is a labour lawyer who has worked for many years in the local politics of Herdecke, a historic town of some 20,000 people.
“We have received news of a terrible deed in Herdecke,” conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on social media. “It must be swiftly investigated. We fear for the life of the mayor-designate and hope for her full recovery.”
TEENAGE CHILDREN
Bild said that Stalzer’s 15-year-old adopted son had been taken from the scene in handcuffs and wearing an evidence-preserving overall. Her 17-year-old adopted daughter was also at home, the newspaper said.
“Investigators said this was purely to protect evidence,” the newspaper added. The son told police that his mother had been attacked by several men, Bild said.
Stalzer had dragged herself back into her house after being stabbed around midday, broadcaster WDR reported.
The attack comes after a region-wide campaign that politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state, said was distinguished by the viciousness and rawness of its tone.
POLITICAL VIOLENCE
A recent study found 60% of politicians in Germany had experienced violence at least once, with one in five saying it had made them more reluctant to appear in public.
The motive was unclear but the case raises memories of the 2019 murder of conservative local government president Walter Luebcke, a supporter of then chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, who was shot dead by a far-right activist as he smoked a late-night cigarette on his terrace at home.
Four years before that, Henriette Reker was stabbed by a right-wing extremist the day before she was elected mayor of Cologne. She made a full recovery and is due to leave office later this year.
Local and regional authorities were not immediately available to comment.
(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Sabine Wollrab, Madeline Chambers and Hugh Lawson)
