Nine people were injured after a man poured an unknown liquid onto an information stand of the right-wing, anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the western German city of Bad Kreuznach on Wednesday, 2 September.
Police said the attack happened at around 4:10pm on 2 September in the Mannheimer Straße/Brückenhäuser area. A man poured the liquid from a window of an adjoining building onto the AfD stand and the people gathered below. Nine people suffered skin irritation, while two were taken to hospital as a precaution and released after treatment.
The quantity involved was small enough that serious injuries were not expected, police said. Investigators have identified a suspect but have so far released neither his identity nor a possible motive. The substance also remains officially unidentified.
The local AfD described the incident as a deliberate attack and said concentrated chlorophenol had been poured from a laboratory overlooking the stand. Bundestag MPs Nicole Höchst and Sebastian Münzenmaier, Rhineland-Palatinate state MPs Damian Lohr and Jürgen Klein, and Bad Kreuznach councillor Nelson Prieß were among those present, according to the party. Höchst told SWR that the party’s sunshade intercepted part of the liquid.
The attack comes amid an increasingly confrontational campaign against the AfD in which mainstream parties and politicians have gone beyond attacking its programme and openly advocated removing parts of the party from democratic competition.
Only days before the incident, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius of the Social Democrats and Baden-Württemberg Minister-President Cem Özdemir of the Greens called for proceedings aimed at banning AfD state organizations in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg. They released a joint statement that began by asking how history might have developed had Adolf Hitler’s NSDAP been banned before taking power in 1933, before arguing that action against the AfD’s ‘völkisch’ wing was constitutionally required. Hamburg Green politician Katharina Fegebank backed the push this week.
The presentation of the AfD, supported by millions of Germans, as an illegitimate and potentially outlawed political force has fuelled warnings that political demonization can lower the threshold for intimidation and violence against its representatives, as reflected in such attacks.
Official crime figures show that violence against the party is already disproportionately high. According to a federal government response published by the Bundestag, police recorded 5,140 offences against representatives or members of parliamentary parties in 2025. The AfD was the most frequently targeted, with 1,852 offences. Of 121 violent offences against AfD representatives, 103 were attributed to the left-wing political spectrum. Representatives of all other parliamentary parties combined were targeted in 62 violent offences.
Nevertheless, the hostility has so far failed to stop the party’s rising popularity; in fact, it may have contributed to its rise. The AfD is preparing for its first state government in Saxony-Anhalt, where the party stands at a record 42 per cent according to the latest INSA poll, twice the Christian Democratic Union’s 21 per cent. State elections are scheduled for 6 September, with lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund having a historic chance to become the party’s first state minister-president.
Nationwide, the trend is similarly striking. An Ipsos poll published on 2 September put the AfD first on 27 per cent, six points ahead of the CDU/CSU on 21 per cent. INSA’s 1 September survey gave the AfD an even larger lead, at 29 per cent against 20.5 per cent for the CDU/CSU.
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