Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemns ‘heinous assault’ after Iris Stalzer, mayor-elect of Herdecke, stabbed.
Revealed On 7 Oct 2025
A newly elected mayor in western Germany has been critically injured in a stabbing assault, in keeping with German media experiences.
Iris Stalzer, the 57-year-old mayor-elect of the North Rhine-Westphalia city of Herdecke, was stabbed in entrance of her residence about midday (10:00 GMT) on Tuesday, leaving her with life-threatening accidents, Germany’s WDR broadcaster reported, quoting native police.
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Chancellor Friedrich Merz condemned the “heinous assault” and referred to as for a swift investigation.
“We worry for the lifetime of the designated mayor, Iris Stalzer, and hope for her full restoration,” he wrote in a put up on X.
In response to WDR, Stalzer was repeatedly stabbed earlier than managing to haul herself inside her residence, the place her youngsters referred to as rescue companies.
After discovering Stalzer severely injured, rescue staff despatched her to a hospital on a helicopter, in keeping with Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.
Stalzer’s teenage son informed authorities his mom had been attacked by a number of males, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.
Additional particulars concerning the assault or potential motives weren’t instantly clear.
Stalzer, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Get together, was elected mayor of the city of twenty-two,000 folks within the jap Ruhr space on September 28.
The assault got here after a regionwide marketing campaign that politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state, described as unusually hostile.
A current research discovered 60 p.c of politicians in Germany had skilled violence no less than as soon as, with one in 5 saying it had made them extra reluctant to look in public.
In 2019, a conservative district authorities president within the state of Hesse, Walter Luebcke, a supporter of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee coverage, was shot lifeless by a far-right activist on his residence terrace.
4 years earlier than that, Henriette Reker was stabbed by a person with anti-immigration views the day earlier than being elected mayor of Cologne. She made a full restoration and is because of go away workplace later this 12 months.
