The pro-refugee mayor of a German town injured on Monday night in a politically motivated knife-attack has said he will continue to do his job without police protection.

“I will continue my engagement for all people, be they refugees or people who have always been here, those who socially secure and those who are socially weaker,” said Andreas Hollstein, the mayor of Altena, the morning after he was stabbed in a kebab shop by a man accusing him of bringing hundreds of refugees to the town.

Once politicians can only do their job under police protection, he added at a press conference, “we should dissolve local parliaments”.



Hollstein, 57, whose civic engagement during the refugee crisis was recognised with Germany’s national integration prize in May, was attacked in the North Rhine-Westphalia town by a man who had loudly criticised his liberal asylum policy.

The German chancellor Angela Merkel, who called Hollstein in the wake of the assault on Monday evening, was “horrified by the knife attack”, her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, wrote on Twitter.

The 56-year-old attacker had entered the restaurant while Hollstein was ordering a kebab, pulling a 34cm-long (13in) kitchen knife from his rucksack after establishing the mayor’s identity.

Shouting: “You let me die of thirst but bring 200 refugees to Altena,” the attacker held a knife to the mayor’s throat, causing non-life-threatening injuries.

The kebab shop owner and his son rushed to the mayor’s help and managed to restrain the attacker until police arrived and arrested the man on the scene. Hollstein on Tuesday thanked the owner of the kebab shop staff, saying he could have died without their help.

“Last night I was gifted a third life,” said the mayor, who has already survived a battle with cancer.

The attacker, named by police as Werner S, was under the influence of alcohol and would have been over the drink-drive limit. Police said the man had a history of mental health problems and was not part of an organised far-right network, describing his attack as “spontaneous”.

The state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, said security services assumed the attack was “politically motivated”.

Germany’s justice minister, Heiko Maas, tweeted that “we must never accept that people are attacked because they help others”, adding that there was no place for hate and violence in Germany.

Altena, a town of about 17,000 people, is well known in Germany for taking in a larger share of asylum seekers than required amid the influx that has brought more than 1 million migrants and refugees to Germany since 2015.

It has a history of population decline and is currently home to around 450 refugees, most of whom are housed in apartments rather than temporary shelters and have a network of designated “carers” who assist families in circumventing bureaucracy in Germany.

The assault evoked a knife attack on Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, in October 2015 by a rightwing extremist who was angered at her welcoming stance toward refugees.

“Such an attack can change your life, but it must not change our behaviour,” Reker said in a statement on Tuesday. “We have to continue to face our challenges with openness and strength – because hatred and violence are not the solution, they are the problem.”

German local politicians who have defended Merkel’s pro-refugee stance have in recent months increasingly complained of attacks and threats. The mayor of the town of Oesdorf in Schleswig-Holstein was beaten unconscious with a timber beam last September and has since retired from office.

In Altena, a refugee shelter was set on fire in October 2015. A fireman and an accomplice were later convicted to six- and five-year prison sentences. During the trial, they cited fear of “burglaries, theft, violence and sexual assault” as a motive for their actions.