A 37-year-old German man of African origin was in critical condition after being severely beaten in a racist attack, police in the eastern city of Potsdam said on Monday.
The victim, who police said had dark skin, was attacked at 4 a.m. on a street in the center of Potsdam on Sunday and was so badly beaten that he nearly died, police said. Authorities in the city west of Berlin said they were searching for two attackers wanted for attempted murder.
“Racism was the motive behind the attack,” a Potsdam police spokesman said.
About 100 people have been killed in a wave of far-right violence that followed German unification in 1990 that has often been directed at dark-skinned foreigners.
The attacks have been most frequent in the formerly communist east. One of the first came just weeks after unity in 1990 when a group of 40 people chased Angolan refugee Antonio Amadeu through Eberswald before severely beating him.
No one intervened in the town north of Berlin and he died of his injuries 11 days later. This method has been copied by other neo-Nazis in scores of similar attacks against foreigners across Germany.