AS Alois Mannichl stood on his doorstep, he narrowly escaped death when a suspected neo-Nazi plunged a 5in cake knife into his stomach.

When he opened his front door after celebrating Christmas with a neighbour, the 52-year-old police chief of Passau in Bavaria was confronted by a skinhead who said he was from “the national resistance”.

“You leftist pig cop,” the man spat out before stabbing Mannichl, narrowly missing his vital organs.

Mannichl returned to work last week but the attack has chilled the German establishment with the realisation that high-profile opponents are being targeted by neo-Nazis.

Hans-Peter Gossel, the mayor of Warin in eastern Germany, was forced into hiding after a threat was posted on a neo-Nazi website. He had angered neo-Nazis by objecting to a far right political party setting up offices in Warin.

Speaking to The Sunday Times last week, the mayor was still fearful. “You never know what might happen,” he said.

Gossel and others who speak out against the far right have reason to be nervous. New figures from the German interior ministry show that neo-Nazi violence rose 30% last year, with a total of 11,928 incidents.

Horst Seehofer, the conservative minister-president of Bavaria, said this “new dimension” of right-wing extremist violence required a “hard answer” from the state. The stabbing was “an attack on us all – on all politicians and the whole of society”.

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