Mike Mohring said suspected neo-Nazi extremists threatened to stab him in the neck or attack one of his rallies with a car bomb if he did not stop campaigning for the Oct. 27 regional election.
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Police and intelligence agencies are under pressure to take action against right-wing extremists after an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi militant killed two people earlier this month in attacks on a synagogue and a kebab restaurant in the eastern city Halle.
A police spokeswoman said the serious crime unit in Thuringia was investigating the death threat against Mohring.
Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) are vying for second place with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Thuringia election, where polls also show the ruling far-left Linke party will come first.
The AfD in Thuringia is led by Bjoern Hoecke, an anti-immigrant former history teacher who has drawn criticism from Jewish leaders and mainstream politicians for calling Berlin's Holocaust memorial a "monument of shame" and demanding that schools highlight German suffering in World War Two.
Jewish leaders and politicians said after the attacks in Halle that the AfD's anti-immigrant rhetoric was contributing to an atmosphere of hate that encouraged political violence.
The Halle attacks and the deadly shooting of pro-immigration CDU politician Walter Luebcke in June by a far-right extremist have exposed the need for more security and judicial measures against individuals plotting political violence.
"This is a warning and there will not be a second one," read the email sent to Mohring from an address ending @hitler.rocks. "This applies to all the leftist and ecological pussies out there, we will enslave you first and then exterminate you."
