Authorities are considering whether the suspects will face preliminary court proceedings, senior public prosecutor Helmut Walch told the paper. “But we are investigating other people in the far-right spectrum independently of this.”

The two suspects were arrested not far from 52-year-old Mannichl’s home near Passau, where he was found slumped on his porch with stab wounds to his abdomen. Walch did not reveal the time of the arrest or the ages of the suspects due to “investigative reasons.”

Local newspaper Am Sonntag reported Mannichl answered his front door on Saturday to a tall skinhead at around 5:30 pm on Saturday. The man said something along the lines of “Greetings from the national resistance,” and said, “You leftist pig cop, you won’t trample on the graves of our comrades any more,” before stabbing Mannichl in the stomach with a 12-centimetre knife.

He then threw the knife away in the garden and ran to a waiting car in the nearby street and was driven away.

Although Mannichl was seriously wounded, he was able to speak to colleagues who arrived on the scene and give them a description of the man who he said he had not seen before.

Mannichl is said to be out of danger after an operation, but remains seriously wounded, the paper said.

Investigators said they were looking for the attacker within Bavarian fascist groups.

Far-right resentment in the region against the police reached a high point this July after the authorities ordered that the grave of a former neo-Nazi functionary be opened so that a Nazi flag that had been buried with the coffin, be removed.

The local far-right extremist NPD party had accused the police chief of making the group feel harassed on November 16 as they marked the defeat of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.

Bavarian State Premier Horst Seehofer said on Sunday evening that this “new dimension” of right-wing extremist violence required a “new and very clear and hard answer from the state,” adding that the Bavarian cabinet would on Tuesday discuss the possibility of banning the NPD party.