Four police hurt as Antifa protest disrupts German Unity Day event in Bremen

Hundreds of people joined an Antifa demonstration in Bremen on Saturday as Germany marked the anniversary of reunification, and the protest escalated, injuring four police officers, Zeit Online reported. Further details of the clash were not reported.

The demonstration coincided with the national Unity Day ceremony in Bremen, where President Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned against what he called the "unbearable political demagoguery" of extremist forces and urged Germans to defend democracy, Der Spiegel reported. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Bremen mayor Andreas Bovenschulte, Bundestag president Julia Klöckner and constitutional court president Stephan Harbarth also attended the ceremony, which drew about 1,000 invited guests.

Steinmeier said more than a quarter of voters had shown through their choices at the ballot box that they were turning away from the republic's core principles, and that Germany's democracy, which he had once considered secure, was now being challenged again, Der Spiegel reported.

Steinmeier added that it was not yet decided whether Germany's political system would come to resemble the Weimar Republic, which collapsed in the 1930s, and said preventing that was in the country's own hands. He said he had believed the lesson of that history had been learned, and voiced alarm that some on the far right now wanted to erase the memory of the Holocaust's victims, Der Spiegel reported.

Before Steinmeier spoke, Bremen mayor and Bundesrat president Andreas Bovenschulte used his own address to call for greater recognition of different life paths and a determined defence of democracy, saying East Germans had written history rather than simply watched it unfold. He also warned against forces seeking to question equal rights and disparage free media, independent courts and science, Der Spiegel reported.

Saturday's ceremony fell on the 36th anniversary of German reunification, and Steinmeier told the roughly 1,000 guests in Bremen that the country still had the power to decide its own political future, Der Spiegel reported.