Several thousand people gather in Berlin despite ban

After several planned individual gatherings were banned by the authorities under the very rules the demonstrators were planning to protest, a large but scattered crowd gathered on Saturday and began walking through the streets accompanied by police officers on foot, in vans, and even in a helicopter. Large parts of Berlin's government quarter were cordoned off.

The police were prepared for much larger crowds, with some 2,000 officers on standby on Saturday, including officers from other forces in Germany, reported dpa.

Nine demonstrations were banned outright by the police, including that of the Querdenken (Lateral Thinking) movement, a group of coronavirus sceptics, far-right activists and anti-vaxxers, on one of Berlin's main roads.

Four demonstrations challenged the police ban in court, just one of them successfully, ultimately gaining permission for a meeting of 500 protesters on both Saturday and Sunday.

The police have been paying particularly close attention to these types of demonstrations as large protests against the coronavirus restrictions in Berlin a year ago ended in demonstrators breaking through a barrier at the Reichstag, home of Germany's parliament, and briefly occupying one of its main staircases, causing widespread outrage in the country.