A day of violent clashes between police and protesters culminated on Friday evening with the bizarre spectacle of the heads of the world’s 20 leading economies listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the top of a shiny high-rise building while police used water cannon, teargas and speed boats to keep at bay an angry crowd of thousands.
Germany’s second-largest city had been eager to showcase its recently opened Elbphilharmonie concert hall to the rest of the world, but it may come to rue its ivory-tower symbolism after a week of chaotic scenes on the edges of the conference hall.
Rising tensions between protesters and police had escalated with clashes in Hamburg’s historic harbour area on Thursday night, and escalated further when masked anti-capitalist protesters torched cars and smashed shop windows in the Altona district on Friday morning.
Masked protesters in black clothes used flares to set fire to at least 20 cars and pelted rocks at the windows of banks and smaller shops as they made their way through Altona and along the Elbchaussee road along the river at about 7.30 am on Friday morning.
Many shops and cafes in the area, including a local Ikea, boarded up their windows in anticipation of further rioting.
Melania Trump, the wife of the US president, Donald Trump, was reportedly stopped from attending an event in the G20’s supporting programme by the protests. “Police have not given us security clearance to leave the guest house,” Trump’s spokesperson told the German press agency dpa.
A planned visit for leaders’ partners to a climate research centre was scrapped and replaced with a presentation by climate scientists at a luxury hotel. “Thinking of those hurt in Hamburg protests. Hope everyone stay safe!” the US president’s wife tweeted later.
Police forces around Germany dispatched reinforcements to help 15,000 police already deployed to the northern port city for the summit as the violence escalated.
Later on Friday afternoon Hamburg authorities spoke of 160 injured police officers and 70 arrested protesters. Organisers of Thursday’s “Welcome to Hell” march said 14 participants had ended up in hospital, three of whom were seriously injured and one claimed to be in a critical condition.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who hosts the summit, condemned the violence. “I have every understanding for peaceful demonstrations, but violent demonstrations put human lives in danger,” she said.
High-tech water cannon were employed in the city throughout the day. Hamburg police at one point issued a statement via Twitter in which they clarified that reports of the employment of nuclear weapons in the city were taken from a satirical news website.
As G20 leaders and delegates gathered at the Elbphilharmonie after Trump’s two-and-a-half hour meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, protesters began to gather near the venue.
Police again deployed water cannon to disperse a crowd of protesters who had broken into a sealed-off riverside metro station.
Around 15 boats with climate activists tried to reach the concert venue via the harbour basin and 22 Greenpeace activists jumped into the water to swim to the bottom of the building, designed by Herzog and de Meuron. All of them were stopped by police.
Sven Jahn, a police spokesman, said that a group of about 60 masked protesters attacked three police vehicles with molotov cocktails, and that a flare fired at a police helicopter only narrowly missed its target.
Police and protesters accuse each other of having escalated the situation in the city, with police saying they had to use force after a hardcore bloc of activists had attacked them with bottles and sticks.
Andreas Beuth, a lawyer and protest co-organiser, accused authorities of deliberate provocation with heavy-handed tactics. “The escalation was clearly started by the police,” said Beuth at a press conference inside the stadium of local football club FC St Pauli on Friday morning.
Christoph Kleine, one of the organisers of Saturday’s G20 Not Welcome march, said police had “risked the loss of human life” by aiming water cannon at people standing on bridges and rooftops.
A number of journalists working for leftwing German newspapers reported on Friday that their press accreditation had been withdrawn without explanation.
WTF. The German police just seized my official #G20 press accreditation.
— Björn Kietzmann (@bjokie) July 7, 2017
The owner of a burnt-out Saab on the Elbchaussee said she had just got her children to get ready for school when about 30 masked protesters started throwing bottles and molotov cocktails on the street outside, shortly before 8am.
“The car’s insured, but it has a nostalgic value,” said Ariane Striemeier-Gellsen. “If it had survived another year it would have been vintage.” She said it had taken the fire service 45 minutes to arrive on the scene.
Waltraud Waidelich, a resident of the Schanzenviertel district, said she had deliberately parked her car in the more upmarket Altona district on Thursday night, only to find her vehicle surrounded by burnt-out cars this morning.
She said she felt some of the violent protests were undermining more constructive protests and alternative conferences taking place in Hamburg at the weekend. Waidelich said: “At the alternative summit, I saw a lot of highly competent people looking constructively at ways in which we can transform the economy along more social and ecological lines.”
Some degree of protest and disagreement was normal, she said. “We have to remind politicians visiting our city that they have to work harder,” she said. “But I prefer creative forms of protests, and I am not sure what torching normal people’s cars is meant to achieve. There were a lot of young men on the streets who were mainly out to play cops and robbers with the police. Violence is not my way.”
