More than 100 Frankfurt police officers injured in a night of rioting as German ministers promise severe penalties

Frankfurt was the worst of it, but the day of protest was national. Tens of thousands of people marched in dozens of German cities on Saturday under the Gen Z regelt banner, Gen Z takes charge, demanding better education and relief from living costs. The marches were largely peaceful. In Frankfurt, after dark, hooded rioters smashed windows, looted stores and threw petrol bombs, rocks and bottles at emergency services, Frankfurt police said.

Poseck gave the city's account on Sunday. Seventeen stores damaged, five of them looted. More than 100 officers injured in the clashes, one of them seriously, out of 1,300 deployed. Fifty four arrests, the youngest 13. Police estimated the violent group at 1,000 to 1,500 people, and said they were predominantly from an immigrant background. Dobrindt, in Berlin, accused violent left wing groups and troublemakers from the migrant community of hijacking otherwise peaceful protests. He offered no evidence for that in his Sunday statements, and Reuters noted the gap.

"I expect there to be severe penalties. We are not prepared to accept, in the slightest, that such incidents and such rioting should take place here," Dobrindt told reporters. He said the policing strategy, a large presence spread across multiple locations, had prevented violence on the scale Paris saw the same weekend, and he credited the officers who carried it out.

The German protests grew out of the same youth movement that has filled French streets for three Saturdays, over the same complaints: school conditions, rents, prices and a sense that the people in charge are not listening. In France on Saturday the turnout was 320,000 and the arrests 565. In Germany the marches stayed orderly in most cities, and the bill came due in one city after dark, in injured police.