http://www.politics.ie/forum/foreign-affairs/220522-danger-zones-declared-hamburg.html Danger Zones declared in Hamburg

War of words in liberal Hamburg after protesters clash with police

Hundreds have been stopped and searched after clashes between police and protesters at the end of December. The protesters – some demonstrating against gentrification, others pursuing an anarchist agenda – said they were kettled, pepper-sprayed and attacked with batons. Police said they were pelted with rocks, firecrackers and pavement slabs.
That's my image of modern Germany as a clean, well-ordered place gone.

The motivations behind the protestors, violent or otherwise, seem in marked contrast to that of protestors in other European cities. Instead of responding to the usual issues of cut wages, lack of job prospects, police brutality, etc, here it's a desire to keep the centre of the city affordable to low earners:

Ulrich Wagner, the officer in charge of the area around the Reeperbahn, blamed "an unprecedented attitude of violence against the state and police" among leftwing activists. A line was crossed when three of his officers were targeted by a group of up to 40 hooded attackers outside the station, he said, with one policeman suffering a broken jaw.

...

One reason Hamburg citizens took to the streets in the first place, he said, was the fear that their city may go the way of London or Paris, with low earners pushed to the edges of the city. "In the industrial age, clashes between the privileged few and the disadvantaged took place around the factories. Now, those battles are fought over access to our inner cities."

Shortly before start of the uprisings, local authorities ordered the eviction of the Esso buildings on the Reeperbahn, a former social housing block occupied mainly by elderly people and those on low incomes. Some accuse the city of looking on as the owner allowed the building to decay until it was close to collapse – "a classic gentrification tactic", said the activist Steffen Jörg.