Hundreds of neo-Nazis marched through Berlin's Brandenburg Gate at the weekend for the first time since the second World War in protest against a national monument planned to honour Jews murdered in the Holocaust. About 600 young neo-Nazis walked through the gate on Saturday shouting "Glory and Honour to the Waffen SS", while another 500 Germans shouting "Nazis out" staged a counter-demonstration nearby.
Police briefly detained about 25 of the neo-Nazis but riot police kept the two groups apart, and only one scuffle occurred.
Mr Udo Voigt, chairman of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), told the protesters that the project was "an undesirable stain in the Reich capital".
Police had tried to ban the NPD march but they were overruled by a Berlin court. A few Berliners and tourists stared at the march through the Gate with apparent bewilderment. One said he would take them to court for displaying illegal Nazi-style emblems.
Germany's 1933-45 Nazi regime conducted many pageantry-soaked parades through the 18th-century triumphal arch, the reigning symbol of German nationhood.
The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), reformist successor to old East Germany's ruling Communists, said the court decision to permit the march was "an alarming violation of a taboo".
In the west German university town of Goettingen, around 2,000 people marched on Saturday to protest against right-wing extremism after local police banned an NPD rally.