Around 300 police officers have stormed a Berlin university building after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied it and damaged the interior while others demonstrated outside.
According to local police, on 16 April about 60 people occupied an auditorium at Humboldt University, Berlin’s second-largest. Another group of around 50 people also staged a protest outside the facility.
The occupiers hung banners from the windows with slogans including, “Intifada all the way to victory” and: “There is only one state – Palestine 48”.
They also smeared red triangles, a symbol associated with the terror organisation Hamas, and slogans on the windows and walls of the university, including “Zionism is fascism”.
Several benches in the auditorium were reportedly also torn out.
Heute wiedermal eine Besetzung der Humboldt-Universität durch Israel- und Judenhasser – das Ergebnis der deutschen Bildungskatastrophe. pic.twitter.com/omG74ZS6pI
— Andreas Kopietz (@KopietzAndreas) April 16, 2025
On the evening of April 16, officers entered the building and dispersed the protesters after recording their identities.
According to the Berlin police, criminal proceedings against several individuals have been started.
University president Julia von Blumenthal commended what she called the police’s “professional and peaceful” intervention.
“We could immediately see that university property had been damaged. We could see that the right to existence of the State of Israel was being denied,” she added.
“It was clear that violence was being glorified and that the red triangle of the terror organisation Hamas was being displayed. This made it clear for us that red lines had been crossed,” von Blumenthal told radio station RBB24 on April 17.
The purported goal of the activists was to prevent the forced emigration of four foreign students who had taken part in a similar pro-Palestinian protest in autumn 2024.
The foreign nationals – two Irishmen, a Pole and US citizen – had been informed by German authorities on April 3 this year that they need to leave Germany by April 21, according to euronews.
The latest incident followed a similar one in October 2024 when a group of masked protesters entered a building at Freie Universität, Berlin’s biggest university, causing “material damage to property”, according to the Berlin Senate.
Pictures on social media showed graffiti sprayed on the walls, including the slogan, “Kill Jews” and the Hamas triangle.
Von Blumenthal condemned both incidents.
“It was not a political action, but a violent raid,” she said, regarding the 2024 incident.
She added there would be a press tour of the occupied building in the week starting April 21.
“If you look at the auditorium, which has been extensively destroyed within the shortest amount of time, you see there as well it was about violence, it was about destruction.”
