In June 2017, Hamburg became the stage for one of the most heavily secured political summits in Europe – the G20 summit. Leaders of the world’s twenty most powerful industrialized and emerging nations arrived alongside vast delegations, while tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered to protest what they saw as an elitist and undemocratic meeting.

Ahead of the summit, fears of unrest dominated public debate. Authorities responded by creating a thirty eight square kilometer security zone covering the city center and the airport, where public assembly and demonstrations were banned. Hamburg’s First Mayor Olaf Scholz described the event as a festival of democracy.

During the two days of the G20 summit, more than thirty one thousand police officers were deployed with water cannons, special units, and extensive riot control equipment. Despite this, security forces lost control on several occasions. Riots broke out, barricades burned, and shops were looted. At the same time, over sixty thousand people demonstrated peacefully, exposing the sharp contrast between state power, civil protest, and the fragile promise of democratic order.