Officials Pelted at Berlin Anti-Violence Rally : Protests: Leftists disrupt a show of solidarity by 300,000 against assaults on foreigners and racism.

Hundreds of leftist youths hurled eggs, fruit and rocks at German President Richard von Weizsaecker on Sunday as he tried to address a huge rally in central Berlin called to protest the recent wave of attacks against foreigners.

The sight of the nation’s president forced to hide behind police shields and the undignified melee that followed shocked those who looked on and overshadowed the central message of one of the largest demonstrations ever held in postwar Germany.

Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 350,000--roughly three times the number predicted by organizers.

But instead of a high-profile show of solidarity against racism and assaults on foreigners, the rally seemed to demonstrate the impotence of authority to counter either the violence that grips Germany or the political extremism that spawns it.

As Von Weizsaecker spoke from behind a police cordon, scuffles broke out in the crowd. Police trying to grab those disrupting the rally used truncheons in clashes with radical youth.

Police officials said 14 people were arrested and an undetermined number were injured.

Earlier, Chancellor Helmut Kohl was also pelted with eggs as he walked through the city’s Brandenburg Gate to attend the demonstration.

At the rally, Kohl, members of his Cabinet and other leading German politicians were kept virtually hidden from anyone but those at the very front of the massive crowd.

Only a few people appeared on the stage where Von Weizsaecker spoke.

As fights broke out in the crowd near the podium, former opposition leader Hans-Jochen Vogel and a handful of other dignitaries tried to restore order but were quickly overwhelmed.

Vogel fell to the ground and was hauled to safety by Antje Vollmer, a Greens member of Parliament, and Protestant Bishop Martin Kruse.

Police estimated that about 300 people launched the violence, but other observers thought that nearly twice that number were involved.

The majority of hecklers appeared to be youths representing the extreme left--not the extreme right that has been largely responsible for the attacks against foreigners.

Earlier, leftist youths had scuffled with police and distributed leaflets accusing the country’s politicians of hypocrisy for staging a protest in support of foreigners while moving to limit a constitutional provision that allows entry to any foreigner asking political asylum.

For much of Von Weizsaecker’s speech, they chanted, “Hypocrite, hypocrite.”

Their leaflets also demanded tougher action against neo-Nazis and the banning of extremist right-wing parties.

Germany’s liberal asylum law has made the country a mecca for the poor and dispossessed, especially from southeastern Europe. The influx this year is expected to be about half a million.

With eastern Germany in social turmoil in the wake of unification and western Germany suffering the strains of an economic slowdown and new demands to finance unity, resentment has grown against the incoming foreigners.

While the violence has been carried out by a small minority, a far larger number seem to tacitly back the action.

Sunday’s rally followed weeks of frustration by many Germans who wanted to show themselves and an unsettled international community that the vast majority of Germans condemn the attacks against foreigners.

The protest was also supposed to be a sign that Germans would not stand by again and simply watch the persecution of a helpless minority.

In this regard, the rally succeeded--with a massive turnout that far exceeded organizers’ estimates.

Many of those who marched were school groups and families who had never before been politically active.

Some had traveled hundreds of miles to take part, and until the violence began, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly friendly and light.

Jochim Stoltenberg, a deputy editor of the Berlin newspaper Berliner Morgenpost, seemed to speak for a number of participants in a commentary in Sunday’s editions.

“I’ve never taken part in a demonstration, but on this Sunday I am doing it for the first time because I’m worried about our democracy,” he wrote. “The Weimar Republic failed and gave way to the Nazis because the democrats of the 1920s had neither the insight nor the courage to get deeply involved for freedom, tolerance and parliamentary order. We have to learn from this bitter experience and its catastrophic consequences.”

Despite the proven success of post-World War II German democracy, many Germans privately express a nagging sense of doubt about its ability to withstand considerable social strain.

Many of those who attended the rally seemed distraught at Sunday’s violence.

“How could we have misjudged events so much?” Michael Wolfsohn, a prominent social scientist and faculty member at the National Army College in Munich, asked during an extensive television interview after the rally. “If he (Von Weizsaecker) can’t get this message across, then I have to ask myself, ‘What politician can?’ ”

Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, rushed the microphone after Von Weizsaecker finished speaking and shouted: “I’m ashamed of what has happened here. We are not in the year 1938 but in the year 1992.”

Bubis said later that he felt he had to say something.

Von Weizsaecker, the only major German political figure to have consistently and actively demonstrated sympathy for foreigners since the attacks against them began to escalate last year, had uttered only the first three words of his prepared speech when objects came hurtling from the crowd.

First came an orange, and when several tomatoes and eggs followed, he was quickly surrounded by helmeted police who protected him with plastic riot shields.

Aides rushed to the president and held umbrellas for further protection. After a brief delay, he labored on determinedly, although a loudspeaker system failure and continuous whistling from the crowd drowned out most of his words.

Several injured people were pulled from the crowd as he spoke.

One well-dressed, middle-age woman clung to her husband as she staggered free, saying, “We’ve got to get away from here.”

Many others burst into tears at the sight of their patrician president facing volley after volley of abuse.

In a statement after the rally, Kohl condemned the violence and vowed not to cave in to what he called “street terror.”

“The mob wanted to damage the worldwide image of Berlin and Germany,” he added. “They will not succeed.”

In his speech, Von Weizsaecker told his compatriots that they must actively support democracy.

“We must never forget why the first German republic failed,” he warned. “Not because there were too many Nazis too soon, but because there were too few democrats for too long.”

Wolfgang Thierse, deputy chairman of the main opposition Social Democrats who was also among those leaders who tried to calm the crowd, compared Sunday’s violence with the huge, peaceful demonstrations of the East German revolution in 1989.

“We can only hope,” he said, “that those in the majority are shocked to a point where they will speak out to say, ‘We are the majority.’ ”