Jochen Kopelke, federal chair of the Union for Police (GdP), called for a knife amnesty in the wake of a high-profile attack in Stuttgart.

Almost 9,000 knife attacks caused serious injury across Germany in 2023, a dramatic rise on previous years.

Kopelke added that an amnesty would only succeed if there were “serious incentives”, especially for young people.

“In concrete terms, this could mean a year of Netflix for handing in a banned butterfly knife,” he said.

However, rival police union DPOLG has derided the plan as insulting “knife attack victims and their families” by offering a “reward for criminals”.