Every Jewish institution in Germany is in need of police protection, Angela Merkel has said, just days after her top advisor on antisemitism said he "cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time".

In an interview with CNN in the wake of the European election results on Sunday, the German Chancellor said that "unfortunately there is to this day not a single synagogue, not a single day care center for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by German policemen."

Her comments came after Felix Klein, the German government's commissioner on antisemitism, said earlier in the weekend that he "cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany".

The earlier remarks were greeted with dismay.

Israel's President Reuven Rivlin called it “a capitulation to antisemitism and an admittance that, again, Jews are not safe on German soil.”

Bild, Germany’s best-selling tabloid, featured a cut-out-and-keep kippah on its front page on Monday, along with a piece by the paper’s editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt, titled: “The kippah belongs to Germany”.

In the article, Mr Reichert said that if German Jews felt they could not wear the item then “we have failed in the face of our history."

Bild’s cut-out-and-keep kippah featured the Star of David in three different layouts. The paper’s editor urged Germans: “wear it, so that your friends and neighbors can see it. Explain to your children what the kippah is.

"Post a photograph with the kippah on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Go out onto the streets with it."

On Twitter, Mr Reichelt summed up his column by writing: “If even one person in our country can’t wear a kippah without putting themselves in danger, the only answer can be that we all wear a kippah.”

According to data published by Germany’s Interior Ministry earlier this month, antisemitic attacks rose by approximately 20 per cent in 2018 compared to the previous year, with nine out of ten such attacks coming from the far-right.