Reuters pictures from the scene showed police inspecting an estate car at the gate with the words “Stop Globalisation Politics” scrawled in white on its right side.

Pictures on social media showed the words “You damn killers of children and old people” written on the other.

There were no immediate reports of casualties and it was not clear if Merkel was inside the building.

Dozens of police and a fire engine attended the incident. The driver, who appeared to be in late middle age, was taken away in a wheelchair.

“We are establishing if the driver deliberately drove against (the gate),” Berlin police said on Twitter. “He has been taken into custody.”

A firefighter subsequently moved the car, which had a licence plate from the northwestern county of Lippe, away from the gate. Both fence and car appeared largely undamaged.

Merkel was scheduled to be hosting a video conference of German state premiers on Wednesday morning, at which an extension to the coronavirus lockdown and further steps to combat the pandemic were due to be discussed.

Europe is on high alert after suspected Islamist militants killed eight people in Paris, Nice and Vienna in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Swiss police have identified a Swiss woman, who knifed a victim in the neck and grabbed another by the throat in a Lugano department store, as a known jihadist.

Four years ago, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck then ploughed it into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens of others.

The chancellery office, a white post-modernist structure set across a square from the Reichstag building that houses Germany’s parliament, is well set back from any main roads.