Germans of all faiths and none are being urged to wear kippah skullcaps on Saturday as a symbol of solidarity with the Jewish community, after a steep rise in antisemitic attacks.

Protests across the country have been called by the government’s antisemitism ombudsman after he triggered a heated debate when he warned Jews last week not to wear the kippah because of the increasing likelihood of being attacked.

The German tabloid newspaper Bild has been one of the most vocal supporters of the protests, even publishing a cut-out kippah for readers to download and print.

Felix Klein, who was appointed as antisemitism ombudsman a year ago, told German media last week: “I cannot recommend that Jews wear the kippah whenever and wherever they want in Germany, and I say this with regret.”

He cited a 20% rise in attacks on Jewish citizens since 2018. Last year, 1,800 antisemitic attacks were reported, involving verbal and physical abuse and death threats. The real figure is thought to be much higher.

In April, the rabbi for Cologne’s 4,000-strong Jewish community, Yechiel Brukner, said he would no longer travel on public transport because of the abuse he had received, including a death threat.

In the run-up to the European parliamentary elections earlier this month, campaigners for the far-right Die Rechte party drove past a synagogue in the city of Pforzheim shouting “Leave Germany” and “Go back to Israel” from the open windows of their bus, which displayed a prominent picture of a convicted Holocaust denier.

Klein said his warning came amid “mounting disinhibition and spreading of views which poses a fatal breeding ground for antisemitism”. According to the ombudsman, 90% of the threats to Jews in Germany come from far-right extremists, while most of the remaining 10% come from long-term Muslim residents. “Many of them watch Arabic television channels, in which a fatal picture of Israel and of Jews is conveyed,” Klein said.

He has called for extra support to educate the police, judges and other state officials who he said were insufficiently informed about the problem or how to deal with it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Men wear Kippahs as part of a protest in Berlin last year. Photograph: Carsten Koall/Getty Images

Klein’s recommendation not to wear the kippah was met with a mixture of defiance and shock.

Joachim Herrmann, the Bavaria interior minister, said the warning was the equivalent of giving in to the far right. He urged Jews to ignore Klein’s warning and to continue wearing the kippah. “If we cave in to hatred towards Jews, we are doing nothing other than handing the playing field to rightwing ideology,” he said.

The prominent German Jewish publisher Michel Friedman said Klein’s warning amounted to an “admission of failure by the state”, in contravention of article four of Germany’s constitution, which guarantees the right to religious freedom. “Obviously the state is failing to enable this for all Jewish citizens in their normal lives,” he said.

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, expressed his disquiet during a visit to Berlin on Friday. “We were concerned to see Jews discouraged from wearing the yarmulke [another name for the kippah] in public out of safety concerns. None of us should shrink in the face of prejudice,” he said at a press conference.

Klein said while announcing Saturday’s protests that his earlier warning was meant as a “wake-up call” and that the coming together of politics and society would offer “a real chance to win the battle against antisemitism”.

The kippah protest has been called to coincide with al-Quds Day, when protesters gather to remember the occupation of East Jerusalem by Israel during the six-day war in 1967. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. The demonstration is typically a magnet in central Berlin for anti-Israel demonstrators, and attracts Hezbollah and Hamas sympathisers as well as neo-Nazis sporting antisemitic slogans and symbols.

The demonstration – dubbed Deutschland trägt Kippa (Germany wears the kippah) – has been welcomed by Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews, who said it was a sign of solidarity and “helpful but insufficient”.

“Antisemitism must be tackled on many different levels,” he said. He urged children and young people to be cautious, calling on them to “preferably wear a cap over your kippah” in towns and cities with a particular reputation for antisemitic attacks, as he had done for years.

The demonstration was hopefully an indication “that the state is finally treating antisemitism with the seriousness that it deserves”, he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angela Merkel speaks at the Synagogue Rykestrasse in Berlin last year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this week Angela Merkel said in an interview that antisemitism continued to be a problem in Germany more than seven decades after the end of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime.

“We have always had a certain amount of antisemites among us,” the chancellor said in an interview with CNN. “Unfortunately there is to this day not a single synagogue, not a single daycare centre for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by German policemen.”

The government spokesman Steffen Seibert said state institutions had a duty to ensure “that every person can be safe everywhere in this country”.

In an editorial Bild said the fact that Jewish people were having to hide their religion in order to feel safe seven decades after the Holocaust meant “we are failing before our own history”.