Political activists in Germany built a replica of the country’s national Holocaust memorial outside the home of one of the leaders of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) as a protest.

Björn Höcke caused outrage earlier this year with a speech in which he described the memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame” and called for a “180-degree turn” in Germany’s attitude to the Second World War.

A group of activists calling themselves the Centre for Political Beauty has now responded by buying the property next door to Mr Höcke’s country home and building a life-size replica of the memorial in the garden.

“The Dresden speech, which ignores any serious argument about the annihilation of six million lives, may have shaken us more deeply than anything,” Philipp Ruch, one of the organisers of the protest, said. “We are slower than the media, but we are also more thorough.”

Overnight the activists erected 24 massive concrete columns outside Mr Höcke’s cottage, in a partial reconstruction of the memorial, which takes up an entire block in the heart of Berlin.