Two police officers were injured and a police auto was set ablaze during protests in Cologne on Saturday, police said, as some 600 delegates of the deeply divided anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party met to discuss policy for September's national elections.
Over 4,000 police, many clad in riot gear and some on horseback, were braced for riots with as many 50,000 protesters expected, including about 1,000 hard left activists.
The convention takes place days after Petry said that she won't be her party's top candidate in the September general election, a move seen by many as a outcome to the party leaders' infighting about the future direction of the AfD.
The AfD lost a third of its support as the refugee influx slowed, while infighting and a controversy about how to deal with Germany's Nazi past damaged the party's image.
"As long as the party doesn't recognize where it wants to go, then this campaign must be led by protagonists who can live with this non-decision better than I can", Petry told reporters on Saturday.
The convention continues Sunday when they will discuss the election platform and vote on their lead candidates, with German media putting Alexander Gauland (the regional leader in Brandenburg) and Beatrix von Storch (an MEP) among the frontrunners.
Denouncing "provocations" by party officials, Petry has called for the ouster of an AfD state leader, Bjoern Hoecke, who in January sparked outrage by slamming Berlin's vast Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame".
Frauke Petry's appeal at a party convention in the western city of Cologne appeared to reveal a growing split among the populist party's leading figures.
Germany's anti-immigration AfD holds a party congress this weekend aimed at quieting a bitter power struggle threatening to scupper its bid to win its first seats in parliament in September.
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As the congress began, AfD co-leader Frauke Petry failed in her bid to rally members behind a more moderate programme based on pragmatic "Realpolitik" meant to shut down the party's more extremist voices.
In a fiery speech, economics professor Meuthen said Germans in his hometown were now "few and far between" and that without action, "the irrevocable change of our homeland into a Muslim-dominated country is a mathematical certainty".
A spokesman for the Cologne police said the situation in the city was "very dynamic" and "fairly aggressive" in some areas.
The convention in a Cologne hotel was overshadowed by massive left-wing demonstrations. Her foes within the party say that division is artificial.
She suffered a blow on Saturday attempting to set the AfD on a more moderate course.
But Petry's rise made her both a media star and a red rag for envious party colleagues.
Another likely member of the election team is 38-year-old economist and former investment banker Alice Weidel who has railed against "an army of millions of uneducated migrants from the Middle East and Africa who expect a free ride" in Germany.
Her second husband Marcus Pretzell, an MEP whom she married previous year, insisted on Friday that his wife's withdrawal from the election was not a strategic move, saying her "decision is final".
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