Police told the paper that a Red Cross (DRK) employer found the baby while collecting donations from a Wilmersdorf district container at 7 am. Officers closed the scene for investigation.

“I discovered the corpse between the other items,” the 37-year-old told the paper. “It was clean, not covered in blood, which is why in that moment I thought it was a doll at first.”

The DRK worker, identified as René G., collects clothing donations from the large metal containers throughout Berlin each day.

“I felt faint and sick,” G. said. “The shock is still deep.”

Police are questioning potential witnesses in the area – which is in plain view of a restaurant and parking lot – while they await an autopsy.

Over the weekend, two other dead infants were discovered in a Stuttgart trash container and a wooded area near Engen-Anselfingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the paper reported.

In the last few years Germany has been plagued with a spate of gruesome infanticide cases that have shocked the country. One woman who killed nine of her babies was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April 2008.

In May 2008, a 44-year-old woman was arrested when her family found three dead babies in her freezer near Bonn.

Meanwhile in January of 2009, a German soldier was jailed for leaving her newborn daughter to die after giving birth at army barracks toilet while allegedly unaware she was pregnant.