The 29-year-old man was reportedly angered by the noise next to his apartment building, which had woken him on a Sunday afternoon.

As one of the mothers who witnessed the incident later explained to the police, the young child had been playing within the designated fenced area of the playground when he had fallen and hurt himself. His loud cries annoyed the sixth-floor resident of the adjacent tower block.

Eyewitnesses told the paper that the man initially leaned out of the window and shouted at the child to be quiet as he was sleeping. He then threw a powerful firecracker, later classified as coming from Poland and illegal in Germany, from the window towards the playground.

“The explosion from the Polish firecracker burned an area of grass of around 30 square centimetres,” said a police spokesman.

After witnesses called the police, a stash of seven more illegal firecrackers was found and confiscated by the authorities.

The man was charged with attempted bodily harm and breaching explosives law, as the confiscated firecrackers were classed as illegal for import to Germany.

Other residents of the building also reported that this was not the first time the man had responded to the sound of the children by throwing fireworks into the playground.

But it seems that the man was in good company, as a father of two who lived on the seventh floor has also been seen throwing bangers down from his apartment into the same play area.

The Local/rm