The suspect is a 50-year-old man from just outside Bavaria's second city, police said in a statement on Friday.

He was found at home and arrested after an his home phone number was showed on the caller display at the police station.

The man immediately admitted to the allegations against him, police said.

Large sections of the station were closed on Thursday evening due to the threat, the Augsburger Allgemeine reported.

Specialist bomb teams from the police searched the lockers in the station where the man had said the bomb was concealed.

A locker indicated by a sniffer dog was found to be empty and the alarm was lowered after around an hour.

The hoaxer, who suffers from a mental illness, said nothing about his motive for the crime before officers took him to a psychiatric clinic.

Prosecutors will now charge him with disturbing the peace by threatening a crime. He will also be made to pay the costs of the resulting police deployment.

The bomb threat against the station followed a similar threat made against the central branch of the Sparkasse bank in Erlangen on Wednesday.

A suspicious package turned out to be harmless, but police were unable to find the person who called in the threat.