The US election victory for Donald Trump is undermining the Western value system, German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said.

"The real clash of civilisations is not between Christianity and Islam, but between the assertion of liberal and social democracies against the remeasurement of our societies by authoritarian, nationalist and chauvinist movements," he wrote in news magazine Der Spiegel.

"Women going to work without having to apologise, people no longer being able to run their businesses in an autocratic manner, gay couples being able to walk the streets without fear of persecution - all this is not to be taken for granted anymore," he wrote.

German politicians have expressed shock and concern since it became clear that Trump had won the country's highest office.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would cooperate with Trump on the basis that he upholds democratic values, while her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that the US would become more "unpredictable" and "unilateral" in its foreign policy decisions.

Meanwhile some 700 critics of Trump took to the streets of Berlin last night, just three days after his election victory over opponent Hillary Clinton was announced.

Participants outside the US embassy at the central Pariser Platz square held signs saying "Untrump the world" and "Love-Trump-Hate".

The protests were peaceful, police said.

A total of 400 people were registered for the event, according to police, but an event on Facebook indicated that 7,600 people were planning to attend the rally in the city centre.

Another smaller demonstration was held elsewhere in Berlin earlier in the day, with about 120 people in attendance.

"We need to build a peaceful movement to show the world that we (Americans in Berlin, Germans, Europeans, and other nationalities) will not tolerate the injustice, intolerance, hate, and inequality that Trump embodies!" the Facebook post reads.

The organisers indicated on the site that violence would not be tolerated at the event.

New Yorkers rally at Trump Tower

Demonstrators opposed to Trump also marched yesterday through Manhattan streets to the real estate tycoon's skyscraper.

In what appeared to be one of the largest anti-Trump rallies since the Republican Party candidate's election victory on Tuesday, protesters chanted "not my president" as they walked from Union Square to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

Many carried signs with messages including "no Trump" and "protect civil rights, protest civil wrongs."

Trump and his wife, Melania, live in an opulent penthouse atop Trump Tower.

A New York Police Department spokesperson said that 56th Street outside the building was closed. There were no arrests as of mid-afternoon.

Trump's inflammatory rhetoric during the campaign, as well as his business record and past personal behaviour, drew frequent condemnation from civil rights groups representing Latinos, Muslims, immigrants and women.

Demonstrations since Wednesday in several large cities have seen hundreds of arrests for violence, including rioting on the West Coast.

- dpa