German police were stunned on Wednesday to find an arsenal of 362 weapons at the house of an 83-year-old man, including rifles and machine guns as well as armour-piercing bullets.

Authorities raided the man's house in Beckingen in western Germany after he had "become increasingly threatening and aggressive to people around him," police said in a statement.

"The raid team was pretty astonished," it added.

They discovered 35 rifles, 77 handguns, a G3 assault rifle and several dismantled machineguns and machine pistols.

They also found four illegal knives, 100 belts of ammunition with thousands of bullets and other armour-piercing weapons.

The man, a trained joiner and later professional ironworker, was charged with breaking German weapons laws.