President Mohamed Mursi is to leave Egypt's political crisis behind on Wednesday, Jan 30, with a short trip to Germany to seek urgently needed foreign investment and convince Europe of his democratic credentials, Reuters reported.

But with the Egyptian army chief warning on Tuesday that the state was on the brink of collapse after days of lethal street violence, Mursi cancelled plans to go on to Paris from Berlin and will instead hurry back to Cairo later in the day.

Fifty-two people have been killed in unrest surrounding the two-year anniversary of Egypt's popular revolution, whose values Mursi's critics say he has betrayed.

His supporters say protesters want to overthrow Egypt's first democratically elected leader, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood that was banned under former President Hosni Mubarak but has come to dominate Egypt since his downfall in 2011.

Mursi on Monday declared a month-long state of emergency in three violence-ridden cities on the Suez Canal - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, imposing a curfew and allowing soldiers to arrest civilians.

The turmoil eased on Tuesday but the instability has stirred unease in the West about the direction of the Arab world's most populous country, where a currency slump has compounded severe economic problems.

Mursi will be keen to allay those fears when he meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel and powerful industry groups in Berlin.

"President Mursi is very welcome in Germany," Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told Reuters in an interview last week.

"He is the first democratically elected president in the history of Egypt. We all know that a revolution means a lot of turbulence ... Of course we are not happy with everything that has been decided in the last few months in Egypt but it is necessary to seek solutions, increase the dialogue."