Reich citizen
Planned coup? – Reuss group trial begins
Should appear in court soon: The “Reichsbürger” group around Prince Reuss. photo
© Boris Roessler/dpa
The raid in December 2022 was a bang: “Reich citizens” are said to have planned a violent overthrow in Germany. Suspected ringleaders are now due in court in Frankfurt.
The federal prosecutor’s office is accusing the nine defendants in Frankfurt of being members of a terrorist organization or of supporting it, the court said. The aim was to forcibly eliminate the existing state order in Germany and replace it with its own form of government, which had already been largely developed. The association is said to have planned and specifically prepared a coup from August 2021. The State Protection Senate of the Higher Regional Court admitted the indictment to the main hearing against nine defendants in a decision dated March 22nd.
In December 2022 there was a large-scale anti-terror raid against the group in several German federal states and abroad. The federal prosecutor’s office charged a total of 27 suspects. The trial in Frankfurt is about suspected ringleaders, in Stuttgart about the so-called military arm and in Munich about the other suspected members. The so-called Reichsbürger in Germany claim that the German Reich (1871-1945) continues to exist, hence their name. The Federal Republic and its laws do not recognize them.
This is what the association had in mind
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the accused planned to enter the Reichstag building in Berlin with an armed group in order to arrest members of the Bundestag and thus bring about the overthrow of the system. The suspects also include soldiers and a former AfD MP.
The accused are said to have knowingly risked deaths in their plans for a coup. They are said to have already worked out the basic principles of structures for their own state order. As head of state, Henry XIII would have. Prince Reuss should act. Departments of a possible government had already been distributed. According to investigators, the central body of the group was a “council”. A transitional government should have negotiated a new political order in Germany with the Allied victorious powers of the Second World War.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office had previously announced that soldiers and police officers were targeted for the alleged planned coup. According to the prosecutors, the association had “access to a massive arsenal of weapons” with around 380 firearms, 350 cutting and stabbing weapons, almost 500 other weapons and 148,000 pieces of ammunition.
According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, this arsenal of weapons should not only serve to intimidate. Those involved were aware “that the planned takeover of power would involve the killing of people.” Part of the plans also included “enemy lists” of officials at the federal, state, district and local levels. According to the Karlsruhe authorities, members and interested parties had to sign a confidentiality agreement. “Violations of this should be punished as high treason with the death penalty,” the authority said.