A year and a half ago, Germany was shocked to discover a coup plot by a small group of far-right extremists and followers of conspiracy theories, headed by an aristocrat, which was dismantled by prosecutors and police with police raids throughout the country. The detainees – mostly ‘Reichsbürger’ (citizens of the Reich), who do not recognize the Federal Republic – were plotting a plan against the State that included a violent invasion of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament in Berlin, according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. . In total, 26 people will be tried for this.
This Monday, the first of the three trials for planning the attempt began in Stuttgart, dedicated to the alleged military arm of the plot, which, despite its crudeness, caused deep concern to German society. Nine people sat in the dock, accused of preparing to commit high treason and belonging to a terrorist organization.
They are represented by 22 lawyers, and more than 300 witnesses have been called, including 270 police officers. The other two trials will be held in Frankfurt – this will be the most notorious, as it refers to the nine ringleaders – starting on May 21, and in Munich starting on June 18, with the remaining eight alleged participants in the plot. There was another accused, but he has died.
The main ringleader is the businessman Heinrich Reuss, who is now 72 years old, coming from a noble family in Thuringia for which he calls himself a prince, with domicile in Frankfurt and a palace in Bad Lobestein (Bavaria). Another leader is Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former lieutenant colonel who was dismissed from the armed forces in 1990 for violating weapons regulations. Also in the leadership was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of the Bundestag of the far-right AfD party and a judge in Berlin.
The ringleaders are accused of having founded in 2021 a “terrorist organization whose objective was to overthrow the existing state order in Germany and replace it with their own form of state.” The suspects knew that their objective could only be achieved through military means and force, prosecutors warned at the time. “They planned to infiltrate an armed group into the Parliament building in Berlin, arrest legislators and overthrow the system; “They understood that taking power would mean killing people,” the prosecutors write. After the arrest of the small group orbiting Prince Reuss, new Reichsbürger raids and arrests took place in November 2023.
For each of the three trials (Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Munich), the courts have scheduled about fifty days of hearings, until at least January 2025. However, given the complexity of the case and the number of witnesses and suspects, experts They estimate that the trials will last much longer, possibly several years.
The suspects had provided themselves with the means to achieve their goals: 500,000 euros, in addition to “an arsenal of about 380 firearms, about 350 edged weapons, as well as another 500 weapons and at least 148,000 rounds of ammunition,” the investigators indicate. They had also purchased other equipment, including ballistic helmets, bulletproof vests, night vision devices and handcuffs. According to the accusation, they even planned to take over the Heckler arms factory by force.
The group fantasized about using Bundeswehr (armed forces) helicopters, which would supposedly be piloted by soldiers who would immediately join the cause of the coup plotters. On the conspiracy side – in the group there are also Querdenkers (lateral thinkers), who believe in conspiracy theories – the conspirators maintained that Germany is governed by a kind of ‘deep state’ whose objective would be the large-scale murder of children and young people. .
In the aborted plot there is also a shadow of Russia. The German Prosecutor’s Office maintains that a Russian citizen named Vitalia B., alleged romantic partner of Heinrich Reuss, “put the aristocrat in contact with the Russian consulate general in Leipzig and accompanied him there in June 2022.” The aforementioned would have tried to secure the support of Moscow, although at the time of the cell’s dismantling, the Kremlin denied any knowledge or involvement in the plot.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the secret services of the Ministry of the Interior, estimates that there are about 21,000 Reichsbürger in the country, of which about 1,150 are classified as far-right radicals. The majority are men, on average over 50 years old, and have Nazi and anti-Semitic sympathies. About 2,100 are considered potentially violent. The BfV considers violent both those who have a history of violence and those who have made threats or statements in favor of violence with corresponding ideological references.
