A year and a half ago, Germany was shocked when it discovered a coup plot by a group of far-right and conspiracy theorists, led by an aristocrat, which was dismantled by prosecutors and police in a nationwide police raid. country The detainees – most of them Reichsbürger (citizens of the Reich), who do not recognize the Federal Republic – ordered a plan against the State that provided for a violent break-in to the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament in Berlin, according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. Now 26 people will be tried for this.
Yesterday in Stuttgart began the first of the three trials, dedicated to the alleged military arm of the conspiracy, which does not cease to cause deep concern in 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 processes will be held in Frankfurt – it will be the most famous, as it refers to the nine capitostos – from May 21, and in Munich from June 18, with the remaining eight alleged participants in the plot. There was one more accused, but he has died.
The main leader is the businessman Heinrich Reuss, who is now 72 years old, from a noble family in Thuringia, which is why he calls himself a prince, with a residence in Frankfurt and a palace in Bad Lobestein (Bavaria). Another leader is Rüdiger von Pescatore, a retired colonel who was removed from the armed forces in 1990 for violating weapons regulations. Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, former member of the Bundestag from the far-right AfD party and a Berlin judge, was also at the summit.
The capitostos 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 goal could only be achieved by military means and by force, prosecutors warn. “They planned to infiltrate an armed group into the Parliament building in Berlin, arrest the lawmakers and bring down the system; they understood that taking power would involve killing people,” prosecutors write. After the arrest of the group orbiting around Reuss, there were further raids and arrests of Reichsbürger in November 2023.
For each of the three processes (Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Munich) the courts have scheduled around fifty hearing days, at least until January 2025. Given the complexity of the case and the number of witnesses and suspects, it is estimated that the trials will last longer, possibly several years.
The suspects had provided themselves with means for their purposes: 500,000 euros, in addition to “an arsenal of 380 firearms, nearly 350 melee weapons, as well as 500 other weapons and at least 148,000 rounds of ammunition”, according to the investigators . On the conspiratorial side – the group also includes Querdenker (lateral thinkers), who believe in conspiracy theories – the conspirators claimed that Germany is ruled by a deep state whose objective would be the large-scale murder of children and young people.
There is also a shadow of Russia in the plot. The Prosecutor’s Office says that a Russian citizen named Vitàlia 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 alluded would have tried to secure the support of Moscow, although at the time of the dismantling of the cell the Kremlin denied any knowledge or involvement in the conspiracy.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the secret services of the Ministry of the Interior, estimates that there are around 23,000 Reichsbürger in the country, around 1,250 of whom are classified as far-right radicals. The majority are men, on average over 50 years old, and have Nazi and anti-Semitic sympathies. About 2,300 are considered potentially violent. The BfV considers violent those who have a history of violence and those who have made threats or statements in favor of violence.
