Monday start in Stuttgart, Germany, the first of three trials against 26 people accused of belonging to a terrorist organization, known as “Reichsbürger”, and of high treason, i.e. of having plotted to carry out a coup d’état that had the objective of overthrowing the democratic order of the country. Most of those involved were arrested in December 2022 in an operation widely covered by German and international newspapers.
Overall, it is one of the largest trials on terrorism charges in the history of democratic Germany, and this is also why it was decided to divide it in three processes smaller: the one in Stuttgart, which begins today, concerns nine men who are considered the armed wing of the organization.
On May 21, a second trial against its alleged leaders will begin in Frankfurt: among these will be Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a Berlin judge who in the last legislature had been a member of parliament for the far-right German party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) and Heinrich XIII of Reuss, a descendant of an ancient German noble house who worked as a real estate agent but called himself a prince. The noble titles were in fact eliminated in Germany after the First World War, Heinrich XIII had nevertheless maintained a certain patrimony and a certain influence. The latest trial against the remaining alleged coup plotters will begin in Munich on June 18. All accused persons are in pre-trial detention.
The arrested people were linked to the Reichsbürger movement – “citizens of the Reich”, a group of nostalgics that includes monarchists, right-wing extremists and anti-Semites. The movement claims that modern Germany, the one born after the Second World War, would not be a true sovereign state but a commercial society created by international potentates. For this reason, all German citizens would be stateless and would have to reunite under a new empire (Reich) which would have to be brought back to the borders of the German empire of the beginning of the twentieth century. The theory, born in the 1980s, has become widespread again and has strengthened in recent years. The National Intelligence Service defense of Constitution had been observing the movement since 2016: the people affiliated with it would have increased from 2 thousand before the pandemic to 21 thousand in the last months of 2022.
According to the German authorities, in the plan of the Reichsbürger movement Heinrich XIII should have become the new head of state. Malsack-Winkemann instead should have used his knowledge of the parliament’s structures to allow members of the organization access to them. According to the charges, the plan for the coup called for an armed group to take control of parliament, while a system of 286 armed cells would impose the coup plotters’ authority across Germany. The coup, however, was never implemented.
The prosecutors handling the Stuttgart trial claim that it is possible to prove that the alleged coup plotters had planned to kill people and that the coup was a real danger: the nine men who will be tried had accumulated 500 thousand euros in cash, 380 pistols, 350 edged weapons and approximately 148,000 rounds of ammunition. One of them is also accused of shooting and seriously wounding a police officer while resisting arrest in late 2022.
Among the people arrested, there were 27 but one she’s dead as of March 2024, at least 15 have links to the military or police, including serving agents and officers.