THE NEW IMPERIALISTS
The King of Germany and other monarchical pretenders
RoMANoV EMPIRE RESToRED?
A Russian human rights activist is seeking to buy three uninhabited islands in the remote south Pacific nation of Kiribati to restore the Romanov Empire and create an “alternative Russia”. Businessman Anton Alekseyevich Bakov, 51, a former Russian MP and founder of Russia’s monarchist party, visited the tiny nation in late January after he was invited there to discuss his plan to purchase or lease three uninhabited islands – Malden, Starbuck and Caroline. He has proposed creating the capital of the new Russian nation on Malden Island, an empty coral atoll, where he says he plans to invest £280 million on resorts. Bakov, self-styled “Archchancellor of the Imperial Throne” wants Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen, a 64-year-old German great great grandson of Tsar Alexander II, to restore the monarchy overthrown in 1917 and accede as Tsar Nicholas III. (It might be relevant that Bakov was born and still lives in Yekaterinberg, where Nicholas II and his family were murdered.)
Visiting Kiribati with his wife Maria, who acted as an interpreter, Bakov said the idea for the restoration had the backing of a large number of Russians who were dissatisfied with Vladimir Putin. “This is the desire not only of the heir of the Russian throne but also a great number of Russian patriots who are not happy with Putin’s regime and would like to have their revival of Romanov’s empire visible – as an alternative Russia,” he said.
Bakov has previously made attempts to restore the monarchy in the Cook Islands, a south Pacific country in free association with New Zealand, and in Montenegro – where he bought a 80ha (198-acre) plot of land “twice as big as the Vatican”; but the latest proposal is being seriously considered by authorities in Kiribati, a series of 33 coral atolls roughly halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The low-lying nation faces an uncertain future due to rising sea levels and has been seeking fresh sources of income, as well as potential places of refuge for some of its 107,000 citizens whose homes and livelihoods are under threat. Kiribati’s government said its foreign investment commission was considering Bakov’s proposal.
Former Kiribati president Teburoro Tito said the plan could bring much-needed investment and turn the nation into a remote island tourist attraction akin to the Maldives. Bakov is ambitious: “We are planning to construct air and sea ports, solar power stations, freshwater plants, hospitals, schools and settlements for the employees,” he said. “The main economic objects of the islands will be eco-friendly hotels and fish processing plants. We would also develop tropical agriculture and Russian Imperial University.” However, some academics are urging caution. Dr Sitiveni Halapua, a Pacific development specialist, told Radio New Zealand that he finds Bakov’s plans “very strange” and “scary”. Others have suggested Bakov’s unstated aim is to create a tax haven. BBC News, 30 Jan; D.Telegraph, 31 Jan; Guardian, 7 Feb 2017.
GERMAN IMPERIAL CITIZENS
Meanwhile in Germany, there is a tiny but growing movement of “imperial citizens”, which appears more sinister than Bakov’s project. The so-called Reichsbürger are convinced that the Federal Republic of Germany doesn’t exist. In its place the old German Empire endures, which in their telling was never properly abolished and persists in the borders of either 1871 or 1937. There are nearly as many lines of pseudo-legal reasoning as adherents. One rests on the
Bakov plans to purchase three islands in remote Kiribati Russian monarchists plan the Romanovs’ return; German nationalists rewrite history.
fact that the Allies never signed a peace treaty with Germany after World War II. Another cites selectively from a decision by Germany’s supreme court in 1973 regarding an agreement between West and East Germany. The upshot, say Reichsbürger, is that the Federal Republic is really a limited-liability company based in Frankfurt and controlled by a Jewish world government based in America.
To the Reichsbürger the FRG’s police, judges, laws and tax agencies thus have no authority, and its documents carry no weight. At a traffic stop, say, a Reichsbürger will overwhelm the (usually puzzled) police with references to phony legal paragraphs and treaties while producing a driver’s licence or other identification issued by the Empire. The insignia vary because it is not clear even to the Reichsbürger who the true imperial government-in-waiting is. There are about 30 rival imperial chancellors, several princes and at least one king (see below). One of the chancellors, a man named Norbert Schittke, also claims the English throne.
Though they draw ridicule even from neo-Nazis, the Reichsbürger are considered part of the extreme right. Many (though not all) are racist and anti-immigrant. Most are male and live in rural areas. Of the four regions that monitor their numbers, Brandenburg and Thuringia, both in eastern Germany, have the most, with several hundred identified in each. Worried about a rise in incidents, a think-tank in Brandenburg recently published a handbook for bureaucrats dealing with Reichsbürger.
The best approach, it advises, is to avoid responding at all. Typically, a Reichsbürger will only deluge a bureaucracy with verbose letters studded with obscure citations. Others get aggressive. Some 20 interrupted a trial this year and tried to “arrest” the judge. The first case of armed violence occurred in October. Wolfgang P., a hunter in Bavaria, had outed himself as a Reichsbürger in the course of disobeying local authorities. When officers approached his house to confiscate his rifles, he opened fire from the upper floor, injuring several and killing one. Locals told the press that the 49-year-old was a loner raised by his grandmother, whose death had apparently unhinged him.
Peter Fitzek, a Reichsbürger who claimed to have set up the “Kingdom of New Germany” with himself as king, faced charges last October of embezzling 1.3 million euros from his “subjects”, who had deposited money in accounts at his bank. In January, another prominent Reichsbürger was arrested for allegedly hoarding weapons. Burghard B, 65, a bearded neo-Nazi from Saxony-Anhalt, resembles Gandalf as he dresses as a druid, carrying a tribal spear. Guardian, D.Telegraph, 22 Oct; Economist, 12 Nov 2016; Metro, 31 Jan 2017.