Prince ‘plotted far-right coup in Germany’
Aristocrat would have been installed as king, say prosecutors as 20 alleged conspirators are arrested
IT READS like the outlandish plot of a political thriller – the overthrow of a stable Western European government by a group of conspiracy theorists modelling themselves on the US Capitol rioters.
But German police said yesterday they had uncovered a real-life conspiracy by far-right militants led by a disgruntled aristocrat to storm the country’s parliament, seize power and install him as king.
Prosecutors allege Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss was the leader of a sinister group that has been conspiring since November 2021 to storm the Bundestag.
More than 3,000 police swooped on dozens of properties at dawn yesterday in one of the largest raids in modern German history.
Among more than 20 suspects carted away in handcuffs was Mr Reuss, a distant descendant of Dutch kings.
The 71-year-old prince, an engineer and owner of a property company, was held in Frankfurt am Main, where he has an apartment and an office.
The plotters, who are members of the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement, are also understood to have met at a castle and a hunting lodge owned by the prince in the Thuringian village of Saaldorf.
Prosecutors said the group formed a “terrorist organisation with the goal of overturning the existing state order in Germany and replacing it with their own form of state, which was already in the course of being founded”.
Mr Reuss is a descendant of the House of Reuss, which ruled over parts of Germany for hundreds of years until the collapse of the German empire in the wake of the First World War.
Although members of the wider family have called him a “confused old man” and a conspiracy theorist, he is alleged to have been determined to overthrow the government.
In an intercepted phone call this summer, he is alleged to have said: “We’re going to flatten them now, it’s the end of the fun!”
Several of the suspected Reichsbürger plotters are understood to have been involved in recent protests by anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers who tried to storm the Bundestag in August 2020.
There are also reported links to the Qanon movement, who believe the US and other Western nations are in the hands of a mythical “deep state” controlled by secret powers.
In anticipation of taking power, the group had printed its own identity cards as the “German Reich Government in
Exile”. They were thought to have planned to use the failed storming of the US Capitol in January last year as a model for their own seizure of power.
Mr Reuss allegedly used intermediaries to make contact with Russia, hoping the Putin regime would establish friendly relations with his new government.
Prosecutors say that there is no evidence Moscow responded to his efforts and the Russian embassy yesterday denied having any links to the plotters’ organisation.
The places raided yesterday included the barracks where Germany’s elite army unit is based. Arrests were also made in Austria and northern Italy. It is alleged the plotters had targeted soldiers and police officers to join their conspiracy. Several former soldiers are among the suspects as well as a serving senior officer in the elite KSK, the German version of the SAS.
Plans to acquire firearms had been made, and the group had started weapons training, it is claimed.
Peter Frank, one of the prosecutors, said the plotters included former members of the armed forces, the Bundeswehr, who formed a “military arm … which as far as we understand was meant to be built into a new German army.”
He added: “The organisation is structured in a sort of council. This … was divided into ministries like a government. Individuals had already been earmarked to take over individual portfolios, including a former Bundestag member for the justice portfolio.”
The politician, Birgit Malsack-winkemann, 58, a former judge and member of the far-right AFD party, is alleged to have provided detailed information to the conspirators on the inside of the Reichstag building.
Nancy Faeser, the Interior Minister, said the raids demonstrated the “depths of terrorist threat” that Germany faced, adding that the group appeared to be “driven by violent coup fantasies and conspiracy ideologies”.
Prosecutors said Mr Reuss and his fellow plotters believed that a secret “alliance” of intelligence agents from around the world had already moved into Germany and a plan to overthrow the “deep state” was imminent.
In 2019, the prince delivered a speech at a Worldwebforum event in Zurich, railing against both the abolition of the German monarchy – under which he maintained “people were leading happy lives” – and the waning of his family’s influence.
‘The terrorist organisation was formed with the goal of overturning the existing state order in Germany’