Germany - The trial against citizens of the Reich begins

2023-05-17 09:17:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Germany - The trial against citizens of the Reich begins

Illustrative photo

They are suspected of planning to cut off the electricity supply and kidnap the Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach.

The trial against five suspected members of the United Patriots group begins on Wednesday (May 17th) at the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz.

What are the accused accused of?

The four men and a 75-year-old woman, who is believed to have been the leader of the group, are accused of plotting to topple the German government. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, their group was created at the latest in mid-January 2022, and was named "United Patriots". They are accused of being founders or members of a terrorist organization.

They planned to cut off the electricity supply and kidnap the Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach. Thus they wanted to cause conditions similar to civil war. Their goal was to end parliamentary democracy in Germany. Once in power, they allegedly wanted to take control of government offices. Therefore, the Federal Prosecutor accuses them of "preparing a very treacherous enterprise against the federal government".

How specific were the group's plans?

The investigators say that the group had made "concrete preparations". They exchanged information through a chat group on the "Telegram" internet service and that they had met several times in different places. The woman was the main driver for the rapid implementation of the project. She constantly set specific dates for the coup.

One of the accused was monitoring the targets of the attack to cut off the electricity supply. Another made plans to kidnap the Minister of Health, "perhaps by killing his bodyguards." For this purpose, the group had provided Kalashnikovs and pistols as well as combat ammunition. They planned to import tons of explosives from the former Yugoslavia. Did the accused belong to the Reich Citizens' Movement?

Yes. The group's ideological leader is a 75-year-old former pastor and teacher who lived in Saxony. The woman's writings can be found online. They are written in the style typical of the Reich Citizens (Reichsbürger) scene, which has around 23,000 followers. Citizens of the Reich believe that the German Reich, that is, the German state under the leadership of an emperor, as it existed until 1918, continues to exist. Thus, according to them, all today's state bodies are illegal.

In online forums and blogs, "Citizens of the Reich" have also published open letters that the woman is said to have written - for example to Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump or "allies". There are also anti-Semitic thoughts in them, signed "Wilhelm-Imperator-Rex-Descendants". So she saw herself as a descendant of the last German emperor.

The federal prosecutor is convinced that the woman and her associates were more than con artists. From the thesis that the German Reich continued to exist under the constitution of 1871, they concluded that the democratic order of the Federal Republic of Germany had no value and that it should be replaced by an authoritarian system based on the model of the German Empire.

Why did the group target the Minister of Health?

In the scene of Querdenker and Reichtsbürger, Karl Lauterbach has long been regarded as an enemy. Even before his appointment as Federal Minister of Health, in December 2021, the professor of medicine frequently appeared in the media as a corona expert and called for strict measures, such as contact restrictions, to prevent the spread of the virus. Lauterbach was thus the person most hated by German extremist circles, which rejected the government's measures to fight the pandemic in Germany. Today Lauterbach is under personal protection at all times.

How was the group caught?

An undercover investigator is said to have played a central role in arresting the accused. He had been staying close to the accused for months. The four accused were arrested on April 13, while the woman on October 13, 2022. They have been in custody since then. If the court concludes that the charges against them are correct, they could face several years in prison./ DW