At 6am on Wednesday, German special forces stormed a house in the Berlin lakeside villa quarter of Wannsee and arrested a former MP of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Three minutes later, they entered the Waidmannsheil hunting lodge in Bad Lobenstein in Thuringia. Simultaneous raids took place in 30 other locations, including a car repair shop and a carpenters’ studio, as well as in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbühel and the Italian city of Perugia.
Twenty-five people were arrested, and by lunchtime eight of them were in police custody, among them a serving soldier of the elite KSK unit, a lawyer, a pilot, a gourmet chef and a prince, the alleged ringleader who had led the plans to overthrow the German state and replace it with a “monarchistic order”.
It was, said one MP from the leftwing Linke party, like something out of a crime novel.
Other comparisons were made with the hit TV series Babylon Berlin, set in the German capital in the heady days of the Weimar era, when democracy is on the brink of collapse and violent clashes abound between extralegal paramilitary formations.
But despite the description of its alleged members by prosecutors as a “motley crew” of unlikely characters, the plot was real. So were the weapons they owned, the gun licences they held and the fact that among them were serving members of the police and military.
The most dominant among the group of what the state prosecutors called a “conglomerate of conspiracy theorists” were the Reichsbürger, who believe the German state is an artificial construct that illegitimately replaced the “Deutsche Reich” of the Nazi era.
Though little known outside the country until now, they have become increasingly familiar to Germans in recent years, not least following various thwarted plots, including that of a 75-year-old retired teacher in October. Peter Frank, Germany’s chief prosecutor, had warned this summer of a radicalisation of the rightwing milieu, pointing specifically at the Reichsbürger who, he said, together with conspiracy theorists, were becoming “increasingly ready to use violence”. He added: “It would be careless to shrug the danger off.”
Those who count themselves among the Reichsbürger reject the idea of the modern German state by refusing to pay their taxes and are frequently in dispute with the authorities as a result. Some refer to themselves as “Selbstverwalter” or self-governed.
They number about 21,000 in Germany, according to the BfV domestic intelligence agency, and about 5% of them – about 1,150 – are estimated to be rightwing extremists. In 2021 the BfV attributed about 1,011 extremist crimes to them.
Doubt has been expressed as to the extent to which the group was capable of actually carrying out its plans to overturn the German state, starting by storming the Reichstag building and handcuffing and arresting MPs. Yet there has been much relief that they did not succeed. The Green MP Sara Nanni said while she believed the group might not have been smart enough to carry out what the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, referred to as its “violent fantasies”, nevertheless, “no matter how crude their ideas and how hopeless their plans, the very attempt is dangerous”.
The security forces have been praised for their comprehensive surveillance operation – reportedly the biggest ever on terrorist activity in Germany. It began at the start of September under the codename Schatten – or shadows – and involved monitoring the activities of 52 suspects after a tipoff. But nevertheless the questions remain: how lucky were they, and just how dangerous are the Reichsbürger to modern-day Germany?
The group targeted on Wednesday certainly seemed to be serious about its aims. According to investigators, its members were made to sign a non-disclosure agreement: anyone thinking of breaking it was threatened with punishment by death. In order to communicate with each other, they acquired Iridium satellite telephones valued at €20,000 that would have worked even if the electricity network had collapsed – which was, apparently, also part of the plan, in order to spread chaos.
In one wire-tapped conversation last summer, the alleged ringleader, Prince Heinrich, was heard saying: “We’re going to wipe them out now, the time for fun is over!” According to investigators the group had even called on the services of clairvoyants to check the veracity of their plan, as well as the trustworthiness of the members. In messages they talked about a “system change” and “exterminating” their enemies.
Police were warned weeks ago to prepare for attempts to storm the Reichstag building and had increased its surveillance accordingly. Personal protection for politicians across the country was also tightened. The BfV set up a taskforce to concentrate on the threat, codenamed Kangal. In short, the threat was considered very real and credible.
In an editorial in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jörg Schmitt wrote: “It would be too easy to write these people off as crazy, as a weird bunch of conspiracy theorists, people who we don’t need to take seriously … But that would be naive. Some of the 52 accused of planning a military system overthrow in Germany come from the middle of society, they are teachers, doctors, business people. People who you’d normally expect to be pillars of democracy.”
