BAD LOBENSTEIN The letter could have been considered a joke if strange things hadn’t already happened in the East German spa town.
The letter that came in the summer started with questions.
“Do you also feel that everything is not right in this country? Did you know that you don’t actually have citizenship, but are stateless and therefore without any rights?”
The letter listed a list of YouTube links. According to the letter, they would provide additional information about the fact that modern Germany is not a legal state. The letter has no signature, logo or stamp.
At the end, the authors are mentioned as “dedicated and honorable residents”, who believe that the pre-1918 form of government, i.e. the empire, should be returned to Germany.
The letter was delivered to almost every mailbox last summer in Bad Lobenstein. Less than half a year later, last December, in the same place, the police raided several targets in one of the biggest terror raids in modern German history.
The group is suspected of planning a violent coup attempt. The spa town was their base.
The raid surprised, the ideas did not
Councilor Andree Burkhardt sits in the town hall of Bad Lobenstein and shows the letter he received in the summer. It’s been a month since the big raid in December.
– All this raises the question of what is happening in our democracy, the councilor says.
The raid came as a shocking surprise, but the world of thought of those under investigation has been familiar in Bad Lobenstein for years. According to city councilor Burkhardt, for fifteen years the city hall has already received letters from individual locals who dispute the legality of modern Germany, that is, the federal state of Germany.
They are called Reichsbürgers, because they want to restore the German Empire as a form of government. Bürger refers to a citizen. According to them, modern Germany is a conspiracy derived from abroad and therefore they do not recognize it.
As a sign of resistance, the movement’s members have already returned their passports to the authorities or refused to pay the tax for years. The court of the state of Thuringia has had to draw up special instructions for legal protection, because the activities of Reichsbürgers are so common in the region.
Councilor Burkhardt builds ovens by profession and therefore constantly meets people around the city. At clients, he has sometimes heard these thoughts that modern Germany is not legal and that we are not its citizens.
According to the commissioner, few outsiders took the ideas seriously.
Only the raid revealed to the locals that it was not a harmless joke. According to the prosecutor, some of the Reichsbürgers were ready to kill people in their violent coup fantasy.
The plan was refined in the historical castle located on the foothills of Bad Lobestein.
A prince or an embittered businessman
A castle standing on top of a hill is like something from a fairy tale book. The tower is flanked by a serrated wall and the windows appear to have paintings. You can’t get too close, because the castle grounds are fenced and the gate is locked with an egg lock.
The castle, which serves as a hunting lodge, was one of the destinations ridden in December. It was searched for weapons and explosives.
The castle is owned by a businessman from Frankfurt Heinrich Reuss. The neatly dressed 71-year-old man made headlines around the world in December when the police arrested him as part of a raid.
The title Prince Heinrich XIII is also used for Reuss, although the nobles were stripped of their official power after the First World War. The tradition of the Reuss family has been to name boys with the first name Heinrich, which is why there is an ordinal number after the name.
The Reuss noble family has a long tradition in Bad Lobenstein. The family ruled parts of the surrounding areas during the empire.
It was this position of power that the group that planned the revolution wanted to restore. The idea was to make Heinrich Reuss the leader of Germany as long as the empire was restored after the coup.
The announcement in the lime tree aroused interest
One of those who met the prince is a local newspaper reporter Peter Hagenwho started investigating Reuss’s background as early as spring 2021.
At that time, an announcement about elections in the mystical Reuss electoral district was attached to a linden tree near the hunting castle. The announcement contained the emblems of the Reuss noble family. No real elections were held during that time.
Even then, Hagen tried to get an explanation for his story in the newspaper, but Heinrich Reuss did not answer the calls. A year later, Hagen called again when a letter referring to Prince Reuss had appeared in the townspeople’s mailboxes.
That time the prince answered. Reuss distanced himself from the letter, but said in the same breath that he wanted to restore the state form before 1918.
– He explained this very calmly, journalist Hagen says.
Now the castle stands empty. According to Hagen’s information, Reuss and the other 24 people arrested in the raid are still in pretrial detention a month later.
It portends that the charges are serious.
Conspiracy theories gained ground in the protests
It is Monday evening about a hundred kilometers from Bad Lobenstain. A weekly demonstration is about to begin in the city of Weimar.
Demonstrators carry signs opposing the arming of Ukraine and hoping for the opening of gas pipelines from Russia to Germany again. During the pandemic, the same protests opposed corona restrictions and vaccinations.
Although the themes of the protests change depending on the current crisis, the message of the protests has remained the same: the German government is acting against the will of the people and threatens to take away the citizens’ freedom.
The Weimar demonstration shows that the ideas of the Reichsbürgers have an echo base above all in the area of the former East Germany.
Marching in the front row Iris says he joined the protests during the corona pandemic. He suspects that the entire pandemic is just a conspiracy to enrich America’s richest. He mentions a major investor by name George Soros and a billionaire Bill Gates.
– These things are not told on TV, Iris says and says that she herself follows news from Telegram groups.
According to Iris, Germany is controlled by secret networks led from abroad. They are called deep state. Iris believes that the current German government came to power fraudulently and with fake results.
– I don’t know anyone who would have voted the current government into power.
Standing next to Sabina points out that Germany and the United States have never concluded an official peace treaty since World War II. According to Sabina, it is a sign that the United States and other allied countries still hold Germany in their power.
– They still decide for us, says Sabina.
Iris and Sabina are in their fifties. They don’t want to tell their surnames or professions. The women do not recognize themselves as supporters of the Reichsbürger movement, although they share many of the movement’s ideas.
When asked about the big raid in December, Iris starts to laugh.
– Oh, that pensioner, he says, referring to the age of the arrested Prince Reuss.
– It’s all fake! The government and the media have inflated the whole thing.
For the demonstrators, the whole raid was just a show, the purpose of which was to confuse and draw attention away from Germany’s real problems.
Some monarchists, some extreme right
German authorities believe that the protest movement, which grew stronger during the pandemic years, has also inflated the number of Reichsbürgers.
According to the German intelligence service, there were about 23,000 people in Germany last year who are classified as belonging to the Reichsbürger movement or otherwise deny the legitimacy of modern Germany. That’s more than the year before.
The chapter includes only those persons who have been in contact with the authorities, returned their passports or denied the legality of the German state to the authorities in one way or another.
There may be significantly more people who believe in the idea.
Political researcher, professor Rebecca Pates says that before the corona pandemic, the reichsbürger movement was mostly heard of by researchers and judicial authorities. The demonstrations against the corona measures made the Reichsbürgers visible to the entire German people, as the movement’s members and symbols were a visible part of the protests.
Professor Pates sees that the resistance is part of a wider international development.
In the United States, the attack on the parliament building on Capitol Hill in Epiphany 2021 and most recently the storming of the parliament in Brazil show that groups questioning the legitimacy of the state are more visible than before and ready for violence in different parts of the world.
– These groups question the state’s monopoly on maintaining order, says Pates.
However, it is wrong to claim that all those who believe in the Reichsbürger idea are extreme right-wingers ready for violence. According to Pates, some of them are mainly monarchists.
The German domestic intelligence service estimates that around five percent of Reichsbürgers and other dissidents can be classified as far-right radicals.
According to Pates, some want to restore a strong patriarchal order to Germany, where people had different values according to gender, background or status. The arrested nobleman Reuss has also spoken openly anti-Semitic, and the group was obviously ready for violence.
According to Pates, Reichsbürgers ready for violence can be a threat to politicians or authorities representing Germany. The plan to seize power in Germany was, on the other hand, misguided in terms of how much support the movement has among the people.
– “We are the people” is repeated at the demonstrations, and they may have believed that they represented the majority of Germans, says Pates.
The movement is more of a regional risk in regions where conspiracy theories gain ground.
The reporter has already been attacked
The spa town of Bad Lobenstein has turned out to be one such region.
Hagen, the editor of a local newspaper, was attacked in August when he tried to ask the then mayor of the city about his connections with the Reichsbürgers and Prince Heinrich Reuss. The mayor, who has since been fired, attacked Hagen’s camera.
Hagen says he immediately thought of the August incident when he heard about the raid and the armed wing of the group on December 7. He broke into a cold sweat.
– Only then did I realize how naively I had approached them, says Hagen.
City councilor Burkhardt is also thinking. In the eyes of the movement, the representative of public authority is the enemy.
You can discuss the topic on 22.1. until 11 p.m.
In the news podcast, Suvi Turtiainen talks about her trip to the small spa town of Bad Lobenstein, which was the base of the group that planned the coup.