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Nine men went on trial in Stuttgart on Monday charged with high treason and plotting a violent coup d’état, in a case that has highlighted the threat posed to Germany’s democratic institutions by far-right extremists.
The case in Stuttgart is the first of three mammoth trials of 27 people in total. They are accused of conspiring to overthrow the German government, install the aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss as national leader and declare martial law.
The nine accused in Stuttgart are alleged to have constituted the coup-plotters’ “military arm”. The political ringleaders go on trial in Frankfurt on May 21, with a third trial of lesser members of the conspiracy scheduled to start in Munich on June 18.
Together the three trials mark one of the largest and most complex sets of legal proceedings in Germany’s postwar history.
The accused emerged from the “Reichsbürger” or “imperial citizen” movement, a loose union of conspiracy theorists, racists and fantasists who refuse to recognise the German state in its current form and yearn for a restoration of the monarchy.
The Reichsbürger, who often issue their own passports and stamps and refuse to pay fines issued by local authorities, were long dismissed as harmless cranks. But public perceptions of the movement have hardened significantly since the coup plot allegations first emerged in late 2022.
The nine, who include several former senior officers in the Bundeswehr (the armed forces), and one who belonged to an elite unit, stand accused of membership of a terrorist organisation and of “preparing an act of high treason”.
One of the group, who shot and wounded policemen carrying out a search of his apartment in March 2023, faces an additional charge of attempted murder.
Prosecutors allege the military arm had planned to seize power using weapons and had started to construct a nationwide system of more than 280 military units. They said it was led by Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former lieutenant colonel and a paratrooper commander.
At the time of their arrest, the group had collected €500,000 in cash from members and donors, prosecutors say, and built up a stash of 380 firearms, 350 bladed weapons and 148,000 rounds of ammunition.
The indictment says that after deposing the federal government, the plotters intended to contact the Russian government to negotiate a new order for Germany. Members of the Reuss group also tried to meet Russian officials at diplomatic premises in Germany and at least one location in Slovakia, prosecutors allege.
Andreas Singer, president of the Stuttgart court, said it was one of the biggest national security trials in Germany’s postwar history, involving five judges, two substitute judges and 22 defence lawyers.
The Frankfurt trial involves Heinrich XIII as well as a former judge and ex-lawmaker with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, who prosecutors say was to serve as the country’s post-coup justice minister.
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