The trial against Prince Reuss and the alleged main conspirators of a group of Reich Citizens has begun in Frankfurt. Right from the start they show their contempt for the state. The indictment reveals the group’s absurd plans.
They stopped moving. As if they had agreed, the nine alleged main conspirators of the Reichsbürger group “Union” stand in front of their chairs on the prosecution side in the Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the defendants wanted to storm the Bundestag and cause a bloodbath. Because they were already standing, the presumed leadership clique around Henry XIII must. Prince Reuss did not stand up when the presiding judge, Jürgen Bonk, entered the courtroom with the Senate in a tent specially erected for this purpose.
Until now, the trick was only known from Islamist terror trials. The defendants also stopped there. They thus escaped administrative detention because they did not greet the court with due respect. Militant Islamists and Reich citizens have one thing in common: These extremists despise the Federal Republic of Germany and its free-democratic basic order – including the local judiciary.
Prince Reuss, who according to the prosecution was the ringleader of the political branch of the coup planners, arrived an hour late for the main hearing at around 10:30 a.m., accompanied by two judicial sergeants. Rüdiger von Pescatore, the alleged military chief of the “association” with 200 members, steps between his lawyers with a confident smile.
He sends a soldier’s greeting across the dock to one of his closest comrades-in-arms, ex-lieutenant Manfred Wörner and staff officer in the Bundeswehr special unit KSK. Wörner had previously marched smartly dressed in a green traditional jacket and beige trousers to his seat on the far left. The beefy ex-soldier with the long beard has been hanging around in the right-wing extremist scene for years before he and his boss from Pescatore are said to have played a key role in building up the military arm of the Reichsbürger Connection from the summer of 2021.
Maximilian Eder is also one of the accomplices. The ex-KSK officer, who wanted the military to come to Berlin during the Corona peak to clean up properly, looks like a wreck. There seems to be nothing left of military splendor and glory. The neat short cut of yore has given way to a tangled hippie outfit with long gray hair. The eyes stare left and right without finding anything to hold on to. The 55-year-old Reich citizen was arrested in Perugia during the first major raid on December 7, 2022.
Eder appears pale and emaciated. In the spring of 2023 he entered the hunger dispute and also refused water units. On April 12th he had drawn up a corresponding living will. Eder wanted to die. The man who, according to federal prosecutors, wanted to kill politicians when storming the Bundestag complained about the difficult prison conditions. In addition, he had little hope of ever being released again after a guilty verdict. That’s why, says Eder, he wanted to die.
After the Federal Court of Justice ordered force-feeding behind bars, the defendant changed his mind just a month later. He voluntarily began eating and drinking again. According to information from FOCUS online, two psychiatric experts commissioned by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office came to the conclusion that Maximilian E. had only faked his wish to die in order to be released from custody.
AfD Bundestag member Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who has since resigned, appears completely different. The right-wing extremist politician, who was intended by the revolutionaries to be justice minister, walks briskly to her seat surrounded by two security guards. The former judge is said to have led members of the core squad on spying tours of the Bundestag in the summer of 2021.
Prince Reuss, on the other hand, seems like a marginal figure when he enters the hall. Rather small, wearing a blue covered jacket, the files in his arms, the nobleman sits in line among his three criminal defense lawyers. Arms crossed, fingers on right hand running back and forth nervously.
Immediately after the chairman determines the defendant’s personal details, the flood of applications from the defense begins. The lawyers want to reject Judge Bonk twice because of bias. It is also requested that the indictment not be read out. The defense also demands that the entire procedure be filmed. Finally, trials against other alleged conspirators of the Prinz Reuß Group are ongoing at two other OLG senates. “Equality of arms should be established,” emphasized Roman van Alvensleben, who represented Henry XIII. represents.
The chairman, however, sticks to his line. First of all, he gives the floor to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office to introduce the charges into the proceedings; only then does the Senate want to deal with the defense lawyers’ motions. The allegations include membership in a terrorist organization and an attempted treasonous coup. This carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
Prince Reuss’ defense lawyers rejected the allegations against their client on the sidelines of the trial. “He is not a leader, not a ringleader, and he is not a member of a terrorist organization,” explains Alvensleben’s lawyer.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office assumes the opposite. According to the indictment, the “association” gradually built up a military wing and a parallel government under the Hessian nobleman Prince Reuss as a figurehead for a coup. Weapons were procured, around 200 supporters were recruited, and attack sites such as the German Bundestag were spied on several times, as well as efforts to recruit high-ranking Bundeswehr officers for “Day X”.
Accordingly, Corona deniers banded together with enemies of the republic from the Reichsbürger scene and so-called QAnon supporters. A highly dangerous mix that followed crude ideologies. QAnon disciples seriously believe that pedo-criminal satanic elites are striving for a global dictatorship through a power apparatus, the so-called “deep state”, in which children are tortured in underground cellars.
Leaders like von Pescatore were convinced that an elixir for eternal life would be extracted from children’s bodies. In order to tap the substance called adrenochrome, the “Deep State” operates underground military-industrial complexes in the form of “deep underground military bases” (DUMBs), which are constantly supplied with underage victims by UNICEF.
The managers also developed an unbridled hatred for prominent queer politicians such as Jens Spahn (CDU) or Kevin Kühnert (SPD). In overheard phone calls, the agitators demanded that “the gays have to go.” After the putsch, Spahn would have his head “shortened.” Anti-Semitic agitation was constantly circulating among the extremists: Germany was a Jewish state, it was said, but the “Zionist pack would soon be gone.”
At its core, however, the conspiracy ideologists are spinning the tale of a secret global war. The “Deep State” was equated with the government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). A military secret society is fighting against it. The “alliance” is headed by former US President Donald Trump, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Chinese autocrat Xi Jinping. After the alliance with ground forces had “cleared out” the highest level of politicians in Germany, the military arm of the “association” around the accused von Pescatore was then supposed to carry out the further cleansing operations.
Members of the terrorist group found “enemy lists” with name registers and addresses of parliamentarians in the Bundestag, the Hamburg citizenship and the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. The TV political talkers Markus Lanz and Sandra Maischberger were handwritten in other documents. In addition to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), SPD party leader Saskia Esken, CDU opposition leader Friedrich Merz, his party colleague Armin Laschet and SPD politician Norbert Walter-Borjans were on paper.
At an operational briefing, the military chief of Pescatore debated with his “military staff” about the fate of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) in the event of a coup. Some voted to arrest the head of state like “the other” members of the government and “put him against the wall”. According to von Pescatore, the “inner leadership would have to be publicly shot like citizens in uniform”. Some leading military zealots dreamed of marching directly into Berlin “and killing everyone.” 382 firearms and at least 148,000 pieces of ammunition were hoarded for Day X.
