A former German lawmaker who also served as a judge led members of a far-right terrorist group that was plotting to overthrow the government on a tour of the Reichstag, home of the country’s parliament, according to prosecutors.
The new allegations come as Germany faces the most serious challenge by a far-right party since World War II, one expert said, with the hardline Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party climbing to second place in opinion polls.
The former lawmaker at the center of the alleged coup plot belonged to the AfD, which is enjoying greater mainstream success even as the country’s intelligence chief warns it is becoming more extreme.
Reconnaissance tour
The charges, released Monday in a filing from Germany’s Federal Court, allege that three members of the far-right Reichsbürger movement toured the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin in September 2022 and took photos and video of nearby government offices — authorities say this was preparation for a violent attack.
Three months later, 25 people from the Reichsbürger movement were arrested after police discovered details of a planned armed coup in the advanced stages of planning, including a government structure to replace Germany’s federal republic.
One of those charged Dec. 7 served as a lawmaker for the AfD from 2017 to 2021, which gave her the right to enter the Reichstag along with up to six others. The document does not name the suspect but mentions that she had been a judge in Berlin.
“Everyone involved in this operation knew that it could only be carried out by using deadly force of arms against the police and security forces of the German Bundestag,” the document said, referring to Germany’s federal parliament.
The group planned for 16 people to force their way into the building, the court document said, and had acquired weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and restraining devices. The former lawmaker was found to have a revolver and a semi-automatic rifle with a telescopic sight, as well as around 7,000 cartridges, according to prosecutors.
Another person charged with involvement in the coup is a former commander of a parachute battalion in the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces.
Some have ridiculed the Reichsbürger group for its eccentric, mostly older members, including its alleged leader, Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, with his obscure and archaic royal title. Reuss descends from the House of Reuss, which controlled a portion of eastern Germany until the formation of the modern country after 1918.
He has repeated an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jews being responsible for the end of European kingdoms and believes that the current German state is illegitimate and void because of agreements made with Allied forces after World War II.
“In Germany itself, there were quite a few people who said, ‘Was this really serious? Look at the people, look how old they are.’ Like they were basically crazy pensioners,” Peter Neumann, an expert on extremism in Germany at King’s College London, told NBC News.
“The reality is, we’re now seeing the hard evidence that they were actually trying to plan a serious operation, to have guns, to scope the building.”
