The coup plans were, if what the investigators of the Federal Public Prosecutor General have compiled is correct: a group of so-called “Reich citizens” and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory are said to have planned a coup d’état and a “system change at all levels”.

A "military arm" of the association was to carry out the overthrow.

People wanted to consciously accept the dead.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The head of the conspiracy was apparently a real estate entrepreneur and nobleman from Frankfurt: Heinrich XIII.

Prince Reuss, whose company is based on Fichardstrasse in Frankfurt's north end.

The seventy-one-year-old is said to have been known to the security authorities for a long time and is assigned to the "Reichsbürger" scene.

On Wednesday morning he was arrested as one of 25 suspects, the police raid was carried out in several federal states.

It is said that the noble should have led the interim government of the subversives.

The group had formed a kind of shadow cabinet to take over power in the country.

Prince Reuss is said to have headed the so-called "Council", the central body of the group.

The noble is said to have commuted between Frankfurt and Thuringia, where, according to MDR, he owns a hunting lodge near Bad Lobenstein.

Prince Reuss had long been noticed by statements that made his sympathies for the "Reichsbürger" ideology clear.

The Princely House of Reuss had therefore publicly distanced itself from him.

He was a "confused man who sits on "conspiracy theory misconceptions", according to the family.

Recruited from the ranks of the Bundeswehr and the police

According to the Attorney General, the group he allegedly led had been preparing intensively for the planned coup since November 2021 at the latest.

An attack on the Bundestag is also said to have been discussed.

Equipment was purchased, a bug-proof communication and IT structure is said to have been set up, and shooting training took place.

Fellow combatants should be recruited from the ranks of the Bundeswehr and the police.

There were at least four secret recruiting meetings in Baden-Württemberg.

A former elite soldier who led a German army parachute battalion was to lead the underground army.

A former AfD member of the Bundestag is said to have been part of the conspiracy.

Overall, there were three arrests during the raids in Hesse on Wednesday: Prince Reuss was arrested in Frankfurt, and there were further accesses in the Bergstraße district and in the Lahn-Dill district.

Nationwide, 25 people were arrested.

22 of them are said to have been members of the group, three people were classified as supporters.

The raid against the "Reichsbürger" group, which was allegedly determined to stage a coup, was also a topic in the Hessian state parliament on Wednesday morning.

Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) spoke in the plenum at the beginning of the regular deliberations on the individual budget of the Interior Ministry of the attempt by a terrorist organization to overcome the state order.

Beuth said that the arrests are also thanks to the Hessian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the State Criminal Police Office.

"The employees had the right instincts and stuck with it," explained the Minister of the Interior.

They would have consolidated their findings and shared them with the partner authorities.

Almost 300 emergency services from Hesse, including the special units, were involved in the nationwide raid.

According to the Minister of the Interior, the arrests are a strong signal of the rule of law and a well-fortified democracy.

The "Reich citizens" have long been regarded as a great danger.

The majority of the scene can be assigned to the right-wing extremist milieu.

"Reich citizens" reject the Federal Republic and its democratic structures and instead refer to the German Reich.

Many of them were also involved in the protests against the Corona policy.

The security authorities assume that there are now 21,000 supporters of the ideology in Germany, and there are said to be around 1,000 "Reich citizens" in Hesse.