Germany
bans major part of far-right movement seeking to undermine state
Security
forces stage raids against cult-like extremist ‘Kingdom of Germany’ group,
arresting alleged ringleader
Deborah Cole
in Berlin
Tue 13 May
2025 13.01 BST
The German
government has outlawed a major part of an extremist movement seeking to
undermine the state, in a move the new administration said signalled tough
action against a subversive far-right scene.
Hundreds of
security forces across seven states staged early morning raids on Tuesday
against the cult-like group calling itself “Kingdom of Germany” (KRD), a large
group within the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. Four suspects
were arrested including alleged ringleader Peter Fitzek, the self-proclaimed
Peter I.
“This is
illegal and unlawful,” Fitzek told Spiegel TV as he was led away in handcuffs.
The interior
minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said the KRD, which estimates it has 6,000
members, had created a “counter-state” in Germany and established “criminal
economic structures” that challenged the rule of law and the justice system.
“They
underpin their supposed claim to power with antisemitic conspiracy narratives,”
Dobrindt, who took office last week as part of a new coalition government, said
in a statement.
“We will
take decisive action against those who attack our free democratic basic order.”
“We are
stepping up security in our country,” the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, posted on
X. “That includes taking action against those who try to fight internally
against our constitution.”
The order to
ban the group was made just before the raids, the ministry said, calling the
KRD “the biggest association in the growing scene” of radicals rejecting the
federal republic. The state ban means its online presence will be blocked and
its assets confiscated.
The
Reichsbürger believe the German state is an illegitimate construct and seek to
re-establish a monarchy they say endured despite its formal abolition after the
first world war.
The group,
which bears significant similarities to the US-based QAnon conspiracy movement,
does not recognise institutions including parliament or the courts and its
followers refuse to pay taxes, social welfare contributions or fines.
Fitzek
founded the KRD in the eastern town of Wittenberg in 2012 and proclaimed
himself the “highest sovereign” of the new “kingdom”, the ministry said.
Beyond
Fitzek, a high-profile figure who has given media interviews, federal
prosecutors named those arrested on Tuesday only as Mathias B, Benjamin M and
Martin S, in line with privacy rules.
The four
suspects are alleged by prosecutors to have over the last decade set up a bank,
a health insurance and pension scheme, identity papers and a separate currency.
Germany’s
domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution (BfV), put the Reichsbürger under observation in 2016, after one
of its members shot dead a police officer during a raid at his home.
The movement
came to light for most Germans in December 2022 when authorities swooped on
several of its leaders who they said were in the advanced stages of planning an
armed coup.
The eclectic
movement was led by a minor aristocrat and businessman, Heinrich XIII Prince
Reuss.
In March
this year, a German court jailed five members of an extremist group linked to
the Reichsbürger for plotting a coup and planning to kidnap the then health
minister, Karl Lauterbach, who drew the ire of many opponents of Covid-era
restrictions.
It was one
of several trials targeting the wider movement.
German
authorities have recently stepped up action against groups seen as a threat to
the democratic order.
The BfV
earlier this month declared the Alternative für Deutschland, the country’s
biggest opposition party, to be a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force.
Pending a court challenge, the designation would allow stepped-up surveillance
of AfD officials, while the announcement has lent momentum to calls for an
outright ban of the party.
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