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Since early Tuesday, 800 police officers in several states have
been searching the association’s properties and the homes of
leading members.
“The members of this association have created a “counter-state”
in our country and built up economic criminal structures,”
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said, adding that the
members of the group underpinned their supposed claim to power
with antisemitic conspiracy narratives — a behavior that the
country can't tolerate.
“We will take decisive action against those who attack our free
democratic basic order,” Dobrindt added.
The so-called Reich citizen, or Reichsbürger, movement doesn't
recognize Germany as a state. Many of them claim that the
historical German Reich still exists and ignore the country's
democratic and constitutional structures such as parliament,
laws or courts. They also refuse to pay taxes, social security
contributions or fines.
The “Kingdom of Germany” was proclaimed by its leader Peter
Fitzek — who was among those arrested on Tuesday — in the
eastern town of Wittenberg in 2012 and says it has around 6,000
followers, though the interior ministry said that the group has
about 1,000 members. It claims to be a “counter-state” that
seceded from the German federal government.
“This is not about harmless nostalgics, as the title of the
association might suggest, but about criminal structures,
criminal networks," the minister told reporters later in Berlin.
"That’s why it’s being banned today.”
The group's online platforms will be blocked and its assets will
be confiscated to ensure that no further financial resources can
be used for extremist purposes.
It's not the first time that Germany has acted against the
“Reichsbürger” movement.
In 2023, German police officers searched the homes of about 20
people in connection with investigations into the far-right
Reich Citizens scene, whose adherents had similarities to
followers of the QAnon movement in the United States.
Last year, the alleged leaders of a suspected far-right plot to
topple Germany’s government went on trial on Tuesday, opening
proceedings in a case that shocked the country in late 2022.
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