BBC News in Berlin
ReutersA self -proclaimed “king” of Germany and three of his “higher subjects” were arrested and their group is prohibited for trying to overthrow the state.
Peter Fitzek, 59, was one of the people arrested in morning raids in seven states on Tuesday, which involved around 800 security staff.
The government has prohibited its group, the Reichsbürger, or “citizens of the Reich”, who seeks to establish the Königreich Deutschland, or “Kingdom of Germany”.
Alexander Dobrindt, Minister of the German Interior, accused the group of having tried to “undermine the rule of law” by creating an alternative state and by broadcasting “anti -Semitic conspiracy accounts to support their alleged claim to authority”.
His ministry announced the dissolution of the group and accused him funding by “economic criminal structures”.
Fitzek, a former chief and instructor of karate, calls himself “King” and identified himself with the judges as “Pierre the first” in a previous judicial case.
He himself crowned in 2012 when he was dressed in Ermine dresses and brandishing a medieval sword. Since then, he buys land and properties across Germany.
The Reichsbürgers have their own currency, flag and identity cards and wish to set up separate banking and health systems.
Fitzek claims to have thousands of followers – or “subjects”.
In an interview with the BBC in 2022, he denied having had violent intentions, but also described the German state as “destructive and patient”.
“I have no interest in being part of this fascist and satanic system,” he told Jenny Hill de la BBC, when she visited her “kingdom” in eastern Germany.
Fitzek clashed several times with the authorities and refused to respect German laws, often in what seems to be in search of advertising.
He has already been imprisoned for conduct several times without a license, following a decision to put the back in a symbolic rejection of the law. At the end of a trial session, Fitzek was seen riding in his car in court and leaving.
Fitzek is One of the approximately 25,000 Reichsbürger in Germany. The figures have increased in recent years.
Many are right -wing extremists who toll racist and anti -Semitic conspiracy theories. They refuse to recognize the authority of the security forces and many have illegal weapons, which led to fire with the police. The officials say that around 2,500 are potentially violent and that 1,350 are classified as right -wing extremists.
In 2022, dozens of people were arrested, including many Reichsbürger, for having plotted to overthrow the German Berlin government. They were accused of having planned a violent coup, which included kidnapping the Minister of Health, to create “civil war conditions” to lower German democracy.
In the past, the Reichsbürger has often been rejected as eccentric cranks because of their bizarre ideas.
But as the extreme right has developed politically in Germany over the past decade, officials now consider them a serious threat.
The office of the federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe said that Fitzek had been arrested with three other alleged leaders of the group, which he classified as a criminal organization.
As a “so-called supreme sovereign”, Fitzek “had” control and decision-making power in all key areas, “said the office.
“The” kingdom of Germany “considers itself as a sovereign state within the meaning of international law and strives to extend its” national territory “claimed at the borders of the German Empire in 1871,” he added in a press release.
