A pro-royal Twitter account dropped some huge news in the early morning hours of December 7th, announcing that Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss of Greiz, a German prince, had been arrested after planning a coup in Germany. As that account, CoutureAndRoyals, announced:
#BREAKING German Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss of Greiz was arrested this morning suspected of planning a coup d’état in Germany with at least 24 other people
The plan was to attack the German parliament in Berlin and insert the Prince as new head of state, King/Emperor of 🇩🇪
The action is ongoing. Military not involved but an armed coup was planned. Weapons have been confirmed seized by the police. 3000 police officers have arrested people in Germany associated with a right-wing group
The account later emphasized that it was not-pro-coup, saying “FYI as I saw some of the quoted tweets: this was just an informative tweet for the news. Not in any way I think that this is justified, I actually think that he is really delusional if he thought he’d succeed. It’s stupid that he thought doing this to this 🌍powerful government“.
France24 added more details with a shocking
A German prince, known for his desire to revive the country’s monarchy and rejected by his own family as a “mad old man”, has emerged as a central figure in an alleged coup plot.
Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss, descendant of a noble family with a history dating back over eight centuries, was supposed to be installed as Germany’s new leader if the bizarre plan had succeeded, officials say.
But he was arrested, along with other alleged plotters including a right-wing ex-MP and former soldiers, in a massive nationwide operation by thousands of German security forces Wednesday.
Continuing, the same France24 report gave details on the group that Prince Heinrich was a part of and the details of his arrest, saying:
“The group are alleged members of the “Citizens of the Reich” (“Reichsbuerger”), an ideological movement grouping far-right extremists and conspiracy enthusiasts.
“The suspected seditionists are said to have planned to storm parliament and had sketched out details of their new government.
“Heinrich XIII, a real estate businessman, was arrested at his residence in Frankfurt and led out by police wearing masks.
“At the same time, his castle in Bad Lobenstein in the eastern region of Thuringia — where his aristocratic family had once ruled over a swathe of land — was also searched.”
NBC News also delved into Prince Heinrich’s political views, particularly his defense of monarchy, saying:
Delivering a rambling speech titled “Why blue-blooded elite became servants” at the World Web Forum in Zurich in 2019, Heinrich presented a rose-tinted picture of monarchical Germany at the end of World War I.
“If something wasn’t going well, you just went to the prince,” he said. “Who are you supposed to turn to today? Your parliamentarian, the local, federal or E.U. level? Good luck!”
He argued that his family was unjustly deposed and cited an antisemitic conspiracy theory about the role of Jewish bankers in the removal of European kingdoms.
Summing up the Reichsbürger credo, he said: “Ever since Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, it has never been sovereign again. It was made into an administrative structure of the Allies … a vassal state.”
A distant relative of the prince, Heinrich XIV, said “Of course it rubs off catastrophically on the family. I believe we’ve been a tolerant, cosmopolitan dynasty for 850 years in eastern Thuringia, and now we are all around the world, all the way to America, [we’re] ‘terrorists’ and ‘reactionaries’ — it’s really horrible.”
Featured image by By Steffen Löwe – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126413465
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