Germany’s Rentnerputsch: A Case Study

An indictment stretching over 600 pages. Some 400,000 documents submitted as evidence. The trial of the so-called Reichsbürger has taken on the dimensions of a bureaucratic behemoth. Statistics alone appear marshalled to prove criminal intent. A justice ministry spokesperson had promised the “biggest terrorism trial” of the post-war era. Expectations, accordingly, are high.

The Reichsbürger movement — a ragtag assembly of monarchists, conspiracy theorists, and anti-state eccentrics — has long been dismissed as a marginal curiosity. But in late 2022, German authorities announced the arrest of several alleged members of a plot to overthrow the democratic order. At its centre stood Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuß, a minor aristocrat seemingly cast in the role of future head of state. Their purported plans included storming the Bundestag and placing leading politicians under arrest.

The announcement triggered a media frenzy. News outlets competed in superlatives. Iconic images flooded front pages — the result, many suspect, of carefully coordinated leaks. For days, the narrative prevailed: Germany had narrowly averted a coup. But the peculiarities of the plotters, not least Prinz Reuß himself, soon gave cause to question whether the putsch attempt had ever stood a serious chance of success.

The Operetta Coup that Wasn’t

Mockingly dubbed the ”pensioners’ coup” or the ”operetta putsch” by alternative media, the alleged conspiracy has since shed much of its menace. Absurd details, once hushed, have emerged to undermine the initial gravity with which authorities framed the affair. Among them: the group’s reliance on a clairvoyant to identify the perfect day for revolution; the confiscation of an ornamental scimitar (13th century) and a bolt-less crossbow (14th century); and a dusty chest of hunting ammunition that had seen better days under the ownership of the Prince’s grandfather.

Public alarm has given way to widespread indifference. Yet the justice system, having promised a landmark prosecution, now finds itself under pressure to deliver. Prinz Reuß and his alleged co-conspirators have languished in pre-trial detention for over two years. Some 3,000 police officers were mobilised to arrest the group. But even the Federal Prosecutor now admits the case lacks “exceptional relevance” to the stability of the Republic, nor does it bear the “broad societal” significance once claimed.

The Politics of Panic

A glance at previous cases illustrates the point. The trial of the neo-Nazi terrorist cell known as the NSU centred on ten murders, 43 attempted murders, 15 armed robberies and two bombings. The left-wing Red Army Faction, active during the “German Autumn”, killed 33 and injured hundreds. The Reichsbürger, by contrast, has not — as even the Welt newspaper conceded — “so much as smashed a windowpane”.

It was Welt, notably, that had once joined the chorus of alarmist outlets fanning fears of imminent insurrection. How, then, did a country with no history of a successful coup succumb so readily to such hysteria? Increasingly, a media narrative likens today’s Germany to the Weimar Republic, doomed by instability and demagoguery. The far right, we are told, lies in wait — eager to re-do an authoritarian power grab, with democracy biting the dust. Demand for far-right revolutionaries, however, lags far behind the apparent supply.

The coup metaphor is misleading in any case. After all, the Bundeswehr, Germany’s army, was never involved.

Paranoia, it seems, is selective. Compare, for instance, the response to Islamist demonstrations in Hamburg in 2024, where calls for a caliphate were judged by the head of domestic intelligence, Thomas Haldenwang, to be “still within the bounds of free expression”. When it comes to the Reichsbürger, however, Haldenwang warns of violence. A caliphate, he argues, is merely a “conceivable form of government”.

A new “Wannsee Conference“?

Thus, the right-wing conspirator has replaced the Cold War’s communist as the principal bogeyman of the state. Enter Correctiv, a partly state-funded investigative platform, which in early 2024 published a report alleging a secret meeting between AfD politicians and right-wing figures took place in a lakeside villa near Potsdam.

According to the report, participants discussed plans to deport migrants en masse — language laced with allusions to the Wannsee Conference and the Nazi “Madagascar Plan”. The piece triggered a wave of moral outrage and nationwide demonstrations, chiefly organised by left-wing parties and NGOs. Chancellor Olaf Scholz joined the chorus, accusing the AfD of plotting to disappear people from public life. Not what was said, but what could have been said — or might yet be said — became the prevailing concern.

Several broadcasters have quietly walked back their initial reports. As with the “pensioners’ coup”, evidence remains tenuous. Courts have repeatedly ruled that the event in question — in reality, a lecture series — was misrepresented in media accounts. Some public broadcasters have even been forced, under legal threat, to retract segments based on Correctiv’s reporting.

What remains is a climate of fear. A fear that bolsters the powers of the Interior Ministry and domestic intelligence. A fear that edges Germany closer to banning its largest opposition party. A fear that cements the mantra of the “firewall”: that any party to the right of the CDU must be excluded from political life — by narrative, if not by law.

Statement

Germany appears to be embracing a strategy long familiar to students of Italian political history: the so-called strategy of tension. By orchestrating a steady stream of political ”incidents”, a climate of unease is cultivated—one in which the public is nudged to seek security in the arms of the incumbent government. That such tactics may erode the liberal democratic order more profoundly than any right-wing or even far-right opposition is a paradox few in power seem troubled by. Hysteria and alarmism, once exposed as unfounded, do more to corrode trust in constitutional institutions than any fringe ideology.

Weekly