German Police Launch Nationwide Raids Targeting Web Hate Speech - Gestapo moment as 91 house searches and interrogations took place across Germany today

Interview with Heinrich XIII. Prince Reuß, courtesy of renowned journalist Roland Tichy (Tichys Einblick) -transcription, annotation, and translation by yours truly.

There's references to several statutes, I'm inserting them in spoilers for your convenience.
The big headlines indicate different topics / yt chapters, the small headlines indicate where Tichy is speaking.
Contents:

• Daily life and isolation in detention
• The day of the raid and the arrest
• § 129a of the German Criminal Code and the think tank concept
• Belief in the "Earth Alliance"
• Accusations of child rescue & underground military bunkers
• Weapons, homeland defense, plans
• Restitution claims and family holdings in Thuringia
• Future perspectives, daily life in prison, family duty [warning: heartbreaking]

---

Welcome, Prince Reuß. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me. May I ask - how long have you been in custody now? Do you actually count the days?​

I don't count the days, but this will be my fifth Christmas... that I'll be spending here.

How do you spend Christmas in a jail cell?​

Just like any other day in the cell. Of course, you hear about it from the outside world through the media, uh... I've got a TV and a radio, after all, so you know it's Christmas, and you... well, there's also the lead-up to Christmas here. The church offers both Protestant and Catholic services. So through those, you get to experience a little bit of... those festive hours, so to speak.

Daily life & isolation in detention​

How do you spend your days? Those are long days, after all - books, TV, radio?​

Well. I mean, at 6 AM they come around for what's called the "life check," where they check to see if you're still alive. And then we get lunch at 10. So there's not much time in between. I have breakfast then, sometimes breakfast and lunch end up being very close together. And then, here in the building I'm in now, we have recreation time at 3 PM, sometimes an hour and a half. That's when I have to turn in my computer, which I use for work. And that also answers your question about what I do. I have to read the case files on the computer, that's one part of it. Reading books is another, and reading newspapers is a third. And during that hour and a half, like I said, once I've dealt with all the paperwork, all these submissions, everything you have to apply for and everything that has to be reported, you can take a shower and still have some time to talk to a few people.
A lot of them also cook during that time. They have - there's a kitchen. I don't do that. I tried it once, but it wasn't for me. And then you go out, here we go out at around 5 PM, um... shortly after 5, for what's called the recreation hour. That's an hour out in the yard. I make a lot of use of that. I always walk as much as I possibly can, for my lungs and so on, to stay in shape, and I get a little exercise out there.
So, and... unfortunately, on the days when there's organized exercise, I'm usually in court, so I miss out on that. And now there was supposed to be an endurance workout on Fridays, where I like to use the rowing machine [makes rowing motions] - but that's been canceled because some of the other inmates got into a fight. [slightly amused] So they don't offer that anymore.

How long has it actually been since you last held your daughter in your arms? I know you care deeply about her and make a point of seeing her.​

Well, once a month I'm allowed to... she's allowed to visit me, and then I'm allowed to hug her, too. She was also the first and only person I was allowed to hug, because in the beginning, visits were always conducted behind glass partitions. And, uh, my son and all my other siblings and so on, they all had to stay behind glass partitions, too. But they relaxed that restriction for my daughter first, although even that wasn't until about a year in, I think. I don't remember the exact timing.
So, once a month she's allowed to visit me and hug me and even sit next to me. That's something special, too.

So they made an exception for you.​

They made an exception for me, or for my daughter, or for both of us. Yes, that's right, yes. [nods]

The day of the raid & the arrest​

Let's go all the way back to the beginning. How were you arrested? Could you briefly walk us through that again? Because, as you rightly point out, it's been quite some time now.​

Yes, like I said, it'll be five years now. So, the arrest. I was, uh, I was in Thuringia at the time with my daughter and my partner. And I drove to Frankfurt with my daughter for her birthday, which was coming up on December 9. That's why I drove from Thuringia to Frankfurt on December 6, and I was alone in the apartment with my daughter. The arrest came completely... out of the blue [he uses the word "unverhofft", i.e. unexpected, "unhoped-for" - Tichy catches this] for me. I mean, I knew I was under surveillance, but I thought that had something to do with my...

[amused] Well, "unhoped-for" - it's not as if you're hoping to be suspected, to be arrested.​

[amused] Not arrested - sorry, that's the wrong word, of course. I mean...

Surprised.​

Surprised, thank you, yes. It came as a surprise. I wasn't expecting it. ... Let's put it that way.
And then, well, they knew I wasn't armed, that I was completely harmless, that I was there with just my daughter, who needs care. Nevertheless, at 6 in the morning, they smashed through the door. I don't know what kind of equipment they used, but the apartment door just came crashing into my daughter's door, her bedroom door. She was naturally in a state of tremendous shock, and I got up, ran into the hallway, and the whole apartment was already full of police officers. They threw me to the floor and lit me up with all these bright lights [laughs briefly], and, um, "don't move," "head down," and so on and so forth.
I had absolutely no idea what was going on. ... But I regained my composure relatively quickly. And I tried to... I wasn't allowed to check on my daughter, nothing. Eventually, yes, after about an hour, and there she was, lying in bed, with nothing but white showing in her eyes. There was no color in her eyes at all. That was pretty distressing and upsetting.

When you say you regained your composure quickly - the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, ran the headline "Security Forces Foil Right-Wing Coup." When you read that, did you think "is that supposed to be me?"​

Yes. I thought to myself, "What? I don't understand any of this." I mean...... And it wasn't just the Süddeutsche. There was also, which was then delivered to me, uh... Der Spiegel, for example, right? They said, "Prince Reuß had everything prepared for a coup that was supposed to take place on December 8, 2022."
One of our soldiers, who was still, um, in Italy, was on his way back, needed someone to drive him because he doesn't have a driver's license, and was arrested there, right.

But you say "one of our soldiers"? I mean...​

Yes, well, they're being grouped together with us in court now. So that's the whole issue with the association, which is a legal term, under Section 129a of the Criminal Code, whether you're an association or not. So that's where the relationships are getting all mixed up, so to speak. I didn't found any association, just to get that out of the way. But that wasn't your question. Your question was how I experienced the arrest.
Of course it was a shock, obviously. But then I, somehow I managed to... through this maze of police officers, the place was just packed, the entire stairwell was full of policemen and policewomen... Then I had to sit down in my living room, and that's where they... questioned me, and... first of all, I was still in my pajamas, so whether we could at least get some clothes on...
And that's how it all started. So, to get back to your question about the idea of a coup, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I couldn't process it at all. I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. Right? Because it genuinely had never been planned. At least not by me, right? I've repeatedly distanced myself from all such ideas, and that's actually been confirmed by four of my co-defendants and one witness by now, but it's simply being ignored.
There are other reasons, reasons under international law, why I've renounced violence, but I'm generally not a fan of violence anyway, because it doesn't accomplish anything. And this idea behind it all, about [shrugs] overthrowing the Reichstag, it's just, it's just, it... defies any, any logic. It's not feasible, right? But anyway.

Terrorism accusation & plans for a coup​

Now, we get the feeling we're talking about two different worlds, don't we?​

At least.

At least two different worlds. Your world is that of the accused. And the prosecution is talking about terrorism, the intention to overthrow the state [Reuß smiles and nods], firing squads, mass murder, and the like. ... Now, of course you have to defend yourself against these accusations. Anything else would be absurd. But I have to ask you: How do you feel about these allegations?​

Absurd. Simply absurd.
Well, I don't want to... I don't want to be rude. But fabricating criminal offenses is prohibited under international law. Right? And that's my personal conviction. It may not be suitable for a public audience, but my personal conviction is based on Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires that the law as it stands be applied. And to play director, so to speak, making up crimes that never actually happened, is not permissible as I understand it.

Now, the indictments say that you had a whole lot of weapons, I think 377 or something like that, the exact number doesn't really matter, that you'd stockpiled quite a substantial amount of weapons and ammunition.​

Me.

You. At your castle, too.​

370 weapons?!

So the group as a whole had a large number of them, and-​

But the indictment doesn't even support that. There was one air rifle at my castle, which the children used to shoot with. An old break-barrel air rifle. They used it for target practice, right? And there was this... some little box, some kind of thing where they could shoot at a moving metal target. As far as I know, that was the only weapon there. Where are 300 weapons supposed to have been hidden?

Well, you're being accused of being the ringleader of a conspiracy.​

I see. But the weapons weren't found at my place, they were found at someone else's.

Yes.​

[shrugs] ... Well, I didn't have any weapons.

But as the ringleader of a conspiracy, you're now being held responsible for what other people do.​

That's indeed the case. That's, uh... back to this concept of an association, again...
I was also very... very surprised when I got to read in the press that they'd arrested some so-called "Reichsbürger" in northern or southern Germany. That was back in '23, when I was already here. Those people were then, so to speak, assigned to the association that I was supposedly in charge of. I don't know these people at all, right? So if weapons were found in the possession of people like that, I... unfortunately, I have no control over that.

§ 129a of the Criminal Code & the Think Tank concept​

As for you personally - Section 129a of the German Criminal Code, which is what they're going after you under, to put it in somewhat nonlegal terms, treats even the mere intent as a criminal act. So not a completed act, or even an attempted one, but, in a sense, an act that still exists only in someone's mind. ... Is that a fair characterization, or have I misunderstood something?​

I think you're absolutely right with that definition, although it's something I only understood once I was here in the penal- uh, correctional facility, and during the court proceedings. That's Section 129a, which was introduced into law, so to speak, in response to the terrorists of the [Red Army Faction]. And that interpretation, the way you just phrased it, was something I wasn't aware of. That merely talking about certain things...
So, to get right to the point, here's what actually happened: We- I was asked to set up this think tank at my house. Perhaps I can say a little more about that, because it was actually quite normal for me to- in an open house, to have these kinds of discussions with all sorts of different circles. But. If you talk about a so-called Earth Alliance, an imaginary one, because we now know it was imaginary, coming along and overthrowing the German government in a coup. And you talk about what you would- what you'd have to do, how you'd respond. Then that's a criminal offense.
... And to this day, I simply cannot wrap my head around that, because as I understand it, that violates Article 5 of the Basic Law and Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, concerning freedom of expression. If the two of us were having a conversation about what's constantly being reported in the press, that even politicians, even NATO... officers are saying they expect an attack by the Russian Federation starting in 2029. Well, if the two of us were out- out somewhere right now, sitting in a bar having a beer, we'd be saying, "What do we do? Do we stay here? Do we leave? What do we do?" And that's comparable to the situation I experienced, with one difference - the Earth Alliance is imaginary. It doesn't exist. Which we didn't know. We didn't know that.

We'll get to that in a moment. I've actually just found the number: 360 firearms, rifles, axes, although hardly any of that has come up during the trial.​

I don't have those.

You don't have them.​

That's easy enough to verify. I... I don't even know where they got that idea.

Let's come back to this point, because it's very important. I think, because... ordinarily, people assume that you get punished for an act.​

Correct.

Here, you're being accused of making an agreement to commit an act.​

Not even that. Yes, that's what I'm being accused of, yes. But even that never happened.]

Yes. But an agreement to commit a crime, why was that even necessary in the first place? You've had plenty of time to look into this. In the RAF trials, there were 40 people killed, or even more, people injured, there were bombings, there were shootings, there were attacks, all sorts of things, and it kept escalating. Those were actual acts, not agreements to commit them.​

Correct.

... So what's the point of this concept of an agreement to commit a crime?​

I suppose, [unintelligible] if someone plans a crime. But I never planned any agreement to commit a crime, and neither did the people sitting at my table. It was a civilian gathering. There was one person we believed was a representative of the Earth Alliance, the contact person for the Earth Alliance. The rest were civilians, lawyers, doctors, businesspeople, and so on.

Now, the allegation is that this was necessary to dismantle dangerous networks. After all, you were the head of the think tank, which involved quite a number of people.​

Well, "head of the think tank" is a nice term, but it doesn't reflect reality. Maybe I should explain... how I used my house, when you have a house that large.
I bought it back from the Gera water management authority... in 2000. It had been a small hunting lodge of its own. I said, having a big castle doesn't make sense these days, so keep it as small as possible.
But nevertheless, it was an open house. And I hosted many different groups. For example, I'm a motorsports enthusiast, and I wanted to revive Germany's oldest road racing circuit, the Schleizer Dreieck, and I even made a film about it. With Mr. Röhrl and Mr. Stuck and Jochen Mass and all the others. And then I managed to bring the management of the Nürburgring on board as a project development partner for the Schleizer Dreieck. And the Nürburgring had received authorization from the then Minister-President Beck to set up a... project development company with us. Any American racing organization would have paid millions for that. I just did it for the sheer enjoyment... of it.
So we had the Nürburgring's management as guests, along with the transportation minister of the state of Thuringia, a member of the state parliament, the mayor of Schleiz, and others. And I didn't... I didn't take on any particular role in that, even though I was the one who brought everyone together. I simply made my house available for these discussions. Right? And really, all I did was provide food and drinks. Or, when the-

I understand- sorry. I understand this concept of an open house-​

Yes, but so you understand what I meant by having an open house, even when the- when, for example, I was the patron of the Fürstlicher Hickory Golfclub Reuß. I let them use the house, too. I went somewhere else, welcomed the people there, came back to my house, provided them with food and drinks, and basically left them to their own devices. And that's how I understood the think tank too. I was asked to put together, so to speak, a civilian discussion group to talk about these things. Fine, then I'll make my house available for that. We can do that.
And now, all of a sudden, I'm the chief of a terrorist organization.

Right, okay. But there were some interesting things going on in this think tank, like the personal chef and the head of-​

Not at my house. [shakes his head]

Not at your house?​

No.

So there wasn't a chief of military staff or anything like that, either?​

No. Incidentally, there was also a film made about that. By colleagues of yours at ZDF. The so-called GEZ media, right? Just to say it outright. And they made up this story about some drunken party involving me. The whole thing was simply fabricated. With military people.
And now there was also testimony in court from one of them, I don't know if I'm allowed to mention his name, Mr. Börner, who said that it never happened. There was no such thing. We discussed matters at this civilian table. There was one person there as a representative of the military wing, if you will, because we believed he was the- the contact with the Earth Alliance. This drunken party never happened. They simply made it all up.

But there were several different groups, then? The military group, your civilian group?​

Yes.

Belief in the "Earth Alliance"​

You mentioned something about the Earth Alliance. Could you explain this concept of the Earth Alliance to us? Who is this Earth Alliance, and what connection does it have to you?​

Yes. [sighs] Looking back on it now, it's a bitter realization, of course. Because fundamentally, it was the result of complete disinformation. Deliberately spread over the Internet. And it started in 2018. That's when I first became aware of it. And that there was supposedly an- an Earth Alliance. As an offshoot of a- a cosmic federation. And its supposed goal was to restore sovereign states all over the world, starting with Germany. Consisting of various nations. Americans, Russians, and so on. Other nations. Who had supposedly joined forces after the Kennedy assassination, and said that they had to confront the so-called deep state, which was allegedly responsible for Kennedy's assassination.
Then there was an exercise planned for 2020, a... a military exercise called Defender, a NATO exercise. And during this exercise, according to what was being spread on the Internet, quite aggressively, actually, there was supposed to be a takeover.
The exercise never took place. But the information kept circulating afterward and became more insistent. With warnings of power outages, cosmic disruptions caused by solar- solar eruptions that would supposedly interfere with the Earth's magnetic field. And we prepared for that, too. We said "What do we do if we don't have electricity anymore?"

I heard you've got these pyramids in your garden.​

Yes, I do, but that's another subject. [smiles]
[both chuckle]

Pyramids are supposed to concentrate cosmic energy, right?​

Pyramids do quite a few things, yes, but for that... you're dealing with a different kind of physics, you see. And that physics isn't understood yet.

All right, so they didn't play much of a role here either. But the Earth Alliance? With supposedly vastly superior technology and power, and a secret U.S.-Russian military alliance, its goal was to restore sovereign states. What interest would the Americans, or the Russians for that matter, have in somehow bringing other states back into existence, assuming they no longer exist?​

Well, certainly not the countries themselves, as you described them, on a national level. Rather, individual members of those countries, whether... that's what we were told. We know today that it was all imaginary, that it didn't exist. So, I suppose they were military personnel from various countries, but they weren't acting on behalf of their respective countries. They were acting on behalf of this Earth Alliance, which in turn was supposed to have cosmic connections.

Cosmic connections, what does that mean?​

Well, I mean... the assumption is that the cosmos is teeming with life rather than being lifeless, and that there are, uh, civilizations out there in the cosmos that are more advanced than we are.

So, very much along the lines of Erich von Däniken, then, the great inventor of those stories about how Earth was... fertilized in all sorts of ways by extraterrestrial humans, right?​

"Fertilized" might be the wrong word, but genetically fine-tuned, so to speak. [chuckles]

Right, so that, in a sense, explains the superiority and the origins of the Earth Alliance. Which then comes into contact with earthly beings.​

Correct. But that's basically what we were sold, I mean-

What- who sold you that?​

On the Internet. And that's exactly the question. I've also asked myself, looking back now, who sold me this? Who was behind this disinformation terrorism on the internet? To confuse all of us. Which obviously worked, as we now know. Uh, who did this? Who has an interest in these things? Well, of course, I haven't discovered the actual truth about who's interested in doing this. And it seems to be a business.

What was it that led you to believe in this Earth Alliance for so long and pin your hopes on it? We can talk about the implications later. And what made you distance yourself from it now?​

I distanced myself from it earlier, back in 2000-and... uh, 22 I had already distanced myself from it, because we- because the things we'd been told never came to pass.

Well, the indictment says that you and your... I'm not sure what to call them without creating some kind of legal complication here. That you and the people you were talking with believed that after Queen Elizabeth II's death, the Earth Alliance would, shall we say, make its move.​

That I believed that is an insinuation. It's simply being claimed. I can't defend myself against it. It was on the internet, yes, absolutely. I even got phone calls about it [smiles]. "The Queen is dead. Is it starting now?" I don't know. I had no contact with this Earth Alliance. We... we were completely in the dark. And of course I didn't believe it. My- My wires are [amused] a little shorter than other people's.

So you didn't have a red telephone to Mars or anything.​

[smiles] No, of course not.
... The- The danger I faced, and I've already tried to explain this, was that I was operating in the realm of international law. Unfortunately, this gets a little technical now, I'm sorry, but there was a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1973 that the German Reich had not ceased to exist, but simply no longer had an administrative structure.
And that set off alarm bells for me. And this was confirmed again in 2021, in response to inquiries from the Green Party and the party of The Left. So it was reaffirmed fairly recently. And so I said, in a sense, this administrative structure of the Reich is a key issue and serves a key function for me. Why? Because, in pursuing restitution, I had to go back to my great-grandfather Heinrich XXVII, the last reigning Prince of Reuß. Who abdicated under an agreement in 1918-1919. So, if you will, that places him in the final days of the German Empire... That agreement is still relevant to me today. I actually have the first page of it here with me, if you'd like, from a collection of laws, yes.
And for me, it's a matter of day-to-day business. You might say, how can an agreement from 1918, 1919 be a matter of day-to-day business? Because, of course, it gives rise to claims. Claims under international law, constitutional law, and civil law.
So I had to look into all of that. I'll get back to the Alliance in a moment, even if I'm testing your patience, but it's simply complicated.
The- the chain of events, starting with the Principality of Reuß, which then became the People's State of Reuß, which in turn joined with the other principalities and duchies to form the state of Thuringia. That was back then. Then came the Weimar Republic, then came Hitler, then came the Federal Republic in 1945 with the Basic Law- sorry, 1949, with the Basic Law. And then came the so-called annexation of East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall. All different legal... stages. And whether that's legitimate or not, that chain of successive constitutional arrangements, is still of significance to me to this day, because of the agreement I just mentioned to you.
Because I wanted to know, regarding the restitution claims, who is my contractual counterpart?
Now along comes an Earth Alliance. For 30- well, up until my arrest, I had spent 32 years dealing with these matters. I had scaled back my business activities to the bare minimum for the sake of my family. And I had practically devoted myself entirely to these matters.

So, about restoring...​

Clarifying these issues, and also the case law on- the case law surrounding reunification. There was the Property Act, there was a Compensation and Equalization Benefits Act, all very dry stuff, I'm sorry. That's what I was- we naturally pursued legal action on that basis, including with a major law firm, Clifford Chance Pünder, during the first few years. Until I realized that they also have a hand in drafting legisla-

Yeah, that's the thing with big law firms.​

Thank you for confirming that. So I spent my time dealing with these matters and trying to... trying to establish legal succession. Under that agreement, an arbitration tribunal should have been established, but that simply never happened. So, if you will, a standstill in the administration of justice.

Let's put it this way: You hit a dead end.​

No.

I don't want to pass judgment-​

No.

Nothing happened. You never obtained any legal redress.​

A lot has happened. But that isn't publicly known. They want to portray me as a loser - fine, they can do that. But that's not how it is. Um... Let me explain one more thing first.
The danger involving the- involving the imaginary Earth Alliance was, so to speak, my activities under international law, through the restoration of two constituent states of the German Empire. Under international law, it's an indisputable principle that international law, so to speak, only becomes effective or not through recognition by other nations. Just look at Gaza. The Federal Republic [of Germany] does not recognize it. France and Britain do, and so it goes, among the 192 countries we have. In other words, has a state structure been established under international law, yes or no? That's essentially up to the other nations to decide.
So, now along comes an Earth Alliance and stages a coup. Under international law, you cannot establish a sovereign state through a coup. That was the contradiction. For me.
And that was the problem. Here I've spent 32 years devoting an enormous amount of effort, energy, and money to resolving these matters for my family, and now some... organization called the "Earth Alliance" comes along and destroys these structures I've been working on. Under international law. Through a coup. That cannot establish sovereignty. Those were the discussions I was having.

Yes, but you should have been more careful there. I mean, at first glance, you could see the Earth Alliance as a potential ally, right? But you're saying that because of the coup, it is inherently not an ally, and actually destroys your whole chain of reasoning.​

It was never an ally. And that's what we- of course I didn't discuss the whole framework... the restoration of two constituent states of the- of the Reich at the- at this think tank table, because these people had been sent my way. Through- through this whole Earth Alliance business, people involved in this Earth Alliance business-

Who sent them your way?​

Well, that was at those meetings we had in Helmbrechts, which are also known to the court. That's how I came to be asked to organize this roundtable. I said "I don't know anyone who'd be willing to do that, I don't have anybody." "Well, we'll bring those people along."
And there was only one person that I put for- that I brought in, and that was this female physician. Because during the COVID period, I was interested in what it all meant and what role it had played. Everyone else was simply sent my way, and the people kept changing, too. [makes a rotating motion with his hands] There was never any such- a council has a fixed structure, and we never had anything like that.

But when you say "they were sent my way," somebody must have said "Dear Prince Reuß, invite people to your open house, invite Mr. So-and-so or Ms..."​

There were people like that. There was this Mr. Tscherneschek, for example, and Mr. von Pescatore, who told me I should set up this roundtable- and Ms. Leiding. Ms. Leiding was, so to speak, one of the, uh... one of the women involved right from the very beginning, who had already established these- these- these contacts back in '21, in Buch am Wald, at Mr. Tscherneschek's place. That goes back a long- I didn't even know them back then. I didn't know any of these people yet. And that's when it had already been decided that these structures were needed. Which I knew nothing about, that I was somehow... uh... well...

So you're saying you suddenly found yourself part of an organization.​

That's right.

But that organization did exist, then. And you were part of it.​

The structure existed before that. I didn't know it was a structure. I've given you those examples involving the think tank, how, to me, it was always an open house. To me, that wasn't an organizational structure. And certainly not one under § 129a.

If you follow the proceedings, there was something, a military staff, which, if I understand correctly, is being tried in Munich, right?​

... I believe so, although one of- or at least one of those people is also in Stuttgart.

Yes. And... what would they have needed you for? Why did they need you?​

... ...

I mean, if this was the brainchild of another group of people, what did they need you for?​

They concocted this idea that they needed me in order to derive some kind of peace treaty arrangement from the- from the legal framework of 1871 to 1918, the German Empire. That's what they'd worked out among themselves... put together. And unfortunately, this can be traced back to an initiative of my own. In February 2019, I gave a speech at the Worldwebforum in Zurich, and- I appealed to the then American president, during his first term in office, asking him to enter into peace treaty... negotiations with us.
Which, of course, is a terrible thing to do, talking about peace. You're not supposed to do that. As it also says in the Two Plus Four Treaty, nobody wants to talk about peace.
And he did respond on one occasion, when Ms. Merkel visited him, and said "We still have this matter involving Germany and Japan and many other countries"... His predecessors should have resolved that. What did he mean?
The Federal Republic, like Japan, is still listed as an enemy state in the UN Charter. And these enemy-state provisions allow us- allow the Allies, in the absence of a peace treaty, to march into this country whenever they want. And that's an uncomfortable situation when you're aware of it.
The current political establishment says "that's obsolete." Well. If it's obsolete, they could just remove it.

Accusation of child rescue & alleged DUMBs [Deep Underground Military Bases]​

Yes, we have the alliances- but let me come back to one point. You say there was no organizational structure, certainly not a dangerous one, and that you may have happened to be part of various discussion groups, but not in the sense of an organization. Now, I think it's undisputed that at least one concrete action took place, namely the payment of substantial sums of money to rescue children from so-called DUMBs. Apparently, somewhere between 50,000 euros, which is confirmed, and 100,000 euros, which isn't, was paid to two Swiss brothers, Sandro and Claudio Ricci, with instructions to search for children in underground tunnel systems, where they were supposedly being killed and used for horrific purposes. Was that part of it, too?​

That was one aspect of the Earth Alliance. And that's also where a certain sympathy for it developed.
I've already explained the antipathy, which had to do with the- with the establishment of sovereignty through force, a kind of sovereignty that doesn't exist. It doesn't exist under international law.
The sympathy arose when we were assured that, um, these rescues in the tunnels, in these DUMBs, meaning that there was an organized military structure involved, something quite different from what we read about in the media every day, that the Alliance wanted to put a stop to all of that. Then, at the urging of- of Mr. Eder and Pescatore, who had also asked me in Helmbrechts to set up this think tank, I agreed to support the surveillance of a particular site, which was believed to be in Switzerland, uh, where these- these things were supposedly taking place.
And I provided 50,000 euros, actually not to the Ricci brothers, but to Eder, who then designated the Ricci brothers as the recipients. That's what I did. But not 100,000, only 50,000.
Mr. Eder then came to see me again in Thuringia on January 5, 2022, and, to set the record straight, he wasn't there to report on what had happened to my 50,000 euros. Instead, he wanted to raise additional funds. I refused. There was no further payment because there were no results to show for it.
Um, later on, I tried to organize a so-called sponsors' group, uh, where all of us who had been taken in, who had, uh, given money because of this Earth Alliance fantasy, could get together and say "What do we do now? Do we file fraud complaints? Do we draw up loan agreements and demand repayment in monthly installments of 500 euros? Or what do we do?" There were several people who had lost money. There was a- a discussion about demanding our money back, but nothing actually came of it. Because then the arrests happened. In December. That's how it was.
No, I gave 50,000 euros, just to repeat that, and Mr. Eder's attempt to get additional money from me went nowhere. It was only during the trial that I discovered, through what I was able to read and hear, that as much as 500,000 euros had been paid. But by that point, I was no longer involved.

And can you explain to me what these DUMBs are all about? Or what prompted you to actually put up such a substantial sum of money and hand it over?​

Independently of these people I'm now on trial with, in the years before that, I had already, um... received reports. To this day, I don't know why I was sent these reports, in the form of emails, describing such things to me, supposedly from military personnel. Who claimed to have rescued 630 or 640 children in three days and were now moving on to the Memel region to do the same thing there. And I said, "Why are they sending this to me? I was a businessman, right?" I was dealing with my family's restitution claims. "Why would anyone send me a message like this?"
And then, later on, there was also, uh, one from Dr. Ritter, the physician, who personally wrote me a letter. It's part of the case files. In it, she said she had a patient, a caretaker, who was responsible for 500 children, well, what do you call them, children without parents or guardians. Who had suddenly disappeared overnight. And then Dr. Ritter told me there had been explosions, and that she'd even had a crack appear in her house. And I'd heard about these kinds of incidents independently of the organizational structures you want to talk about. These- these incidents.
And then I had, quite by chance, a woman who worked as a coach visiting my office, um. Uh, her name is Dunja Schmidt, she's from the Taunus region. And I showed her this- this email and asked, "What do you make of something like this?" I couldn't make any sense of it at all. I still wonder to this day, why would someone receive something like that?
Long story short, these things were already firmly embedded in my mind. These children being harmed and abused. And then, of course, there were all these stories constantly circulating on the internet about Hillary Clinton and, I don't know, Pizzagate and all those things. I was very interested in uncovering what was going on. That's why I gave them the money. And it was quite a lot of money. Right? Even for me, that's a great deal of money. And, um, but... I was interested in trying- in trying, so to speak, not to stand in the Earth Alliance's way when it came to rescuing these children, either. But rather to support those efforts.

Well, giving money away isn't illegal, much less a criminal offense. You're perfectly entitled to do that. And of course, it happens quite often that people in this country get taken for a ride by scammers from Nigeria. We all know those letters: "You'll receive 500,000 euros if you just transfer me 100,000 first." You know, those kinds of schemes. And a surprising number of people actually fall for them.​

[weakly] Yes.

Did you fall for a scam like that? Would you say it was all a load of nonsense, and now you've unfortunately learned your lesson and are poorer for it?​

I definitely fell for it, but I realized it very late. In fact, it wasn't until my defense attorney [chuckles] pointed out to me that it was a fraudulent organization.
So that's a little strange to me. As a businessman, I really should have caught on sooner. The only thing I did realize was, I said "I'm not putting any more money into this." Okay, fine, so my business instincts kicked in somehow, right?
But I couldn't make sense of it- I didn't know about the other sums of money, as I've already said. That there was a- that there was a whole method behind it. ... That- that was something I only understood during the trial.

You're a successful businessman, as you said yourself. And yet they managed to, let's put it in good old Frankfurt slang, pull a fast one on you?​

Yes. Why do people donate money to help- to help stray cats and dogs?

Well, that's because they want to help those dogs and cats.​

Yes. I wanted to help the children. ...

Do you still believe there's some kernel of truth to all of this?​

I just showed you a newspaper, the Zurich, uh... uh, what's it called again...

Neue Zürcher Zeitung?​

The Zurich newspaper from Wednesday- Wednesday of this week, which shows, now this isn't necessarily satanic pedophilia, but pedophilia, with pictures of children in cages, in this reputable newspaper. Does that have anything to do with belief?

No, that child sexual abuse exists, and unfortunately is widespread in Germany, too, including in political circles, that does appear to be the case, or rather, it is the case.​

And that's what I was interested in, shining a light on it and bringing it out into the open.

Tichy: But what does any of this have to do with the matter at hand? What role does it play in your criminal proceedings for high treason?​

... The 50,000 euros?

Yes, yes.​

Well, the court obviously wants to convict us under § 129a of the Criminal Code, and it regards this pay- this payment of money, or donation, or whatever you want to call it, gift, as, uh, a contribution toward the purchase of weapons, which would then be used for whatever purpose. I mean, the allegation is still that the Reichstag was supposed to be stormed. But there was no such thing. There was no plan, and there still hasn't been one to this day. Right?
And we're all people who plan things, including my- I plan- that's how I operate as a graduate engineer. And believe me, before I build something or anything like that, there's a plan, isn't there? There wasn't one. Certainly not from me, and nobody at my table had drawn up one, either. And as far as I know, no such plans were ever found among the other groups that supposedly make up this organization, either.
The accusation is simply that this money, um, could have been used for that purpose, to buy weapons or something like that.

So then it would actually have been a misuse of the funds.​

Correct.

And did you ever suspect that Mr. Eder and others might be misusing the money to buy weapons?​

I believed Mr. Eder. Mr. Eder is still convincing, even now. Even now, as I'm heading into my fifth year in custody. The- the dedication Mr. Eder showed, because he's also had personal contact with children who, uh, were abused. And there was also one of my co-defendants at my house who played a tape recording describing the suffering those children had endured. And I can tell you, something like that really knocks the wind out of you, right?

I believe that, yes.​

And it's- it's like what you brought up about the grandparent scam, where- grandparents get phone calls and the scammers appeal to them by talking about their grandchildren being in distress, right? So that seems to be some kind of vulnerability in the human psyche, that we somehow have no resistance to. We're not resilient when it comes to that. We react as human beings with a soul, I'd say. Others don't, but people with a soul do react.
And in Eder's case, I do believe that he genuinely continued to believe in it, because he was also closer to these alleged events and had described them. What interested me, and this is no secret at all, was the, uh, this... this... connection between satanic child abuse and, uh, the blackmail of political figures through those acts, um, yes.

What I'm trying to find out is what they actually needed you for.​

Good question. ... I think they imagined that they needed me because having a prince around is quite convenient for all sorts of- all sorts of things. Someone like that can be a useful wild card. You can sometimes put him out front and use him for one thing or another, and for publicity, too. Because there are also conversations or intercepted telephone calls where they were talking about me, and naturally about matters I knew absolutely nothing about. They also used me to recruit people.
The most regrettable example was the nondisclosure agreement prepared by Mr. van Heukelum and his associates, which they had drawn up entirely on their own and then distributed at demonstrations with the initials "PR" for "Prince Reuß", even though I never signed a single one of those documents. It could just as easily have stood for Rüdiger Pescatore. We never found out. That really was criminal fraud, associating me with those documents. That's point A.
Point B: They also combined this with other business activities, because these people were selling forged vaccination certificates and, um, government bonds at those demonstrations. They combined these documents with criminal activities and used my name in the process. And that is actual fraud. But I only found out about it through some so-called soldiers who visited me in Thuringia and told me that these things had been distributed by the hundreds, so to speak. I think about 160 of these documents had been handed out at demonstrations.
And then we tried to respond, and I said at my- at my think tank "I'm going to report this to the police myself now." They probably would have put me in a straitjacket, thinking "What kind of story is this?"
And I did ask the lawyers sitting at my table how I should proceed, given my idea of going to the police and reporting it myself. The thought of going to the police in Bad Lobenstein, in that little village of 2,000 people, didn't quite sit right with me. I said "alright, then I'll drive to Frankfurt and do it there." But they talked me out of it. They said "No, we'll sort this out some other way." Except it never got sorted out.
So, from my point of view, of course...... I was used. My identity was exploited, right?

And you were defrauded.​

That goes without saying, yes.

And you keep referring to these people who did all this. Are there any names?​

Yes, I'm a little cautious about naming names, because, well, alright, the ones who are on trial are already known.
[Tichy: So, the way you're describing it, there were at least two groups. There were these soldiers, the military side, and then there were people who were more interested in money. Or did those groups overlap?]
They overlapped completely. ... But that's something I only learned during the trial. I didn't know that before. And I still assume that when Mr. Eder came to visit me the second time, Mr. von Pescatore was there, too, when he asked for more money, that he genuinely wanted to help those children. I still believe that, because he was very convincing.
Except. That's when my business instincts kicked in and told me "Well, where's any actual evidence?" They did have photographs of some... um... stones in the- in the ground, which they- which they claimed were evidence. But he didn't show me anything at all. He simply asked for money.
He had, of course, completely lost his way when it came to handling money, and when I then- I mean, he'd also sacrificed his own- his own house and everything, taken out mortgages, I believe. And even among my co-defendants, there were people like Mr. Heuer, who gave up his life insurance policy to support this idea of rescuing those children. Just imagine that. And another person, a cousin of Ms. Windeisen, contributed 150,000 euros to put an end to these activities. So I wasn't alone in feeling that way emotionally.
That it was a fraud... as I've already told you, I didn't realize that until much later. And it was also only through subsequent analysis that I learned that- that Marco Heukelum, whose... whose personal background, his life- his life story, I naturally hadn't known, had multiple prior criminal convictions. That he wasn't exactly- exactly particular about telling the truth became clear to us over the course of the summer of '22. And that's why this so-called council, which was really a think tank, was dissolved.

And there's a written piece as well, translation, you know the drill

---

Prince Reuß: The fifth Christmas in prison without a verdict​

Prince Reuß has been held in pretrial detention for years. Yet according to observers of the trial, the evidence for the alleged coup plot remains thin. Just how dangerous was the group really, and how far should the state be allowed to go in prosecuting supposed enemies of the state?​

TE was able to visit the man in a Frankfurt prison whom federal prosecutors accuse of leading a terrorist organization bent on violently overthrowing the existing political order. According to the indictment, he allegedly planned a military coup and was prepared to accept countless deaths in the process. All of this is laid out in an indictment running to more than 1.3 million pages, which, as a matter of sheer logic, no one could possibly have read in its entirety by now. A Kafkaesque prospect.

Just days before TE's prison visit, a witness testified at the trial that, during his active service, he had arrested terrorists and therefore had a very clear idea of what terrorists were like. The witness, an officer in an elite paratrooper unit and an instructor with the German Armed Forces' Special Forces Command (KSK), said that the defendants in Frankfurt did not look like terrorists to him. But what do terrorists look like? Is Prince Reuß, who appears to be enduring his imprisonment with admirable discipline, really the leader of a terrorist organization that the federal prosecutor makes him out to be?

Of course, appearances alone cannot be the basis for a verdict. The court understands this as well, and since early 2024 it has been striving to conduct a fair trial in a purpose-built, lightweight structure erected specifically for the proceedings at enormous expense. Yet these efforts are undermined by security measures that seem downright absurd. For example, the defendants are subjected to humiliating inspections of every bodily orifice before and after each court session.

Federal prosecutors have likewise failed to present any convincing evidence so far. To this day, they have presented no evidence whatsoever at trial of the massive weapons arsenals that featured so prominently in press reports following the arrests. A witness whom federal prosecutors apparently had high hopes would bolster their case quickly proved to be more than a little dubious. The tedious reading aloud of meticulously intercepted communications did little to confirm or reinforce the alleged suspicions, except in the minds of those who already believe that a trial in this case is entirely unnecessary.

This sluggish spectacle is occasionally interrupted by a defense attorney who gives the impression that he might have dozed off during the proceedings and who, unlike all his colleagues, apparently believes he can get by without a portable electronic computing device. Every now and then, this attorney jolts the proceedings awake with vehement, almost impolitely delivered motions, generally demanding Prince Reuß's release. Recently, the court responded to what must have been his tenth such motion by now with a 140-page response. Other defense attorneys are less than thrilled, fearing that the court may have already sketched out its eventual verdict in those pages.

All the defendants questioned by the court so far have stated that they intended to wait until a galactic alliance consisting of Putin and Trump, backed by humanoid aliens, had dismantled the structure of the Federal Republic of Germany. Only then did they intend to step in and lend their support. Obviously, it takes an extensive legal education to figure out how any of this could actually constitute a criminal offense.

But with more than two and a half years having passed without any truly convincing evidence to substantiate the sweeping charges, suspicion is instead mounting that some of the defendants simply intended to defraud the others. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the alleged organization never even had a common objective in the first place. Some apparently wanted to extract payments by peddling horror stories about supposedly abducted children, others wanted to rescue those very children, and Prince Reuß wanted his property restored to him. At this point, the question becomes unavoidable: How can anyone possibly be the leader and ringleader of an organization or group whose members have such wildly divergent objectives?

The following example illustrates just how different the alleged group's interests were. What the Office of the Federal Prosecutor General calls the group's military wing spent most of its time searching for tunnels in Germany and Switzerland where children were supposedly being held captive. According to the military faction, the children's blood was to be extracted and used to concoct an elixir that would supposedly prolong the lives of wealthy individuals, movie stars, and politicians. Prince Reuß donated 50,000 euros toward rescuing these children. Considering how many people donate money to help cats and dogs, this was a noble cause.

Federal prosecutors have also failed so far to substantiate one of the most serious allegations: the supposed plan to storm the Reichstag building. The intelligence agencies, police, and Interior Ministry apparently also believed that the Reichstag was never in any danger. Had these agencies regarded the intercepted conversations as evidence of a genuine threat, security at the Reichstag would necessarily have been stepped up. Apparently, however, that never happened. The intelligence agencies, police, and Interior Ministry therefore evidently concluded that the acts Prince Reuß and his co-defendants are accused of at trial had never actually been planned and consequently could never have been carried out.

And this raises a monstrous thought. Could it be that Prince Reuß is more victim than perpetrator? A victim of politicians who realized that the catastrophic consequences of their policies were becoming increasingly apparent, and who therefore wanted to manufacture an enemy within to distract from the ever more obvious and horrifying consequences of their own policies? Identifying Islamism as a threat would, of course, be out of the question, because the inevitable follow-up question would be why these Islamists are in Germany in the first place. And that is a question none of the governing parties wants to be asked, much less answer.

When thinking of those chiefly responsible for these policies, Angela Merkel immediately comes to mind. Like all leftists, she was quick to resort to a tried-and-true tactic: identifying Nazis and right-wingers as enemies within. Then there was an interior minister who published an article in an Antifa newspaper, Antifa being an organization that has been designated a terrorist organization in the United States. Might such people have found it more than a little convenient to have a prince with a castle, who occasionally met with former military officers and fortune tellers and talked all sorts of nonsense with them on those occasions, and who could then be arrested in an operetta-like spectacle involving 3,000 police officers, squandering resources and generating maximum publicity in front of the cameras of a press corps that had been tipped off in advance?

As so often happens with trial by public opinion, a label comes in handy. It saves people the tedious work of actually substantiating dubious accusations with evidence. Prince Reuß has been slapped with the label "Reichsbürger". Supposedly, he rejects the German state. In reality, he pays taxes, has held a passport and a driver's license. Speaking with Roland Tichy, he explained that a country's status under international law is not entirely irrelevant when it comes to claims for restitution. But apparently, merely asking what Germany's current status under international law actually is is enough to get you branded a Reichsbürger. Just how absurd this label really is could also be seen, if anyone cared to look, in the fact that he is married to a Muslim woman whom he met shortly after she fled Iran's religious terror regime.

Despite the meager evidence presented so far, legal observers of the trial expect a prison sentence of at least ten years. After all, how else could such a prolonged period of pretrial detention possibly be justified? But that would potentially mean knowingly accepting the possibility that Prince Reuß could die behind bars. What would you call such a punishment, especially considering that it is prohibited in Germany for good reason? While migrant offenders, particularly young migrant offenders, who have committed the most serious crimes and whose dangerousness is both evident and documented are treated leniently by the courts, Prince Reuß, who hasn't so much as broken a window, is afforded neither proportionality nor leniency. This is made possible by Sections 129 and 129a of the German Criminal Code, the RAF-era provisions that make even alleged planning, far removed in time from any actual offense and with no possibility of legally recognized withdrawal, grounds for criminal prosecution.

In a country governed by the rule of law, however, a court should aspire to seek justice rather than merely apply statutory provisions. If Prince Reuß were convicted in this trial solely on the basis of these two sections, it would amount to nothing less than an admission that the charges for which he has been indicted and held in pretrial detention for over four years - plotting a violent coup while knowingly accepting the possibility of countless deaths - cannot be proven. It would be tantamount to a declaration of his innocence with respect to the allegations in the indictment.



Section 129
Sections 129 and 129a of the German Criminal Code are found in legislation dating back to the RAF era, legislation concerned not with crimes already committed but with the preventive prosecution of offenses presumed to be committed in the future. It gives prosecutors and courts an extraordinarily powerful instrument. Following its introduction in 1976, these provisions sparked considerable public controversy because they made it possible to prosecute individuals who, under the criteria of the Criminal Code as it had previously stood, had done nothing criminally wrong.

Even purely theoretical agreements to commit a possible crime can become grounds for criminal prosecution. For criminal liability under Sections 129 and 129a of the Criminal Code, it is irrelevant whether the individuals concerned would actually have been capable of committing a serious offense such as storming the Reichstag building. It is enough that they are alleged to have planned such an act. What makes Sections 129 and 129a of the Criminal Code distinctive is that, unlike all other provisions of the Criminal Code, criminal liability does not begin with an attempt - that is, taking a direct step toward committing the offense - but at a much earlier stage. Following this logic, Sections 129 and 129a of the Criminal Code are designed to enable the preventive dismantling of dangerous organizations, even before any concrete offenses can be committed, and regardless of whether the material and technical means to actually carry out those offenses exist in the first place.

---

comments section, some translations, you know the drill

• The real hardened criminals, in my opinion - like a certain minister with an armband, for example - are still walking around free and will never face criminal charges. That tells you everything you need to know about the quality of our "rule of law."
• Sections 129 and 129a of the German Criminal Code should be abolished because they are incompatible with the rule of law.
  • Before abolishing them, we need to put them to use. Against the Federal Prosecutor General. Against the people in the ministries who give him his orders. Against the politicians who are deliberately destroying the country and selling it out not just to Brussels, but to Islamic terror as well.
    And against the judges who went along with it. A complete denazification, a purge of all the leftist collaborators, ringleaders, and conspirators.
    • Above all, we need to go after the political parties that have "turned the state into their own personal spoils."
      Oh, wait, subsection (3) explicitly rules that out...
• And some incompetent minister is whining about supposedly having been treated inhumanely.
• Who the hell writes a 1.3-million-page indictment? AI??????
  • Diligence, loyalty, and stupidity - the virtues of the German civil service.
    They're impervious to arguments, incapable of recognizing their own mistakes, and their diligence only serves to maximize the damage.
    AI can certainly help, but even without it, the German justice system is perfectly capable of making people's lives a living hell.
    • Or, as Elon would put it:
      Five years working in government = brain death.
• This whole thing is a farce, just like the Ballweg case.
  Especially when rapists are getting off with lenient sentences because they're supposedly making good progress integrating into society and have secured an apprenticeship.
• I wonder how they're going to justify a verdict in this case. This is going to end very badly for the judiciary. The pretrial detention is in blatant violation of the German Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure. This is arbitrary state action to protect Faeser, who demanded these proceedings in the first place.
  • Assuming there even is a verdict. They're obviously having a very hard time coming up with anything plausible. Maybe they're just waiting for the man to die in pretrial detention. Then the problem would take care of itself.
• Has Germany really sunk to this? The man has been sitting in prison for four years without a verdict. "Political Honkas" get a lenient seven-year sentence after being convicted. Gisela Friedrichsen, the well-known veteran court reporter, has been highly critical of what's being done to this old man. You can watch it on 3sat Kultur.
  On a purely human level: The old gentleman doesn't have many years left. And every year the state steals from him counts several times over. But apparently this woke state only has compassion for migrants...
  Ballweg was thrown into pretrial detention over peanuts, until even the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court ruled that the nine months he spent locked up were unlawful. In the end, it was less than 20 euros in tax evasion that brought his life here in Germany to an end. He was compensated for his pretrial detention! Given the legal machinery the prosecutors used against him, one could almost get the impression that he was really locked up for "thinking outside the box" rather than for tax evasion and all the rest of it...
  So, dear AfD supporters: You'll soon be spending several years in pretrial detention yourselves, just for "thinking outside the box."
  Where the hell is Amnesty???
  If you're young and still have options, the only thing left to do is leave this country.
• At this point, Prince Reuß obviously has to remain behind bars. Otherwise, he might travel to the United States, where President Trump could recognize him as Germany's legitimate head of state with enormous fanfare.
  And Trump would surely follow through by giving the Owl and Erich Merz the Maduro treatment. Putin would then confirm that everything was perfectly legitimate.
  What? You think that's completely far-fetched and insane? So do I.
  But our rulers are terrified of exactly that.
• "Of course, appearances alone cannot be the basis for a verdict."
  Oh, but they certainly can in states that trample the rule of law. And those states can do far worse.
• A show trial, just like in the Third Reich. Typically German.
• It's just like the old GEZ. [Germany's former broadcasting fee collection agency]
  You didn't need to own a radio or television - the mere possibility of receiving broadcasts was enough to make you liable for the fee.
  How long before you're no longer allowed to enter a store wearing a jacket with pockets, because you might slip some merchandise into them?
  Or better yet, store owners could simply stuff your pockets with merchandise and charge you for it. Your own damn fault for walking into the store wearing a jacket with pockets.