Germany's "Reichsbürger" (Reich Citizens) - former West Germany's under reported role

On Wednesday, a SWAT team of the Bavaria police went to the home of a man to confiscate his firearms. The man shot four officers before he was overcome and arrested.

One officer died of the injuries sustained in the raid.

The shooter is reported to be a so-called "Reichsbürger" (Reich Citizens), which makes this incident the first one resulting in a deadly firefight between a Reich citizen and police.

Who are these Reich citizens?

Short version: people who believe the German state is not legitimate.

The term "Reich" indicates that their ideology is rooted in the first half of the 20th century, when Germany officially was a "Reich", that of the Kaiser or the infamous Third Reich.

A brochure by the German Waldorf schools describes the Reich citizens as follows:
“a marketplace of mismatched ideological components” combining “antisemitism, vegetarianism, belief in UFOs, conspiracy theories, and feel-good esotericism,” in which “proclamations of humanist sentiment and populist nationalism can merge together.” This is not a uniquely German phenomenon. In a US context, the movement is comparable in some ways to the “sovereign citizens” subculture with its anti-government resentments, who dream of “freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth, and life without licenses, fees or laws,” in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its more extreme versions, such as Posse Comitatus organizations or the notion that Americans live under a “Zionist Occupation Government,” are often intertwined with regional and ethnic-racial separatism.

The movement's main argument is that the current German state is illegitimate. They variously claim that the last sovereign German nation (the Third Reich) has never ceased to legally exist and/or that Germany continues to exist in its pre-1937 borders.

While it is easy to dismiss this thinking as denial of history or plain bullshit, successive West German governments and even current mainstream politicians have, at least partially, upheld some notions and policies that Reich citizens use to this day to feed their narrative.


1. Pre-1937 border maps in schools
Maps used in every single West German school well into the 1970s showed the German territories to the East of the river Oder with dotted lines and under the labels 'temporarily under Polish administration' as well as 'temporarily under Russian administration' (the area now known as the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad).
Questioning these earned you the designation of radical or traitor.

2. Judgement by West Germany's constitutional court in 1973
The Federal Constitutional Court had to decide on what is arguably the cornerstone treaty between West Germany and East Germany regarding statehood and borders. While declaring the treaty to be legal and thus making the continued thaw in Cold War relations possible, the court used a legal twist exploited to this day by the Reich citizens.
Wikipedia summarizes: The judgement held that the 1949 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz) itself assumes that the Reich, as a subject of international law, despite the German Instrument of Surrender and the Allied occupation, had survived the collapse of Nazi Germany, but is incapable of acting as a state because it lacks any organization, such as governmental authorities.

3. The power of refugee associations
Millions of Germans lost their homeland in the East as a result of the second World War. Their associations, mostly affiliated with the conservative parties, in then West Germany were opposed to giving up their ancestral homes and fiercely opposed the Cold War policies that eventually recognized the historical facts.

4. Mr. Schaeuble's history class & the side-stepped constitution
Conservative CDU stalwart and current German finance minister Schaeuble is one of those modern politicians who show off their acumen by touting out that Germany has not been independent since 1945. The German constitution described itself as 'temporary', proclaiming Berlin as the capital at a time when no one reasonably expected Berlin to ever become the capital of a single state called Germany again. The constitution also stated that a new constitution would be drafted and put to a referendum of the people after reunification. This provision was side stepped by the government after the fall of the Iron Curtain, giving Reich citizens yet another talking point.

It is perhaps noteworthy - little known inside Germany, and pretty much unknown outside the country - that East Germany, aka. the bad socialists who ultimately went away, never endorsed or promoted any of these.

Since much of the most visible right wing activity after German re-unification has taken place in states of the former East Germany, the deep roots of the Reich citizen movement in the West can be happily ignored, it seems.

Of course, nationalist or 'sovereign citizen' movements do not require solid historical facts and events to flourish. They will either go back as far in time as needed to find their arguments or simply invent them.

The craziest German conspiracy theory illustrates this.

But letting the West German governments, thinkers, and media off the hook for the Reich citizens movement would be glossing over some of its deepest roots.