Russia would be the first country to recognize the new state. The defendant already had an idea of how he would start a conversation with President Putin: he planned to sail with a colleague across the Baltic Sea to Kaliningrad and raise the flag of the German Empire there. He wanted to ask the Russian navy, which would undoubtedly have arrested him, to take him straight to the Kremlin. There he would have discussed everything personally with Putin.
In the end it didn’t get that far. Last November, the 66-year-old was arrested in the Bad Bramstedt area, where he lives with his family. Now he sits in the Hanze Higher Regional Court in a light beige coat, an inconspicuous elderly person with sparse remaining hair and a light gray beard who enjoys spending time with his little granddaughter and uses his shuttle service to transport tourists from the Schleswig-Holstein region to Hamburg airport. The Public Prosecution Service accuses him of high treason and supporting a terrorist group: he is said to have encouraged the men and women in their coup plans who have been accused of being terrorists before the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz for a year. They form the so-called Kaiserreich group, which became famous when they tried to kidnap Health Minister Karl Lauterbach from a talk show.