BERLIN – EPrince Heinrich XIII of Reussscion of a 700-year-old noble family that ruled a tiny East German state, was a relatively unknown figure until Wednesday, when he was named one of the bosses of a group accused of plotting to overthrow the German government.

Earlier this year, his family members publicly distanced themselves from him, according to MDR, a local public broadcaster, after the prince publicly met with a local mayor known to sympathize with the reichsburg movementa far-right group that denies the legitimacy of the modern German state.

The mayor was suspended from office after assaulting a journalist.

“I fear he is now a conspiracy theorist, a confused old man,” Heinrich XIV de Reuss, speaking on behalf of the House of Reuss, told MDR at the time, adding that Heinrich XIII, 71, had severed all ties with the family for more than a decade.

The male members of the various branches of the family are traditionally all addressed as Heinrich, with the speaker not being a son of Heinrich XIII.

The House of Reuss reigned until 1918 in a principality around Gera, in what is today Thuringia, which was incorporated into the German Empire.

In modern Germany, hereditary nobles have no special legal status;

their titles carry no formal weight, but are still sometimes used as part of names.

The prince, whose professional website calls him Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss and says he offers “Coordination of Business Interests,” has worked as a top-tier real estate agent.

He was arrested in Frankfurt (Germany), where he has an apartment and offices in the exclusive West End district.

Under Germany’s strict privacy laws, the authorities only release the initials of the suspects’ last names, but the name they gave him – “Heinrich XIII PR” – and the photos and details of the arrests clarified his identity.

A Russian national identified as Vitalia B., who according to the German press was the romantic partner of the prince, and another accomplice identified as Norbert G., were arrested near the prince’s manor in the surroundings of Bad Lobenstein in Thuringia.

Police also raided his castle, where the plotters occasionally met, the MDR reported.

According to media reports, the prince allegedly funded Some of the group activities

Over the years, the prince, whose great-grandfather was the last ruler of the line until he abdicated at the end of World War I, had been at pains to maintain family history and burial sites.

Born in West Germany during German partition, he became active in the region ruled by his ancestors after reunification, overseeing an excavation for an ancestor’s grave in 2014 and renovating a local theatre.

But his interest in conspiracy theories and theirs anti-Semitic tendencies they were also well documented.

In January 2019, he gave a talk at the WorldWebForum in Zurich entitled “Experience the rise and fall of the blue blood elite”.

In the 15-minute speech, he lashed out at the Rothschild family and claimed that World War I was forced upon the German Kaiser by international financial interests—both common anti-Semitic arguments—and that modern democratic Germany was only an illusion.

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