Please Rise for the King of Germany

the Reichberger movement, whose members believed Germany doesn't exist. Reichbergers print their own passports, they often refused to pay taxes, and they cloud courts with paperwork along the same lines as the US Sovereign Citizen movement. While King Peter's dominion boast more than thirt hundred subjects who live in a sprawling compound in Wittenburg that's sixty miles southwest of Berlin. They also have their own health care system and currency.

And Jason money is exactly where things kind of start to get really interesting here because King Peter, well, he has also been accused of embezzling more than one point three million euros from some once loyal subjects. It's a great story. Please rise for the King of Germany. Peter Fitzek was a leading light in the Reichsburger movement, which denies Germany's very existence. He founded a kingdom and opened a bank. Then the German government started asking where the

money went. By David Govie, Herbert Peter Fitzek is the King of Germany at fifty four. He has the ponytail and square jaw of an eighties movie terrorist, or perhaps a karate instructor, which in fact he was before ascending to the throne. Like other monarchs, Peter tends to be identified by his first name. His dominion offers its own passport, currency, and health care plan, and it boasts more than thirteen hundred subjects, some of whom live in a sprawling compound

in Wittenburg, sixty miles southwest of Berlin. Most important, he rose alongside a woman tabloids called his Queen, Annette Ulmann, a model and waitress who was brunette and beautiful and wore lavender silk shirts to his court appearances. When he meets journalists, Peter brings a binder of legal documents to support his claim to the throne. It's smaller than the meter high stack he typically lugs to court. Where he's found himself for a violation such as speeding and the

illegal possession of nun chucks. He records his conversations with reporters, a habit developed after a comedy troupe catfished him into a confrontation in the lobby of a Frankfurt hotel. He ended up in a fistfight before stunned tourists. His microphone has a sticker proclaiming that it's owned by one of his followers, placed there so German tax authorities wouldn't seize it to compensate some one's loyal subjects, from whom he was accused of embezzling more than one point three million

euros about one point four million dollars. Presented with a recorder, Peter talks and talks. He talks about how he healed an ext girlfriend who was abused as a child by Satanists using only his hands, About how a cabal of shadowy elites, including Rockefellers and Orthodox Jews spread COVID nineteen to boost drug profits and compel Germans to accept implanted biosensor chips, how a sniper once shot his car on the Autobahn, but divine intervention caused the bullet to only

nick the windshield. He knows what you're thinking, but a policeman friend told him there's no way it was a rock. King Peter's subjects are adherents of the Reichsburger movement, whose

members believe Germany doesn't exist. The Republic, they contend, is a limited liability company controlled by the Allied victors of World War Two, and according to the more anti semitic the Rothschild Family, Reichsburgers print their own passports, often refused to pay taxes, and clog courts with paperwork, along the same lines as the US Sovereign Citizen Movement, and like their other American ken Q and on the far right conspiracy theory alleging a deep state plot against Donald Trump,

their products of the digital age of Unreason. Reichsburgers are indoctrinated by low budget you tube talk shows hosted by the likes of Jo Conrad, who says Freemasons, lizard people, and child murdering cults have overrun Germany. Converts protest outside the Reichstag, which some say is guarded by a laser canon. For fun, they stream Reichsburger hip hop in Germany's domestic intelligence agency identified about nineteen thousand Reichsburger's, nearly double its

estimate of two years earlier. The true number, officials say is likely far greater. Peter, for all his troubles, is a genial leader. His optimism follows from an expedient logic. Every legal wind proves the soundness of his arguments, and every loss proves the corruption of the German system. He's so enjoying himself that you don't want to spoil the fund by raising the matter of those euros. The German government was trying to find it, imprisoned him and confiscated

his cash, his property, even his piano. He's fought in the courts, in the media, and in police cust to defend his treasure and to keep the government from asking more questions. In two thousand eight, as economic crisis swept across Europe, Peter knew his moment had arrived. Since before German reunification, he'd been a tottle, a dept a fair saga,

a loser. Born in East Germany in ninety five, he was a friendless, introvert with an alcoholic father and an overbearing mother who made him clean his plate to the point of vomiting. Peter wanted to become a teacher, but his grades were too poor, so he worked as a cook. Then he married and had two children, started teaching karate and became a video store clerk. In An investor from near Stuttgart in the prosperous West persuaded Peter to co found a slot machine business with him. It was his

big break until it wasn't. His partner used his knowledge of the German legal system to take the company. Peter was just another Aussie, poor and unsophisticated. After nearly fifty years of communist rule Outmaneu heard by a slick Vessey, he and his wife split up the following year. Adrift in the early two thousands, Peter began reading. He devoured esoteric texts and dabbled in black magic, claiming visions of

angels and demons. He also poured over law books and developed what some attorneys described as an astonishingly vast, if not particularly cogent, knowledge of the legal system. And he found a new belief that helped him make sense of his life's failures. Germany wasn't a legitimate country. The first Reichsburger citizen of the Reich was Wolfgang Abel, an East German transit worker. In nineteen eighty five, he notified the U. S Embassy and his local town hall that a US

diplomat named Mr. Kowalski had confided an explosive secret. Because the Allies in Germany never signed a formal peace treaty after World War Two, the German Constitution of nineteen nineteen was still in effect. Abel declared himself Chancellor of the True State and changed his answering machine message to announced the new government. His activities show the signs of mental illness, the Stasi concluded after surveilling him for years. When the

wall fell, Abel's delusions metastasized. The country's true borders were those from n seven, encompassing half of present day Poland. The German government was a corporation serving as a front for Anglo American and yes, Jewish financial interests. It was wild stuff, festering mainly on the political fringes. Then came the Internet and later the financial crisis all over the country. Germans were angry about the economy, migration, and the European Union.

As the Eurozone wobbled men, the majority of Reichsberger's are Men over forty began popping up at a store in downtown Wittenberg, where Peter had started selling esoteric books and promoting his view that an alternate government was possible. He offered membership cards for one twenty euros a year and began accepting investments for what he called a savings account, acting at least sixty euros by the end of two

thousand eight. Court records show Peter also began exploring another kind of magic Fiat currency, pitching a famously cash obsessination his bright and colorful Ngelgeld or Angel money. He conveniently pegged the notes to the Euro denominations included a seven, a number he imbued with deep significance. There weren't many ways to spend the money, but Peter, echoing goldbugs everywhere, says it had value as an inflation free store of

purchasing power. Now attracting cash and interest, Peter decided to create Neu Deutsche Land or New Germany, a country primarily of the mind and YouTube. You send your kids to institutions that train them as slaves, Peter tells a group of normal looking Germans in one video posted to his country's channel. The systems that you use make you behave like slaves, but you choose that. The group participates in a few party tricks, including one in which four people

lift someone from a chair with their fingers. The ease with which they performed the feat, Peter says, confirms the existence of energy fields and the malleability of gravity. It's actually timing, weight distribution and the surprising strength of the human finger. Euros poured in. In two thousand nine, Peter collected nearly forty thousand euros, a fifth of which he put toward a dilapidated factory on the outskirts of Wittenburg.

The next year he took in more than one eighty thousand euros Inn it was eight D fifty two thousand. With his followers now numbering in the thousands, he took out a six d and fifty thousand euro mortgage on another old factory and set about renovating it, a project he'd never complete. He paid workers an hourly rate of four euros and four engle Geld, redeemable at the company's sausage shop. In he acquired an even larger property, an

abandoned hospital that could someday house several thousand people. Peter's followers were a mixed bunch, some loners and losers, but also accomplished professionals, such as Harry Ziegenhagel, a lawyer who was bored and looking for answers. When in February an acquaintance sent him one of Peter's YouTube videos, zeken Haggle was intrigued enough to plunk down fifty euros and drive six hours for a two day personality development seminar in Wittenberg.

He found a movement that had grown to about thirty five hundred followers, middle aged white collar men like himself, but also single mothers, several black Germans, and a left wing Berlin theater director. Some of them were living at the first compound Peter had bought. He called it Rheinsdorf after the surrounding neighborhood. Zeken Haggle came away from the weekend so impressed that he sold his legal practice and

moved to the factory. As NEU deutsch Land's only lawyer, he had uniquely useful skills, and when Peter's erratic behavior compelled the top aid to quit, zegen Haggle became his confidante and chauffeur. Day to day life as easy in the early days at Rhinsdorff, which suited most residents just fine. They were people who didn't find their way in society, people with difficult childhoods, people who were extremely sensitive. Zegan Hoggle says many saw the group as a replacement family.

With Peter presiding as father, there was a lot of hugging, but as the population grew the environment became more structured. Peter implemented a strict daily work schedule. Followers poured concrete, repainted gray walls and optimistic orange, seated a vegetable garden, and built a set for his YouTube videos. Citizens were afraid to take smoke breaks because Peter disapproved of cigarettes. Their leader was insulated from the discomforts of compound life.

When the boiler broke, he still had hot water for his showers in the large apartment he lived in downtown. I got the impression, Zegan Hoggle says that it was increasingly turning into a cult. As Peter's influence grew, he developed a pattern of histrionics and violence. When he visited a court house to contest several speeding tickets, he grabbed a female clerk's arm roughly and fled the scene, later returning with a white rose to ask forgiveness. The clerk declined.

Peter says he was attempting a citizen's arrest on a corrupt official. He punched his son's teacher over a disagreement about the school sexad classes. The curriculum, he says, included a trash book written by an open Satanist, and in twenty twelve, in front of shocked onlookers, Peter slapped his adult daughter twice across the face. I was a little unfairly hard on her, I have to admit, he says. After that incident, segenhoggl realized it was time to go.

The lawyer's assertion that the group became cult like, Peter says, is the opinion of a single person to whom we were happy to say good bye. Other followers began slipping away, too, but YouTube provided a steady stream of replacements. Peter's videos regularly garnered more than fifteen thousand views. They weren't viral, but they didn't need to be. The site served them to the exact slice of the population most likely to pack up and move to Wittenburg, Germans with a taste

for baroque conspiracy theories. They were referred from videos featuring other Reichsburger pitchman such as Konrad, who built a vast online following and hawked them books about aliens, the dangers of vaccination, and the special intellectual qualities of Germans. There was also Jesse Marson, a car salesman who claimed to be a victim of c I A mind control tests.

Marson founded Germania out of a castle he'd bought in Brandenburg, selling nutritional supplements and thirty five euro Celtic druid I D cards. Jurgen Elcessa, a far right journalist, ran a monthly magazine with forty thousand subscribers and sold go Home American and Freedom for Germany t shirts. Amid this ferment, Peter's ambitions for Neu Deutschland grew grander. He wanted to provoke the federal government, raise his profile and gain more followers.

It would take something audacious, it would take a kingdom. On September sixteenth, twenty twelve, Peter stood in the back of an event hall, fiddling with his fake ermine robe as he waited to become the first royal crowned on German soil since Wilhelm the Second in eighteen eighty eight. The moment has come to found the new state, said Thomas Bach, the black caped master of ceremonies. Raise your hearts as we await the sovereigns. He pounded the stage

with a staff. Also strach Zarathustra boomed from speakers as Peter led a half dozen of his most loyal subjects through a mob of flashing smartphones. Reading from an oversized scroll, he declared a free home for the German people after more than sixty years, to his six hundred new citizens. The stunt worked. After Middel Deutschitzeitung reported on the coronation, German journalists flocked to tiny Wittenberg. Weiss sent a video team.

Peter reveled in the attention. When the newspaper Develt asked about his childhood, he boasted that he'd hit puberty at age six. Had he been able to grow a beard? The reporter asked, no, no. Peter replied that he gestured to his crotch was basically working. He began driving his kingdom financed BMW with a kingdom driver's license and Kingdom plates. Police sided him for speeding seven times in five months. As a sovereign, he claimed the rules of the road

no longer applied to him. He turned his savings accounts into a more formal institution called Koniglica or Royal reichs Bunk, which by thirteen had collected more than two point three million euros from roughly five hundred investors. A health insurance company and other side businesses he'd started were also raking

in cash. That April, though financial regulators obtained a search warrant for the Kingdom's compounds on the grounds that Peter was operating on illegal bank in his safe, they found only several hundred euros. He responded to the authorities by announcing plans to open an actual bank on a busy street in Wittenberg, complete with marble floors, gold fixtures, and promised returns as high as nine percent. When the government

banned Peter from accepting deposits, he held a ribbon cutting. Anyway, a relentlessly polite bureaucrat showed up to hand him business registration forms. It's so nice of them to bring it to me personally, Peter said, to a TV crew. Then he ripped up the papers and asked, does anyone have a trash been? The official could only smile awkwardly as customers raced in with their deposits. In May, the German financial services regulator banned Peter's making activities and ordered him

to repay his customers the next year. With most deposits still outstanding and complaints coming in, regulators hired bankruptcy lawyer Stephan Oppermann to liquidate the bank's assets and recover more than one point three million euros. Opperman was tall and humorless, the suit and trench coat clad picture of German probity. To Peter, it was another sign that Germany's government was scared of him. He told depositors to be patient, that

they were participating in an ambitious statehood project. One of them, Richard Gantz, a computer programmer, had invested his life savings of four and thirty one thousand euros in the Kingdom. When he begged for his money back, Peter explained that liquidity was tight. He invited Ghants to relocate to the Kingdom and enjoy free room and board. The exchange devolved into an email flame war Richard, try not to think,

Peter wrote, the results are never satisfying. He dismissed another angry creditor, a septagenarian doctor who deposited seventy tho euros, by saying she wasn't clear in the head. In March, police raided three of Peter's properties a feudal effort to seize cash. Rumors spread that he had a bomb at his bank, leading police to close the surrounding streets. It turned out to be a dubious alternative fuel project that fall with the authority is closing in. Peter met the

woman who would be dubbed his queen. Annette Ulman was then a thirty year old model and aspiring actress who had done some professional photo shoots and TV extra gigs. She was attending a session of Peter's Power of Thought seminar series based on a one sixteen year old four DVD set that taught visualization techniques for losing weight, quitting drinking, and recovering from breakups. As he spoke, they kept locking eyes.

Annette may have shared Peter's flair for self promotion. A few years earlier, on a reality show, she demonstrated a favorite butt exercise, which consisted of writhing on the floor. Her life goal, she told her producer, was to become famous. When the seminar was done, the two met and began dating. The next month, Opperman and tactical police wearing balaclava's hit the bank, hoping to seize its assets. Peter played the

piano in the lobby as officers swarmed in. Over the next few days, Opperman's team on twenty safes, all of them empty. He used suction cups to lift the marble floor tiles. Nothing across the Kingdom's properties. The main items of note were a priest's outfit and some VHS porn tapes. Opperman soon concluded that Peter had spent much of the money on travel, BMW's and real estate. The rest had vanished, laundered through a network of companies, including the one that

ran the Compounds sausage stand. Some had gone to Poland, where officials declined requests to freeze Peter's accounts. Peter's provocations intensified yet again. For one stunt, he burst through construction barriers at Wittenberg's famed Schlosskirka and posed for photos at the same door where Martin Luther had started the Reformation. Peter's own theses numbered seventy seven, including save the Midwives number twenty Adhere to the Cosmic Order number twenty three,

and support free energy machines number seventy seven. In May, Peter loo with Annette to Majorca, where she had once been, to shoot a cringeworthy music video. The Kingdom's website posted photos of Peter smiling and holding a boarding pass in the name of Peter, the first King of Germany. He claimed the trip proved the legitimacy of the Kingdom's passport, though of course travel within the Shingen area doesn't require one. Berlin had a problem on its hands, and it wasn't

just Peter. His segment of the Reichsburger movement at least was pacifistic, and his most serious suspected crime was merely scamming his followers. Others were becoming dangerous. In Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, officials arrived at work one morning to find the fax machines toner cartridge empty and hundreds of

manifesto pages sprayed across the floor. Around the same time, five thousand miles away, a Washington state agency was receiving hundreds of filings alleging that German officials from Chancellor Angela merkel On down were delinquent on debts ranging from twenty seven thousand, two hundred and fifty dollars to five hundred trillion dollars. Reichsberger trolls then used the filings to hire collection agencies in Malta, which theoretically obligated their targets to

appear in Maltese court. When police attempted to crack down on the movement, they were unprepared for the fury that awaited them. In August twenty sixteen, Adrian Urzaka, a former Mister Germany who had become a leading Reichsburger theorist, opened fire on officers trying to evict him from state er a nation that consisted of his house and back yard.

He wounded one before being shot and arrested himself. Two months later, in Bavaria, one of Erzaka's proteges, Wolfgang Plan, fired on police who had come to seize his cash of thirty one guns. An officer died and two others were wounded before Plan was arrested. He'd self radicalized while watching thousands of hours of YouTube videos, including Peter's rants ingelgeld Plan says in a jail house interview, seemingly about to roll his eyes recalling Peter's currency, then he adds brightly,

it's okay, I like it. The police had an easier time apprehending Peter. The same month as the raid on State Or. They stormed Rhindsdorff and took him into custody. The list of charges included operating an illegal bank and embezzling funds. When the trial began on October, Annette was in attendance, the King blew air kisses in her direction. As the proceedings got under way, he repeatedly interrupted the judge, shouting scandal and lies. The theatrics continued for months until

the gavel finally came down the following March. The judge sentenced him to three years and eight months. The King of New Germany was going to prison in the old one. The police never found the money. Much of it had, as Opperman surmised, slipped into other countries. The accounts in Poland, a mysterious check for one million Hong Kong dollars roughly a thousand dollars and land in Paraguay purchased ex followers speculate because the country lacks an extradition treaty with Germany.

He was given control of Peter's properties and began liquidating them, but the law decreed that since there wasn't enough cash for all of the creditors, no one would get anything. It's either all or nothing, Opperman says. Instead, the money went toward the investigations costs. In May seventeen, after the trial, police in riot gear evicted dozens of citizens from the larger of the two Kingdom compounds. Peter's conviction had done

little to shake his follower's faith. Most simply stayed at Drainsdorf, bunking four to a room while the new ownership worked slowly toward evicting them. As they awaited their king's release, they hung up dream catchers, talked about kem trails and eight beats for dinner and vegan ice cream for dessert.

In prison, Peter meditated, exercised, and wrote two books, a magical autobiography and a treatise on the unification of spirituality and science, an impressive output considering he spent barely a year behind bars. In April, an appeals court overturned his conviction. Peter's deposit slips had read more like donation forms, the court ruled, and some depositors had testified they hadn't really expected to get their money back. As Peter exited the courthouse,

his case formally suspended. Annette jumped into his arms, and supporters cheered and handed him flowers. Safe again on sovereign soil, he set about restoring order to the kingdom. He'd need new schemes to get his message back in the news and replenish the Royal Treasury. When I visit Wittenberg in September, all is calm. Peter's domain, fenced off in a quiet, leafy suburb, is easy to pick out. The Kingdom's flag. A rising sun laid over the traditional German tricolor, flutters

from a poll. Peter is excited to show me around. We visit the main office, where his clerks are hunting for revenue streams. They've increased the price of Neu deutsch Lan citizenship tests to three and ninety euros, and they're managing a new health insurance plan which promotes well being through free seminars and yoga classes, and promises reimbursement if you end up in a hospital anyway. The application form asks about daily proximity to WiFi and use of fluoride toothpaste.

They've also persuaded more than seventy companies, including a plumber, a geriatric clothing seller, and a healthcare agency promoting cancer prevention through relaxation to incorporate in the Kingdom for a seven hundred and seventy seven euro fee. And Peter is selling a digital E mark tracked not on the blockchain but a spreadsheet. It's redeemable at the Neu deutsch Lan gift shop, where a Kingdom branded towel costs twenty seven e marks when people change euros to our money. This

is profit, he explains candidly. We see the TV studio, his latest BMW station wagon and the dining hall where Peter played the piano, while my interpreter and I inspect a spotless commercial grade kitchen. Several men scurry about preparing for the Messa gathering a few weeks hence that will draw one hundred and fifty or so visitors curious about joining the movement. There are plenty of potential recruits all across Germany. Reichsburger Mania continues. Hundreds of enthusiasts still own guns,

despite government efforts to disarm them. Berlin police regularly raid I D makers who sell Reichsburger passports for a hundred euros apiece. In March, police in ten states will arrest members of the United German Peoples and Tribes, a Reichsburger group. In April, Peter will hold a two day business seminar at a Mexican restaurant that's still open, he says, because its owner declared it part of the Kingdom, exempting it

from COVID night Dean lockdown rules. Someone also posts a video of him entering a home depot without a mask and brazenly cutting the socially distanced line to the clucking disapproval of others. Ksberger ideology is seeping into the mainstream too. The same month, I'm in Wittenberg, the far right alternative for Germany party, wins twenty seven point five percent of

the vote in its state Saxony anhalt. A week later, the newspaper velt Am Zandag publishes a leaked email from Alis Vidal, a top party official, parroting Reichsberger talking points about the political establishment. These pigs are nothing other than marionettes of the victorious powers of the Second World War, whose task it is to keep down the German people. In October, federal law enforcement will open a tip line focused on far right terrorism and Reichsburgers for the moment.

Though membership in Peter's Kingdom has stalled at roughly undred, with all he's offering, there should be more, he says. When we arrive at the main office, Marco Ginsel, his current aide de camp, touts my visit on the kingdom's telegram account as my interpreter, and I wait for a taxi to pick us up. I asked Peter about his queen. He liked sup she'll soon quit her waitressing job at the Kartoffel House and move here. He says, he'll pay her one thousand euros a month to cook and help

him write books. Genzil glances downward as Peter gushes in the taxi. We decided to eat dinner before returning to Berlin. The choice is obvious the Kartoffel House. You don't need to speak German to understand the name. Potatoes are included with every item. As we tuck into our tubers. A waitress appears with more drinks. We asked to meet Annette. She's off tonight. The waitress says, are you sad she's leaving? I ask? She looks at us quizzically. Peter says she's

quitting to work at the Kingdom. I add. She slowly shakes her head. Nine, she says, drawing out the word nine. But aren't they They've been broken up for a year. She walks inside, picks up a cordless phone, and starts talking animatedly and gesturing at us before re emerging. Annette is a hall that Peter is telling you that they are in a relationship. She says, they're just friends. The King has bested prosecutors. He's kept the cash, the car, and at least until the new owner manages to evict

everyone the compound. He still claims dominion over more than a thousand souls. He spent years leading them all on. But tonight, as shadows creep across Wittenberg, it seems he's been fooling himself. So thanks for listening to our story. Many more in Bloomberg Business Week Magazine, that magazine on newstands, online and at Bloomberg dot com. Be sure to check it out. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly, and

check us out. Every day. Bloomberg Business Week comes to you daily two pm to six pm Wall Street Time. This is Bloomberg