Wednesday morning the German police he arrested 25 people as part of a large investigation into a far-right group suspected of staging various terrorist attacks across the country, including one on the parliament building in Berlin. More than 3,000 police officers conducted 130 searches in 11 German states: 22 of those arrested were German citizens, while the nationality of only one of the others, a Russian citizen, was specified. According to investigators, some of those arrested were inspired by a movement called Reichsbürgerbewegung (“Reich Citizens’ Movement”) which supports the illegitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and which would like the reconstitution of a state modeled on the so-called “Second Reich”, or the German Empire founded by Kaiser Wilhelm I, which existed between 1871 and 1918.
