Germany announced on Tuesday that it was banning a far-right group that refuses to recognize the German state and that has set up aspects of a parallel one of its own that includes a separate currency, ID cards, license plates and even a bank.
On Tuesday morning, 800 police officers were mobilized in seven states and arrested four of the leaders of the group, which calls itself the Kingdom of Germany. Officers also searched buildings where the group was operating.
Peter Fitzek, 59, a former cook who leads the group, and is known to his followers as Peter I, the self-appointed king, was among those arrested. The police said that Mr. Fitzek was being investigated for leading a criminal organization and illegally selling insurance and investments.
The Kingdom of Germany, which the authorities estimate has 1,000 active members, is the largest organized grouping of the so-called Reichsbürger movement.
Adherents of the movement generally claim that the German government is being run by “deep-state operatives” and often use antisemitic and anti-democratic conspiracy theories to justify their resistance to the modern German state.
“The aim of this association is to establish a so-called parallel state and to secede from the Federal Republic of Germany,” Alexander Dobrindt, Germany’s new interior minister, said in Berlin after the raids.
Mr. Dobrindt said that while the investigation into the group had started under his predecessor, he had made the decision to ban it.
The action against the group is one of the first major decisions by Mr. Dobrindt since he became a minister in the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week, suggesting that he is determined to crack down on far-right groups. Since becoming minister, he has also sought to clamp down on unauthorized migration, which became a major issue leading up to Germany’s elections in February.
Despite its ambition to secede from the German state, the Kingdom of Germany does not appear to pose a violent threat, according to the police, who said on Tuesday that no weapons had been found during the raids.
Members of another group espousing Reichsbürger beliefs are defendants in three major trials. The police say the members of that cell, whose leader according to the authorities is a prince disgruntled with modern Germany, had been planning to seize power in a coup.
The Kingdom of Germany’s model, the authorities say, appears to be mainly based on raising money with its own bank and institutions to buy up land where the laws of Germany would be ignored.
Mr. Fitzek, wearing an ermine-trimmed coat and a crown, and carrying a scepter and a sword, made himself the leader of the kingdom in 2012 on the grounds of a former hospital.
Footage of the ceremony made Mr. Fitzek the butt of jokes for many Germans, who generally see him as the leader of a harmless, if misguided group of oddballs.
The group appears to have struggled on a number of fronts over the years. It has been forced to give up several of its properties both because of declining membership and, in other cases, because the local authorities banned their use. The group’s insurance and banking arms have regularly been targeted by Germany’s financial authorities.
Mr. Fitzek has also been charged repeatedly with misdemeanors like driving with a fake license plate or conducting unlicensed financial transitions. This year, a court in the state of Saxony-Anhalt upheld a previous verdict sentencing him to eight months in prison for attacking a security guard at the local motor vehicle authority.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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