It was an outlandish and far-fetched scheme: take control of the world’s fourth largest economy, abolish its democracy, and install an obscure septuagenarian aristocrat as “emperor”.
But when German authorities monitoring the extremist “Reichsburger” movement earlier this year began piecing together the alleged plan to violently topple the government in Berlin, they considered it a grave threat, and placed it at the top of their security priorities.
