Wieduwilt's week: A prince with coup plans does not make Luke Skywalker

A prince and a bunch of esoteric citizens want to replace Chancellor Olaf Scholz by force.

Wieduwilt's week: A prince with coup plans does not make Luke Skywalker

A prince and a bunch of esoteric citizens want to replace Chancellor Olaf Scholz by force. The security authorities react in time. We've known this madness for a hundred years - why can't we find a way of dealing with the causes?

Things repeat themselves, actually nothing is really new anymore. "Nobody believed in wars, in revolutions and upheavals," I read in Stefan Zweig's autobiographical work ("The World of Yesterday"): "Everything radical, everything violent already seemed impossible in an age of reason." Sounds familiar, very familiar. Then came the First World War for Zweig, and today it's Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

It is the same with the now prevented overthrow by "Prince Henry XIII." and his esoteric right-wing radical pack. There has already been a grotesque revolution by a group of people feeling betrayed: in 1923, Adolf Hitler's attempted coup aimed at overthrowing a government of "November traitors". But nobody has to leaf through the history book that far: in January 2020, supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol because the election had been "stolen" from them.

So now German esotericists wanted to replace Chancellor Olaf Scholz with a prince. It sounds like derailed satire, but the experts assure us that the matter should be taken seriously. The "Reichsbürger" have been weaving through the republic with their invented myths of sovereignty for many years, but the pandemic gave them a lot of tinder. This is not surprising either: in 2019, a political scientist soberly submitted this prognosis to the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

It's always the revenge of the short-changed. The Trumpists want their election back. Reich citizens ("sovereignists") are looking forward to day X when "settlements" will then take place - especially after a "dictatorship" has been set up under the pretext of a pandemic. Corona slobs believe that now that the pandemic seems to have survived unscathed, it is time to settle accounts with politicians, the media and other "systematics".

"Yes, man is always looking for the one cause," a doctor once said to me wearily and laconically in a conversation about a mysterious outbreak of disease. He is right: chance has no home in thinking. Whenever a life event overwhelms us, we look for a reason and, above all, a culprit.

If someone has cancer or even a cold, it has to be somehow within their control. "He was always stressed," is the explanation that was quickly found in the environment. Or: "You sat at the open window yesterday." Anyone who has a chronic illness and is confronted with these penetrating questions knows how incredibly aggressive this way of thinking can appear. The motto, not coincidentally: "To each his own". That's what the inscription on the Buchenwald concentration camp read, it's a saying from a Prussian ideal of justice that believed in the state.

Cancer can't just be a coincidence. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 cannot be accidental. Poverty cannot be accidental. Of course, it cannot be a coincidence that a virus becomes so corrosive through mutations that it paralyzes an entire globe. It must either be the person behind the disease ("laboratory theory") or at least behind the government measures ("corona dictatorship").

And isn't it all because of capitalism, the West, Bill Gates and, of course, over and over again, the Jews? Any explanation, no matter how outlandish, any nonsense, no matter how outrageous, makes it into thinking if it maintains the illusion of total life control. This urge unites us all - the question is how we deal with this instinct.

Henry XIII answered this question. The revolutionary prince with the Nick Knatterton jacket made it clear in 2019 what intellectual junk was rotting under his roof: International financial powers were already behind the First World War, he said at the time, the Rothschilds - the Jews - were already behind the French Revolution . Since there is no peace agreement, Germany is still controlled by the Allies today - you know the song: Reichsbürgerfolklore. But the nice thing: You know who is guilty, chance is averted.

Revolution is also unquestionably sexy. The best of all "Star Wars" adaptations, the series "Andor" currently airing on Disney finally delves into the origins of the "Rebellion", including the sacrifices and acts of violence it required. Rebels, especially the main character Cassian Andor, are shady heroes here. The main character spontaneously murders other people every few episodes, but she is, nonetheless, a hero. In his tradition, Luke Skywalker will one day blow up an artificial planet, the "Death Star", to jubilation.

Being part of a rescue movement leads to an irresistible biography gilding. Everything that went wrong in life is now part of a hero's journey. The citizens of the Reich probably all feel a bit like Andor and Skywalker: faced with a faceless government, surrounded by phlegm, ignorance or even loyalty to the regime, they fight for the truth. From poverty, professional failure and being left behind in the deepest province of the galaxy, they catapult themselves into the limelight, including an award ceremony with a princess.

This self-aggrandizement is not new either - there is also frighteningly up-to-date information on this in Stefan Zweig's autobiographical work: "Every individual experienced an increase in his ego, he was no longer the isolated person of the past, he was immersed in a crowd, he was a people, and his person, his otherwise unnoticed person, had gained meaning."

It is remarkable that we have known all this for a long time and apparently cannot find a political answer. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser now wants to tighten disciplinary laws to make it easier to remove anti-constitutional officials from the service. In the future, they would have to provide proof of loyalty to the constitution if they wanted to keep their job - not the other way around. It sounds so mediocre.

The measure is a fight against symptoms like the endless debates about hate speech and "fake news". That is not an answer for those parts of our society that feel left behind. But, at least: The authorities reacted before Prince Henry XIII. and his wacky entourage could do worse. But they end up in the prevention paradox: if you take precautions, you won't get flowers. Which is why you have to say all the louder to the security authorities: thank you, five stars, gladly again.