The doctor falsified over 1,000 medical certificates, exempting patients from the obligation to wear a mask. After a long and highly publicized trial, punctuated by outbursts from sympathizers of a far-right movement, she was sentenced to a prison term.
A 67-year-old medical practitioner was sentenced on Monday by the Dresden Regional Court to two years and eight months’ imprisonment, together with a three-year ban on practicing medicine, for falsifying more than 1,000 certificates during the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported by several German media.
The woman in question, from Moritzburg in Saxony, allegedly issued medical certificates without prior examination, exempting patients from the obligation to wear a mask or stating that they could not be vaccinated for health reasons. The court also set a fine of 47,000 euros (51,000 dollars), corresponding to the total sum the accused would have collected with the false certificates.
Protests and arrests of sympathizers had accompanied this high-profile trial since November 2023. A few hours before the verdict was announced, the judge cleared the courtroom after around a hundred of the defendant’s supporters began singing the German national anthem at the top of their voices. Last month, three people threatened and insulted the judge as he left the courtroom.
Last week, the defense asked for the acquittal of the doctor, who was said to have acted “in good conscience” and “for the good of her patients.” According to the doctor, protective masks are “harmful to the human organism.” She also described PCR tests and coronavirus vaccines as “poison.” From the point of view of her defenders, the protective measures established by the government during the pandemic were “unconstitutional.”
This is not the first time a doctor has been tried for issuing false certificates since the end of the COVID-19 crisis. In January 2023, another German doctor was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison for illegally issuing mask exemptions during the coronavirus pandemic to over 4,000 people — most of whom he had never met or examined. A regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim sentenced him to a three-year ban on practicing medicine and fined him 28,000 euros for issuing the medical certificates.
Nostalgic for the Reich on trial
Similar sentences have been handed down in Italy, France, England, and the USA. While the defendants’ motives are often financial, many media across the Rhine claim that the Dresden defendant is considered to be part of the extreme-right “Reich citizens” movement, or “Reichsbürgerbewegung” in German.
The “Reichsbürger” movement emerged in the 1980s, before properly developing and structuring itself from the 2010s onwards. Its supporters, numbering 21,000 according to German domestic intelligence, are right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists, and weapons enthusiasts who reject the legitimacy of the modern German Republic. They believe in the continued existence of the pre-First World War German Reich in the form of a monarchy, as explained by AFP in a recent dispatch.
Several groups of sympathizers have also decreed the creation of their own mini-states, some of whom refuse to pay taxes and have no identity cards.
A hearing for a group of “Reichsbürger” opened today in Munich as part of a series of three trials planned for this extremist group, whose dismantling shocked the country in 2022. Twenty-six suspects from the group planned to invade the German parliament in Berlin, arrest the legislators, and violently overthrow the government to negotiate a new order in Europe with Russia.
The group was discovered following a large-scale anti-terrorist operation in several German states and abroad in December 2022. Alleged members of the group are already on trial separately in Frankfurt and Stuttgart.
