Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, 58, who is a judge in Berlin, numbered alongside at least two dozen armed men and women who had planned to enter the parliament and stage a coup d’état.

The plot involved the Reichsbürger anti-establishment movement and far-right conspiracy theorists, who were influenced by America’s QAnon movement and had hopes to eliminate the existing state order “by military means”, prosecutors said.

So far, 25 people have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. More than 3,000 officers launched dawn raids across Germany yesterday.

Those arrested are accused of forming a terrorist group led by Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, 71, an aristocrat and owner of an estate in the eastern state of Thuringia as well as a former paratroop commander referred to only as Rüdiger von P, 69.

Prosecutors said the plotters were convinced that their aims could only be realised “by using military means and violence against state representatives. This includes carrying out homicides.”

Members signed a confidentiality agreement with their own form of capital punishment for anyone who broke it. The group was also in close contact with two psychics who were responsible for vetting applicants.

“The association has set itself the goal of eliminating the existing state order in Germany, the free democratic basic order,” Peter Frank, the federal prosecutor, said at a briefing. “It combines the rejection of the state institutions in Germany with conspiracy myths consisting of various narratives of the Reichsbürger ideology and the QAnon ideology,” he added.

Nancy Faeser, the interior minister, said: “Further investigation will give a picture of how far the plans for a coup had progressed.”