The 17-year-old was found guilty of planning a serious act of violence endangering the state, the spokeswoman for the higher regional court in Duesseldorf said.

German prosecutors had previously said the teenager, named as Jeremy R., planned the “right-wing extremist motivated attack” for May 13, 2022.

The massacre using explosives and various other weapons was only narrowly prevented when he was arrested the day before.

“Teachers and a larger number of pupils were to be killed” in the attack, the prosecutors said.

Acquired materials and instructions on the internet

Jeremy R., who was 16 at the time of his arrest, had allegedly acquired the necessary materials to assemble pipe bombs and obtained information on the internet about how to build them.

He had also assembled weapons including knives, brass knuckles, machetes, crossbows and arrows as well as firearms, the prosecutors said.

School shootings are relatively rare in Germany, which has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe.