Berlin sees surge in Brits reclaiming German citizenship after Brexit

19 Oct, 2018 09:12 / Updated 6 years ago

The number of people in Britain seeking to restore their German citizenship has jumped following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, AP reports. According to a German government response to opposition lawmakers published on Friday, 1,667 people applied to Germany’s embassy in London last year to reclaim the citizenship they or their ancestors were stripped of by the Nazis. The government’s reply to the Free Democratic Party query notes that the embassy recorded 684 such requests the previous year, most of them following the Brexit referendum in June 2016. Tens of thousands of Germans, many of them Jewish, fled to Britain after the Nazis took power in 1933.