One of Germany's highest public officials on Monday renounced claims to former family property in present-day Poland, in an effort spiraling tensions over claims for war reparations in both countries. Bundestag speaker Wolfgang Thierse and prominent descendants of German aristocracy were among signatories of a pledge not to enter claims for property lost when the German and Polish borders were moved westward after World War II. Tensions over the issue reached a new peak last Friday when Polish lawmakers voted to urge the Warsaw government to seek compensation from Germany for the death and destruction wrought by the Nazis during the wartime occupation of Poland. It was a response to a much-resented restitution campaign by a German group called the "Prussian Claims Society", which announced it would take cases to Polish and possibly European courts later this year.
"The future of Europe lies not in mutual accusations but in open dialogue," German writer Helga Hirsch said in an open letter. She described the effort as "an attempt to halt the unholy spiral of mutual demands." Thierse symbolically renounced ancestral property in the Polish city of Wroclaw, the former Breslau. Others included the widow of Helmuth James von Moltke, whose so-called Kreisau Circle secretly tried to end the Hitler dictatorship from 1940. Freya von Moltke renounced any claim to the former family estate in the Silesian town now known as Krzyzowa, where her husband gathered enemies of Adolf Hitler before his arrest in 1944. He was executed the following year. An estimated 2.5 million Germans were expelled or fled from Poland, the Czech Republic and other eastern lands when the Third Reich collapsed and Germany's borders were moved westward.