The Solms-Baruths aren’t the only German family probing for answers about their ancestors during the Nazi era. This year, the billionaire Reimann family -- whose JAB Holding Co. owns Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., Panera Bread and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts -- revealed that they have asked a historian to research the clan’s ties to the regime. A report on the findings is expected next year.

Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to the plotters on Saturday, without delving into unresolved claims from the past.

“The women and men of the resistance acted out a deep moral conviction,” she said in a speech in Berlin. “By following their conscience, they proved to be true patriots. We have to ensure that history’s lessons do not fade away.”

Regime’s Victims
Germany faced a surge of claims for lost real estate after its reunification in 1990. Before then, only West Germany had laws allowing the return of property seized by the Nazis. Along with lost property, the state has paid Jewish groups, conscientious objectors and homosexuals who became victims of the regime.

Four years after the Solms-Baruths started their litigation, they reached a partial settlement that excluded properties on the estate owned by local governments. Funds from that deal helped to pay legal and research costs incurred by Solms-Baruth V, who took over handling the case after his father’s 2006 death. It now consumes most of his time.

“Human greed” is the simple answer as to why the Nazis seized property, said German attorney Stephan Glantz, who represented local governments and families, including his own, in cases on East German property rights. “The confiscated assets somehow went to people who were friends of Nazi leaders,” he said, speaking generally. “They stole and gave to friends and allies to keep them good.”

Released from prison in the closing months of World War II, Solms-Baruth III stayed in Germany with the hope of convincing Russian forces of his anti-Nazi ideology. Yet he shortly learned of plans to arrest him at a town hall meeting with a Russian general, prompting him to flee the building through a restroom window.

He then led his family to a farm in former German colony Namibia, one of his few remaining assets, accompanied by his chauffeur and valet. En route, the Solms-Baruths stopped in Denmark to stay with a relative who had married the brother of the country’s king. They later traveled to Stockholm as guests of Swedish gentry until they could finally board a ship to Africa.

Solms-Baruth III died in 1951. His son eventually made a living farming animals for hunting -- a far different subsistence from the timber companies in the family’s former estate almost 8,000 miles away. Solms-Baruth V grew up expecting to become a farmer, too. Yet now he and his family have a chance to reclaim what they see as stolen property, and he doesn’t plan to give up the fight.

“There is too much at stake from a moral point of view,” he said. “Once you go in this direction, you don’t turn back.”