LONDON -- Until Britain voted to leave the European Union, Philip Levine never thought deeply about his Jewish heritage.
But looking for a way to ensure that he could still work and live in Europe once Britain leaves the bloc, Levine, 35, who was born in Britain and lives in London, decided to do what some Jews, including his relatives, might consider unthinkable: apply for German citizenship.
He did so by employing a provision of German law that has been on the books since 1949 but that has been little used in recent years. It allows anyone whom the Nazis stripped of their German citizenship "on political, racial or religious grounds" from Jan. 30, 1933, to May 8, 1945, and their descendants, to have their citizenship restored. Most of those who lost their citizenship during that period were Jews although they also included other minorities and political opponents.
He is not alone in turning to the German law after Britain's decision to end its membership in the European Union, also known as Brexit. Since the vote in June, the German embassy in London said it had received at least 400 requests from Britons for information about German citizenship under a legal provision known as Article 116.
At least 100 are formal applications by individuals or families, said Knud Noelle, an embassy official. "We expect more in coming weeks," he said, adding that the embassy normally receives roughly 20 such applications every year.
The interest among British Jews is far greater than ever before, said Michael Newman, the chief executive of the Association of Jewish Refugees, who said that he, too, was considering applying for German citizenship. The association is based in London.
"I don't remember hearing of requests before" for German citizenship in the association's 75-year-old history, he said. "It's taken Brexit to do this. It was a game-changer."
But if the process of applying for citizenship is straightforward, it is wrapped in complex questions of identity and statehood that tore Europe apart in the last century, one more unintended consequence of Britain's decision to go its own way after more than 20 years in the union.
In Levine's case, his grandparents fled Germany in 1939, at the start of World War II. They kept their documents, including old passports and entry visas into Britain, which are necessary for the application process.
About 70,000 Jews from Germany, Austria and the former Czechoslovakia arrived in Britain before 1939, Newman said. But they were regarded with suspicion by the British authorities. Many were held in internment camps in places like the Isle of Wight, often together with pro-Nazi Germans who had also decided to resettle in Britain.
After the Nazi Party was declared the only legal party in Germany, the government passed a law to strip individual Jews of their German citizenship, with their names listed in the Reich Law Gazette. Jews living abroad lost their citizenship in November 1941.
As deportations began and the first extermination camps were being built, Jews were stripped of their assets, leaving many stranded in Germany because their passports had been nullified.
For some of the British Jews now applying for German citizenship, the process has led them to confront, for the first time, a painful family history. Some American Jews are going through the same process, albeit without the additional incentive provided by Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.
Thomas Harding is another Jewish Briton applying for German citizenship. "I feel much more comfortable about Germany and Germans," he said.
When Britain announced it was leaving the union, "I felt really distressed," he said. "I felt like I was losing something."
The great-grandson of Alfred Alexander, a prominent doctor in Berlin whose patients included Albert Einstein and Marlene Dietrich, Harding, 48, said that his desire for citizenship stemmed from a project to restore his great-grandfather's home, which was seized by the Nazis and only recently returned to the family.
The summer house, on Berlin's westernmost border in Gross Glienicke, Germany, and near what used to be a Nazi airfield, was awarded a landmark status in 2014 and turned into a memorial for truth and reconciliation.
The project was the focus of his recently published book, The House by the Lake. Villagers of Gross Glienicke had initially reached out to him for a separate project researching the village's Jewish families, including his.
In the beginning, "I still had a lot of antagonism toward Germany and the Germans," Harding said. "I was very distrustful."
But as his relationship with the villagers deepened, work on the house progressed and a tentative friendship blossomed, "it gave me the confidence of walking through the door," he said. "And they welcomed me through."
His attitude toward Germany brightened further when it began accepting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. "I was very grateful to the Germans because I think it was incredibly brave, very difficult, very controversial but the right decision," he said.
His sister, who lives in Germany and is married to a Syrian Kurd, brought over their Syrian relatives this year.
Harding said he felt a sense of wonder at how history is an endless repetition. "This is not about Germans or Jews or Syrians," he said. "This is a human condition. This is going to happen all the time."
That all came to a head at 9 a.m. June 23, he said, barely two hours after Britain finished tallying the vote to leave the European Union. "I thought, 'OK, I actually do not want to be apart from Europe,'" Harding recalled telling himself.
"I love the fact that I'm not applying for citizenship; I'm having my citizenship restored," he said. "It's in the initial basic law when Germany was created. I just think that is so powerful."
Religion on 08/20/2016