After World War II, during the communist Bodenreform (land reform) of September 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone, later East Germany, all private property exceeding an area of 100 hectares (250 acres) was nationalised and redistributed to Volkseigene Güter ("publicly owned estates", VEG). As most of these large estates, especially in Brandenburg and Western Pomerania, had belonged to Junkers, the government promoted their plans with the slogan Junkerland in Bauernhand! ("Junker land into farmer's hand"). The former owners were reproached with war crimes and involvement into the Nazi regime by the Soviet Military Administration, many of them were interned in NKVD special camps (Speziallager), while their property was plundered and the manor houses demolished. From 1952 smaller estates were also collectivised and incorporated into Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften ("agricultural production comradeships", LPG).
After German reunification, some Junkers tried to regain their former estates through civil lawsuits. Though the Federal Administrative Court of Germany has adjudged the expropriations political repression, the German courts have upheld the land reforms and rebuffed all claims for compensation, according to a—disputed—Soviet Aide-mémoire during the negotiations of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Two Plus Four Agreement). The last decisive case was the unsuccessful lawsuit of Prince Ernst August of Hanover in September 2006, when the Federal Administrative Court decided that the prince had no right to compensation for the disseized estates of the House of Hanover around Blankenburg Castle in Saxony-Anhalt. Other families, however, have quietly purchased or leased back their ancestral homes from the current owners (often the German federal government in its role as trustee). A petition for official rehabilitation of the ousted landowners has been rejected by the German Bundestag parliament in 2008.
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