ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the “proprietary emotions” that owners of homes and everyday items that once belonged to others might experience. To put it slightly differently, it is about the sense of right and rightful ownership in the aftermath of violent appropriation. The Allied troops plundered vast quantities of Germany’s material wealth—like everybody else at the end of World War II—is well known and documented: “From the theft of the rare Quendlinburg Bibles by an American soldier to the exchange of cigarettes for antique watches, Allied soldiers removed goods illegally from their zone of occupation,” writes Norman Naimark in his seminal work, The Russians in Germany. East Prussia occupied a particular place in these processes. Its annexation to Poland and the Soviet Union was internationally recognised as territorial restitution in the case of Poland and reparation through territorial gain in the case of the Soviet Union,.
