The 25-year-old heiress to the German business behind Choco Leibniz biscuits has been accused of trivialising the company’s Nazi past.

Verena Bahlsen has come under fire over comments she made claiming the company treated forced labourers well during the Nazi era and “did nothing wrong”.

The great-granddaughter of Hermann Bahlsen, the inventor of Leibniz biscuits, Ms Bahlsen is set to inherit a quarter of the family business he founded. She is also an entrepreneur in her own right, and runs a start-up company developing sustainable foods.

She became embroiled in controversy over remarks she made defending capitalism at a digital markering conference in Hamburg.

“I’m a capitalist. I stand to inherit a quarter of Bahlsen, and I'm looking forward to it,” she told the conference. “I want to make money and buy yachts.”

She went on to qualify her remarks, adding that she believed she could make more money by making the world a better place.

But that was drowned out in the chorus of disapproval on social media, where her comments were condemned as inappropriate coming from their heir to a business that used Nazi forced labour.

Ms Bahlsen responded by doubling down and attempting to defend the company’s Nazi-era record.

“That was before my time,” she told Bild, Germany’s highest-selling newspaper. “We paid the forced labourers as much as the Germans and treated them well. We did nothing wrong.”