Hundreds of British Jews and their descendants who were stripped of German citizenship by the Nazis have inquired about obtaining German passports in the wake of Britain’s vote for Brexit, figures from the German embassy in London have shown.

Applications for German citizenship from dispossessed British émigré Jews and their families – which normally run at just 20 per year – have spiked sharply after the June 23 vote which cast a pall of uncertainty over Britain’s future relations with Europe.

Thomas Harding, the Jewish writer whose latest work ‘The House by the Lake’ tells the story of his ancestral summer home outside Berlin that was vacated after his family fled the Nazis in the 1930s, was among the first to stake his claim.

“I heard about Brexit around 6am and by 9am I had emailed the German embassy in London asking how I could go about requesting citizenship,” he said.

Under Article 116 of Germany’s Basic Law any Jew whose citizenship was revoked by Nazi-era ordinances passed between January 1933 and May 1945 is entitled to have it restored. The rule also applies to their descendants.