This is not so comedic as you may think. The supreme constitutional court clarifies in a judgment of the year 1972: The German Reich survived the collapse of 1945 [...] The Federal Republic of Germany is not the legal successor but as a state identical with the state German Reich. (This can be found in the document WD-3-292-07 of the scientific service of the german parliament https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/659208/bb1b8014f97412... )