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BERLIN — Friedrich zu Solms-Baruth was swept up by the Gestapo the day after a failed 1944 bombing attempt on Hitler and thrown into the secret police's notorious Prinz Albrecht Strasse prison in downtown Berlin.

Unlike scores of others connected with the Kreisau Circle of plotters who were executed, the German aristocrat was eventually released — but not before he had signed away ownership of his family's estates on the order of Gestapo and SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Now, some 60 years later, Solms-Baruth's grandson is continuing the family's fight for compensation for the millions of dollars in lost property, taking his case to court.

"My father did it for his father, and unfortunately didn't live to the day to see justice served … therefore I am virtually making this a life's quest," Friedrich zu Solms-Baruth, who shares his grandfather's name, said in a phone interview from Barcelona, Spain, ahead of a Thursday hearing.

"It's really absurd that we should be talking about something like this today, when it's obvious a man who was imprisoned after the assassination attempt, with virtually a noose around his neck, was forced to sign his properties away."

The question the court will decide is when Solms-Baruth's grandfather lost his properties: when he signed away power-of-attorney in the Gestapo prison but remained the official owner on the books, or when the area was occupied by the Soviet Union immediately after the war and all large estates were seized and land redistributed.

At stake is 17,300 acres in the state of Brandenburg held by the state, municipalities and private companies.

Solms-Baruth said there's no estimate on how much the developed properties are worth because it has not yet been established what lands were part of his grandfather's estate. He said the forested areas alone are thought to be worth $8.8 million.

The case comes amid a renewed focus in recent months on the July 20, 1944, plot to kill Hitler led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, in part because of the upcoming Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie" based on the event.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a room where Hitler was meeting with aides and military advisers. Many plotters were executed.

Solms-Baruth's grandfather, a longtime anti-Nazi, was involved in discussions of the plot and provided two of his mansions as meeting places.

But evidence against Solms-Baruth was thin, and he was kept him alive in an attempt to extract information about other plotters, his grandson said.