BERLIN — Two months before the world’s most powerful leaders arrive for a G–8 summit, the German town of Bad Doberan finally got around yesterday to stripping honorary citizenship from a former national leader: Adolf Hitler.

The town, on the Baltic coast of what used to be East Germany, is in the midst of final preparations for the three-day gathering in June.

But with attention to every detail — from a vast security operation to accommodation for thousands of hangers-on — came a somewhat embarrassing fact: Hitler was still the proud recipient of the town’s honorary citizen award.

Indeed, though thousands of German towns clamored to bestow their citizenship on Hitler as he established his tyrannical reign, it was Bad Doberan that first came up with the idea.

While those other towns stripped the Nazi leader of the titles after the war, Bad Doberan did not get around to it. Municipal leaders say part of the reason was that the town was in East Germany and preferred not to dwell on its Nazi past. However, according to Hartmut Polzin, the mayor of Bad Doberan, the indignity was due to be put right at a meeting last night. “It is a political formality,” he said.