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Nazi Gold!

Treasure hunters are digging for it in Germany.  Fascinating tale include coordinates jotted down by one of guy’s late Luftwaffe dad. They think a bunch of Goering’s ripped off art and the Tsar’s Amber Room could be down there, too. Very exciting. Bloomberg: 

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Treasure hunters today began drilling in search of Nazi gold and looted paintings that they believe were buried in the Ore Mountains near the Czech border by retreating German forces at the end of World War II.

“It is the moment of truth,” said Heinz-Peter Haustein, the mayor of the nearby town of Deutschneudorf, speaking to reporters over the noise of drilling equipment. “These are days you don’t have often in life — I have been waiting for this for 10 years. We are planning to drill all week.”

The team led by Haustein, using an electromagnetic pulse measuring instrument, discovered a man-made cavern underground at Deutschkatharinenberg, a hamlet in the mountains. The equipment showed that metal buried there is probably gold or silver, according to Christian Hanisch, a treasure hunter.

Hanisch said he believes the hoard contains bars of gold belonging to the Nazi party. He also said the buried loot may include paintings stolen by Hermann Goering, the commander of the Luftwaffe, and evacuated from his villa near Berlin before the end of the war.

Haustein, who is a Free Democratic Party member of the German parliament, is seeking clues to the fate of the Amber Room, an 18th-century Russian palace chamber stolen by the Nazis. A 53- year-old engineer, Haustein’s profile on the parliamentary Web site describes him as “devoted in his quest to find the legendary Amber Room.”

The room, made of panels covered with amber and gold leaf, was created by Prussian and Russian craftsman and given to Czar Peter the Great by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I in 1716.

In October 1941, the Nazis dismantled it from the Catherine Palace near Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and shipped it to Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad. It hasn’t been seen since 1945.

The first hole drilled today in the hillside at Deutschkatharinenberg revealed little, except that there is water below the surface.

“That’s a good sign,” Hanisch said in an interview at the site as he ordered a burger from a roadside stall. “It suggests that there is a hollow there that is increasing the pressure.”

Hanisch’s father was a Luftwaffe radio operator who was based in the area in 1945 and was wounded at the end of the war. After his death, in 1998, Hanisch found a set of coordinates that his father had written down, and tracked down the location. He later teamed up with Haustein.

“Our clues tallied,” Hanisch said.

Does he believe that the Amber Room also may be buried in the Ore Mountains?

“Anything’s possible,” Hanisch said.

Article short on details about what they plan to do with the loot. Which would be quite literally loot, as in the property of other people. Long line of lawyers, Israelis, etc., might want to have a chat with those guys.

Topics: art, money, Nazis

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:40 pm on Tuesday, February 26, 2008

3 Responses to “Nazi Gold!”

1. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   February 26th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

   Doubtless the Euroweenie autocrats in Brussels will find a way to get their slimy claws on the treasure, thus carrying on a long European tradition of pillaging and looting.

2. Robert Says:
   February 26th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

   “The real Indiana Jones: Intrepid British don Tudor Parfitt’s mission to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant by Zoe Brennan in the Daily Mail (UK) 22nd February 2008

   But, perhaps the greatest missing treasure is the hoard of Alaric the ruler of the Goths who sacked Rome in 410 C.E.

   Gibbon wrote:

   “the whole design was defeated by the premature death of Alaric, which fixed, after a short illness, the fatal term of his conquests. … By the labor of a captive multitude, they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia*. The royal sepulcher, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their natural channel; and the secret spot, where the remains of Alaric had been deposited, was forever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners, who had been employed to execute the work.”

   * A city in Calabria 150 mi SE of Naples

   
   “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, ed. J.B. Bury (New York, 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 5., CHAPTER XXXI: Invasion of Italy by Alaric — Manners of the Roman Senate and People — Rome is thrice besieged and at length pillaged by the Goths — Death of Alaric — The Goths evacuate Italy — Fall of Constantine — Gaul and Spain are occupied by the Barbarians — Independence of Britain

3. saltydog Says:
   February 27th, 2008 at 2:23 am

   TRJS, I wouldn’t be so quick to dump on the Euros, however much they deserve it. Both the federal government and the state of Florida was just as quick to claim the years of labor and money and risk of treasure hunters once they found treasure. Unfortunately, greedy bastards who love the unearned are the same everywhere.

   I don’t include the legitimate claims of families from whom wealth was looted by the Nazis, of course.

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