The ten-year efforts of the German treasure hunter were crowned with success: he managed to find two tons of precious metals, presumably from the Amber Room
Under the ground in the Saxon village of Deychenedorf, allegedly two tons of precious metals were found, which could have been part of the Amber Room stolen by the Nazis. The excavations were carried out by a German amateur archaeologist, according to the Amber Room in 1716 by the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm the First presented to Peter the Great. It was first mounted in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and in 1755 moved to Tsarskoe Selo. During the Great Patriotic War, the Nazis took the Amber Room to Konigsberg, its further fate is unknown.
At one time, the magazine Der Spiegel said that old people living in Deychenedorf remember how on April 9, 1945, a column of military trucks appeared in the village, soldiers cordoned off the area, and some boxes were lowered into one of the adits. This whole operation lasted two days and all this time was under the control of the Saxon Gauleiter Martin Muchmann.
The treasure near a settlement located near the Czech border was discovered by the burgomaster of the village of Heinz-Peter Haustein, who carried out research at his own expense. The current excavation site is also listed in the papers he inherited from his father, who served as a signalman in the Luftwaffe, but it also contains a warning about booby-traps. An amateur archaeologist has been looking for the Amber Room for ten years and believes that its treasures may have been hidden in several copper and silver mines in the mountains on the border of Germany and the Czech Republic.
The British editions The Times and Daily Telegraph indicate that special equipment showed that the jewelry is 20 meters underground. “This is gold, possibly silver. We expect it to be either gold from the Amber Room, or gold that will lead us to another cache,”says Haustein.
Presumably, archaeologists will be able to get to the contents of the cache not earlier than in a few weeks, but for now the sappers are examining the place. The search area has been guarded since the end of last week.
We add that a consolidated catalog of cultural values from Russia lost during the Second World War is posted on the Internet. By the beginning of 2008, this project includes 15 volumes with lists of lost national treasures.
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