Imagine you're a 16-year-old girl on vacation in Bavaria. You enter the icy, crystal clear Königssee Lake, dive for only two metres... And all of a sudden, at the bottom, you see something that shines like a sensational movie.
You're taking it ashore.
Half a kilo of pure gold. Perfect, heavy, with the inscription "Degussa Fine Gold 999.9".
To nie jest scena z filmu. To prawdziwa historia 16-latki z Essen, która w sierpniu 2015 roku spędzała wakacje nad jednym z najpiękniejszych jezior Bawarii.
The girl didn't hide the find. She didn't call a "friend" who would "take care of it." She immediately took the bar to Berchtesgaden Police.
The investigation went full steam. The police divers searched exactly the bottom of this place – they hoped for a safe, a box, perhaps even a larger batch of gold. Nothing. Just this one bar.
But the staff had a secret. The serial number was very carefully and intentionally destroyed. Someone really didn't want it to be read.
Media natychmiast podchwyciły temat. Jezioro Königssee leży niedaleko dawnej kwatery Hitlera w Obersalzbergu. Czyżby „złoto nazistów”? Czy sztabka pochodzi z wojennych czasów?
Deguss experts quickly cooled off these speculations. The bar was produced between 1990 and 2005. So long after the war.
The case slowly began to quiet down. After six months, according to German law, as no one reported for loss, the 16-year-old became the legal owner of a semi-kilogram gold bar worth around EUR 16-19 thousand at the time.
To this day, it is not known how the bar got to the bottom of the lake and why someone so carefully erased her serial number.
