Music score may have secret code leading to Nazi gold, filmmaker says
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Dutch filmmaker has organized a series of digs for lost Nazi riches in a small Bavarian town -- spurred by a sheet of music some claim is actually a coded treasure map.
Spiegel Online reports Leon Giesen, 51, has led three attempts in recent weeks to unearth the rumored buried loot in Mittenwald, near the Austrian border – after the town’s officials signed off on the hunt.
The strange sequence centers on the recent public revelation of an annotated score of the “March Impromptu,” a piece of music by composer Gottfried Federlein, the news agency reports.
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According to Spiegel Online, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered his private secretary, Martin Bormann, during the final days of World War II to imbed a series of letters, figures and runes on the sheet music that would, when deciphered, lend the coordinates to a horde of buried treasure.
A military chaplain was then reportedly ordered to squire the score to someone in Munich – but it never arrived.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Decades later, Dutch journalist Karl Hammer Kaatee came into possession of the document. Then, in December – and after repeated unsuccessful attempts at cracking the code – Kaatee made the score public to much fanfare overseas, according to Spiegel Online.
"It's like a treasure map that can't be deciphered," Jürgen Proske, a German historian, told the news agency.
Now, Giesen believes he’s finally uncovered the solution to the sheet music’s alleged mysterious code.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Dutch filmmaker reportedly believes a line added to the score that reads, “Wo Matthias die Saiten Streichelt," or “where Matthew plucks strings," actually refers to Mittenwald and one-time resident Matthias Klotz, who purportedly founded the town’s renowned violin-making tradition.
Also, Spiegel Online writes Giesen says the sheet music contains a schematic diagram of train tracks that once ran through Mittenwald in the 1940s, and that the chopped sentence, “Enden der Tanz," which means "end the dance" -- located at the conclusion of the score -- means the treasure can be found at the former site of the rail line's buffer stops.
And – eerily – early digs have reportedly revealed a large quantity of unidentified metals, which Giesen cites geologists as describing as an, “anomaly, a substance that doesn’t belong there.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Dutchman is now looking to raise the requisite funds to continue the dig, according to Spiegel Online.
Proske, though, has his doubts, reportedly saying, "It could be a treasure chest. But it could just be a manhole cover."
Click for the story from Spiegel Online.