The long-awaited excavation is the culmination of over a decade of work. Back in 2008, researchers from the Foundation came into possession of a cache of documents, including a wartime diary, given to them by the secretive Quedlinburg Lodge. A mysterious group that dates back thousands of years, it’s thought to have been connected to prominent figures across the spheres of religion, high society, science and the arts. During the WWII years, however, it also counted a number of Nazis among its members. Historian Roman Furmaniak, President of the Silesian Bridge Foundation, told French magazine Science et Vie: ‘It’s a terrible page in their history… And it is precisely for this reason that they entrusted this diary to us, as one more step towards reconciliation and a beginning of a restitution process.’
The diary was reportedly penned in early 1945 by a high-ranking officer in Hitler’s SS, who wrote under the pseudonym Michaelis. Following a lengthy (and ongoing) translation process to decipher the faint pencil and old German dialect, the manuscript relates that Michaelis was assigned a mission by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, tasked with stashing away valuables when the Soviet army began advancing on Poland. ‘We believe that these funds were intended for the construction of a new German nation on the ruins of the Third Reich: A Fourth Reich, as contained in the War Diary in an establishment act 50419411 [a code that is still awaiting to be deciphered],’ explains Furmaniak.
Archive photo of the Minkowskie Palace
Michaelis was instructed to hide an estimated 100 to 300 tonnes of valuables, previously held at locations including the German Central Bank in Breslau (the nearby Polish city of Wrocław today): a treasure trove made up of gold bars, jewellery, art (allegedly including pieces by greats such as Rembrandt, Cézanne and Botcelli) and religious valuables. Some of these were reportedly from the private collections of rich Germans who lived in the area, who deposited their valuables at the Reichsbank in Breslau for safekeeping in the face of the advancing Red Army.
