The pros and cons of treasure hunting in Bavaria.
Wolfgang Hülbig detests musket balls. They are everywhere. In his backpack, rolling around on the floor of his car, hiding in corners in his children’s room. The pockets of his jacket are often full of them. Yet, even though he hates them, he keeps finding them. Finding them is, in fact, how he spends much of his free time.Most weekends and some week days, Hülbig, a freelance insurance consultant from Landshut, can be found combing the fields and forests around Munich, with headphones over his ears, metal detector in hand and eyes carefully measuring his next step. As hobbies go, it is hard work. His detector can see up to 60 cm into the ground and every beep in his headphones must be explored. Often he digs up recently discarded trash, rusty nails or bits of broken farm equipment, but frequently he is successful. In fact, if one were to measure his success by the number of historically intriguing artifacts found, then Hülbig is wildly successful. Single Celtic coins, Roman daggers, ancient gold jewelry, bronze stirrups, silver belt buckles, World War II bayonets, Coke cans—and musket balls by the hundreds. He finds something, he says, every time he goes out.
Hülbig is one of an estimated 150,000 treasure hunters in Germany, thousands of whom wander the hills and fields of Bavaria. Most are hobby collectors and tend to focus on one period in history while selling or trading everything else. Others are in it for the extra cash it can bring in. A single Celtic coin can be worth € 750 or more, while World War II medals bring in up to € 200 on e-Bay or other auction sites.
The hobby also has its detractors. Treasure hunters are, for the most part, reviled by the archaeological community. Referred to as “grave robbers,” they are scorned for the damage they can do to important historical sites. Hülbig, however, maintains that for him, treasure hunting offers a way to connect with history in a way that brings it to life. He enjoys the excitement of finding an object as well as the research that goes into identifying it. Even spending hours in a library searching for clues that might tell him where to search is, he says, part of the pleasure. “I was never interested in history in school,” he says, “but now I am better in history than most of my teachers were. When I find something, I can really make a connection between what I have found and what was going on then. I have developed a different, more personal, relationship to history.”
To characterize treasure hunters as hobby historians, however, is to miss the point. True, many of them are quite happy with their smaller finds. Thomas Werthefrongel of Augsburg posts each of his freshly unearthed coins, some of them dating from the Middle Ages, on a Web forum for treasure hunters. Ostensibly, he does this for the assistance others provide in identifying his finds. Yet one gets the impression that there is an equal part pride in the postings. “I didn’t find much in the last couple of days, but aren’t these two coppers lovely?” he writes in one posting accompanied by a picture of an Augsburger Heller from 1736 and a Lindau Pfennig from 1697. About another find—an ornate coin from Württemberg with a hole drilled through it—he gushes, “What a lovely design. I wonder which beautiful princess wore it around her neck.”
Yet there is one coin in his collection that really animates Werthefrongel. He found it last summer in a farmer’s field northwest of Augsburg. As coins go, it is a beautiful piece—shiny, well preserved with an engraving of a medieval knight on one side. It is also old—minted in the 16th century in Prague. Yet the really exciting aspect of this coin is what it is made of. “At first,” he says, “I thought it was a coin from the early 20th century. But when I brushed the dirt away, my eyes fell on the date—1584. I was electrified! I immediately ran to my water bottle and thoroughly rinsed the coin. It was gold! What every treasure hunter dreams about!”
Indeed. Or to be more accurate, a pot of gold. Visions of chests brimming with military gold from the Thirty Years’ War, clay pots stuffed with the life savings of some medieval salt trader, or caves full of the tons of government gold that disappeared following World War II dance before the eyes of every hobbyist with a metal detector. Such riches, assure treasure hunters, are just lying about waiting to be found. “Every few weeks,” goes one common refrain, “somebody finds a stash of treasure in Germany. Just read the newspapers.”
If they were in it only for the potential riches, most would, of course, be quickly disappointed. Treasure hunters also derive pleasure from unearthing bits of the past. Nevertheless, turning on a metal detector is more like buying a lottery ticket than tuning in to the History Channel—more Robinson Crusoe than Jacques Cousteau. A beeping detector says, “and now for this week’s Lotto numbers.”
There are, of course, lottery winners. And people dig up treasures as well. In the mid-1990s, a worker digging a fish pond near Rosenheim discovered 1,274 silver coins originating from the second and third centuries AD. In the early 1980s, a hobby gardener in Wallersdorf, a small town in eastern Bavaria, kept digging gold coins out of his flowerbed. After three years and a bit of help, he had unearthed 400 Celtic coins worth DM 4 million. Treasure hunter Reinhold Ostler, a resident of Finning, near Ammersee, tells the story of a friend of his who, in 1995, stumbled across a tin cigarette case with his metal detector. Inside were coins and jewelry worth over DM 100,000.
I felt a little ridiculous as I stepped out of Hülbig’s white Mazda station wagon into the freshly plowed field just outside the tiny village of Gablingen west of Munich. My feet sank into the soft earth—soil dribbling into my shoes—as Hülbig and his treasure-hunting buddy Stephan Heptner changed into their military surplus jackets and pants. I hope they haven’t brought one for me, I thought to myself, not especially unhappy to look the city fool in my Gore-Tex windbreaker. I was not handed camouflage, but, as promised, they brought along an extra metal detector, a bright green beginner’s model, with which Heptner began his hunting career early last year. Both he and Hülbig bought themselves newer, more powerful detectors for Christmas. Not only can the newer detectors locate objects buried deeper than the 30 cm my loaner would pick up, but they can also distinguish among different types of metal, allowing hunters to ignore the chunks of iron from farming equipment that often litters cultivated fields. After a brief how-to demonstration by Heptner, we donned our earphones and embarked on our expedition. I imitated the other two as they swept their detectors back and forth in front of them while walking. I quickly fell behind as I concentrated on the clipping and whirring in my headphones, waiting for the clear, extended beep that alerted me to the fact that I had found something.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Stephan had stopped and was hacking into the ground with his adz-shaped digging tool. Intrigued and excited, I wandered over to see what he had found. There were a number of possibilities. The region of what we now know as Bavaria is covered with ancient trade routes, fortress ruins and abandoned villages. People have been living in and cluttering up the area around Munich more or less continuously since the Stone Age.
Finds from the Bronze Age, such as Celtic remains, date back to 1800 BC, some from as early as 500 BC are sprinkled throughout Upper Bavaria, including canals in Feldmoching and Perlach. A high concentration of finds were discovered during the construction of Ikea’s warehouse in Eching. After the Celts came the Romans, occupying Bavaria from the first to the fifth century. Sites of their fortresses dot the banks of the Danube River. Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg) was a regional capital, conquered by Tiberius in 15 BC. The main Roman route over the Alps ends in Rosenheim before branching westwards across the Isar south of Munich on its way to Gauting.
The Middle Ages, the founding of Munich in 1158, the Thirty Years’ War from 1608 to 1638, the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century and the two World Wars have left their marks on that route. Wandering along with a metal detector can yield all manner of treasures, such as coins, daggers, bits of armor, tools, cannonballs and hand grenades. “There are areas in Bavaria that are not as rich in artifacts,” says Dr. Amei Lang, academic director of pre- and early history at the university in Munich, “but in and around Munich, there is a rich variety as well as a large number of them. If you think about the new train lines that are being built and what they run across almost daily, for example, then it becomes clear how many sites there are out there just waiting to be found.”
Heptner’s find turned out to be a somewhat corroded shoe buckle. Or is it a belt buckle? It is unclear from looking at it and, had I found it, I would have considered it just one of the myriad different shapes that junk can take. Heptner, however, was pleased. For one thing, it is in one piece. For another, he found it. “Who knows how old it is,” he says turning it over in his hands. “It could even be Roman.”
It is a proposition that I considered with a certain amount of skepticism as I walked back to continue my search. But then, he was right: it could be Roman. Perhaps it is not knowing that adds to the excitement. I began my search anew, imagining that the faint chirps from my detector indicated deeply buried coins, but heeded Hülbig’s instructions that only a prolonged beep is worth exploring. I ignored the dull beeps, wondering what it was I was doing stumbling around a farmer’s field while a chilly, afternoon wind kicked up.
Then, suddenly, a loud, clear tone and an accompanying shot of adrenalin startled me out of my reverie. I stopped, determined where exactly the signal was coming from, and began to dig. I dug the way I saw the others engaged in excavation—shovel a bit of dirt to one side and then wave the detector over the hole to see if the object, often caked with dirt and therefore hard to see, has already been unearthed. Dig some more. Wave the detector. After four of five shovel loads, my detector went quiet. I looked at my small pile of soil, wondering what it hid. I took a handful and held it under the detector. Nothing. When I finally found the hunk of metal in my pile of dirt, it was difficult to imagine what it might have been. What it is now is an amorphous, rust-colored blob of sharp metal, likely a chunk from the blade of a plow.
My second and my third finds were also junk. A nail encased in rust and another sharp hunk of iron. This was a pretty typical haul, as it turns out, especially considering the rather low-tech gadget I was using. And yet, what did I know? It seemed a pretty safe assumption that my blobs of metal were indeed worthless garbage, but Heptner’s buckle hadn’t exactly jumped out at me either. Nor did the neck of a glass bottle he had found lying on the surface of the field—again he speculated on the item’s possible Roman origin. So far, everything that we had pulled out of the ground looked pretty humdrum.
In considering treasure hunters, this is one of the arguments that archaeologists use to condemn the pastime. Despite their rather intensive interaction with history—compared to most, Hülbig and Heptner are historical geniuses—treasure hunters, so the argument goes, often don’t know what they have found let alone its archaeological importance. The second argument is more convincing. According to Dr. Lang, what seem to be isolated bits of metal found with a detector are often part of a much larger site that could easily be damaged in the process of extracting that metal. Treasure hunters “usually just take the artifact or whatever it is out of the ground without any attempt at contextualization,” she says. “Often, it is precisely the well-preserved metal pieces taken by treasure hunters that enable us to date a find. For example, if you take a coin out of what was a medieval house, it makes it more difficult to find the house, as well as more difficult to date it if it is found again.”
For Dr. Lang and many of her colleagues, it would be best if treasure hunting were forbidden altogether. If that’s not possible, they argue, Bavaria should at least adopt a law strictly governing historical finds. Currently, Bavaria—along with Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia—is one of only three states where all finds don’t automatically belong to the state. Treasure hunters in Bavaria must inform landowners of what they find and split any monetary gains fifty-fifty. Finds of scientific value must be registered at the local Office for the Preservation of Historical Assets and be made available to archaeologists for study. It is a legalized honor system that, given the value of many ancient artifacts, doesn’t always work. Many finds end up being sold to collectors and art dealers without ever seeing the light of day. Auction houses often choose not to ask where pieces come from, and if they do, hunters opt for the Internet as an anonymous sales outlet.
Just two years ago, a bronze disc, made in 1600 BC and inlayed with gold images of the sun, the moon and the stars, was found by a treasure hunter near Halle. Archaeologists, who have seen pictures of the disc circulated by the finders, say that it could be one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century, proving an interest in the cosmos among Europeans far earlier than they had thought possible. Rather than turn in the disc, however, the finders tried to sell it. Through an intermediary they are asking for DM 700,000. Archeologists will have to wait.
Reinhold Ostler, a professional treasure hunter from the town of Finning near Ammersee, says such incidents give metal detecting a bad name. The author of a number of books on treasure hunting, including the classic Das neue Handbuch für Schatzsucher as well as the more recent Auf Schatzsuche in Deutschland: Schätze die noch zu finden sind, Ostler has led a number of large search expeditions, including two to famous Coconut Island, off the coast of Costa Rica. According to Ostler and most other treasure hunters, this island is the place written about in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and represents the Holy Grail of treasure hunting. It is, says Ostler, home to over 30 tons of gold.
Ostler is also as close as it gets to being the official spokesman of treasure hunting in Germany. He is of the opinion that only a small percentage of treasure hunters give the hobby a bad reputation. “Many search in areas where they are not supposed to be—places identified and set aside as being important archaeological sites, where it is illegal to search—and they go at night and search on other people’s property. These people just want to get rich.”
Ostler often registers his own finds with the authorities. A Celtic sword he found in 1984, for example, is now on display in the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich. Two silver platters, which Ostler found in 1983, can be seen in Mühldorf’s local history museum. Such finds, he argues, would still be lying in the ground were it not for him.
The artifact enthusiast also argues that Bavaria’s more liberal approach to treasure hunters may even aid archaeology. Between 10 and 100 times more finds are registered in Bavaria than in states where all treasures must be handed over to the state. After spending two hours of trudging through two different farmer’s fields, I was getting tired and frustrated. My fingernails were black, my shoes were full of dirt and my pockets had grown heavy with unidentifiable chunks of iron. I was about to make my way back to the car when my detector beeped for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Okay,” I thought to myself. “I’ll dig this one out, but this is definitely my last hole.” I crouched down and started digging. My pile of dirt grew quickly and, soon enough, my detector indicated that whatever it was, it was hiding in a small pile of dirt between my knees. I began filtering handfuls of dirt through my fingers. Nothing. I grabbed another handful. Again nothing.
And then I found it—square and thin and, for the first time, the green of corroded copper rather than the orange of rusted iron. I rubbed the dirt off against my jeans and looked again. It is a coin from 1745. It is an Augsburger Heller—tiny and of no value either monetarily or archaeologically. Heck, it isn’t even that old. But it’s not junk. Nor is it a musket ball. I felt the muted satisfaction of a fisherman, who, after a long day of nibbles, finally reels in a slightly undersized trout. I couldn’t wait to get home to clean it up.
