Treasure hunters claim to have found two tonnes of looted Nazi gold, which they believe to be part of the Amber Room, a chamber of such elaborate beauty that it has been called the eighth wonder of the world.

The discovery was made at the weekend near the German village of Deutschneudorf. Tests found a man-made cavern 20 metres below ground that is believed to contain a large amount of precious metals.

“It's definitely not iron,” Heinz-Peter Haustein, who took part in the search, said. “It's gold, maybe silver. We expect it to be either gold from the Amber Room or gold that would give us clues to another hiding place.”

The digging has not yet reached the cavern and the recovery of the precious metals, believed to be in crates, is likely to take weeks because explosives experts and engineers have to be brought in to check for booby traps and to make the site safe, Mr Haustein added. It has been under guard since the weekend.

Mr Haustein, 53, a Member of Parliament for the Free Democrats, the liberal opposition party, has made it his hobby to search for the Amber Room in his home region in the past ten years. He is convinced that the treasure, which was stolen by Nazi Germany from the Soviet Union during the Second World War and which vanished in the turmoil of the final weeks of the conflict, was hidden in a network of copper and silver ore mines in the Ore Mountains along the German border with the Czech Republic.

Over the years Mr Haustein has received several tip-offs from people claiming to have knowledge of secret railways to the region. He says he has spent tens of thousands of euros of his own money on the hunt and has even hired people to use divining rods.

The tip-off that led to the latest purported discovery came from Christian Hanisch, from northern Germany, whose late father was a signaller in the Luftwaffe during the war. While going through papers belonging to his father Mr Hanisch found documents containing the co-ordinates of locations where the Nazis supposedly hid gold and diamonds at the end of the war.

“These co-ordinates were an exact match with the location of our search,” Mr Haustein said. “There was a note written next to the co-ordinates that the site contained Nazi Party gold. If the gold is there the Amber Room will be too. This is the place where the Nazis brought valuables by the truckload.”

The documents also contained warnings about booby trap devices.

The Amber Room, which was made out of amber panels backed with gold leaf, was created in the early 18th century. Friedrich Wilhelm I, a Prussian, gave it to Tsar Peter the Great, his Russian ally, in 1716.

In October 1941, four months after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Germans took it from the Catherine Palace near to what was then Leningrad and brought it to Königsberg in East Prussia, which is now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Part of it was exhibited in Königsberg Castle during the war.

Its disappearance in 1945 is one of the great enduring mysteries of the Second World War. There have been hundreds of theories about its fate and location. Some historians claim that it was destroyed in RAF bombing raids on Königsberg, others said that it was put on board a submarine, which the Soviets sank in the Baltic Sea.

Over the years searches have failed to uncover it and there is no firm evidence yet that the find in Deutschneudorf has anything to do with it. Meanwhile, the village, which calls itself the Amber Room Village, is enjoying something of a gold rush with an influx of reporters and treasure hunters.

Gone . . . but not forgotten

- One theory states that Erich Koch, the SS Commander, bowed to Polish interrogation in 1965 and revealed that the Amber Room was hidden in a bunker near Königsberg

- In 2004, documents supressed for decades by Moscow, suggested that Russian soldiers had burnt down the Knight’s Hall in Königsberg Castle, in which the treasure was stored

- Georg Stein, an investigator, claimed to have discovered a radio message detailing the hiding of the Amber Room. He was found dead in 1987, fueling belief in an Amber Room curse

- Some historians claim that boxes containing the dismantled parts were loaded on to a German vessel that was sunk by Soviet torpedoes

- Recent tip-offs have led investigators to an abandoned silver mine south of Berlin and to the shores of the Baltic Sea

Sources: Times archives, www.amberroom.org

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