Lake Toplitz

Lake Toplitz lies in the Salzkammergut in Styria, walled in by the cliffs of the Totes Gebirge. The lower layer of the lake holds no oxygen and almost nothing lives in it, so wood sunk there does not rot. Whatever went into the water in 1945 is still on the bottom in close to the condition it went in.

In the closing weeks of the war, farmers around the lake watched uniformed men bring heavy wooden crates down to the shore. What was in them has been the question ever since.

Part of it was answered in 1959, when divers working for the German magazine Stern brought up 15 crates. Fourteen held counterfeit British banknotes. The forgeries came from Operation Bernhard, an SS counterfeiting program run with prisoner labor at Sachsenhausen, which printed sterling in quantities meant to break confidence in the pound.

The lake kept its reputation anyway. In October 1963 a 19 year old diver from Munich named Alfred Egner drowned in it. He had been hired by two men, one of them a former SS officer, and they did not report his death for about 20 hours. Austrian authorities opened an inquiry, went into the lake themselves, and brought up more counterfeit notes, some weapons, and Egner's body.

Diving has been restricted since. The forged money is documented. The gold is not.

The oxygen free layer. Below its upper layer the lake holds no oxygen and almost no life. That is why crates sunk in 1945 came up in 1959 with their contents still legible, and why anything still down there is likely to be intact.

Operation Bernhard. The forgery program is not in dispute. It ran at Sachsenhausen using prisoner labor, and the notes were good enough that the Bank of England stopped issuing its larger denominations during the war and did not bring them back for two decades.

Alfred Egner's death. Egner was 19, from Munich, and was hired in 1963 by two men including a former SS officer. He drowned. The delay in reporting it, about 20 hours, is what turned a private treasure hunt into a police matter and put the Austrian state into the lake.

The lake is reached on foot from the parking area at Gößl, at the eastern end of the Grundlsee. Two waymarked paths lead there, one through the village below the Gößler Wand and one through the woods past the Ranftlmühle, and the walk takes about 30 minutes either way. Scheduled boat trips run on the Grundlsee and the Toplitzsee through the warmer months.

The Fischerhütte sits at the western end of the lake beside the boat landing. It serves fish from the water it stands on and keeps a small museum of objects recovered from the lake during the diving expeditions.

The lake is inside the Totes Gebirge nature reserve. Swimming is allowed. Diving, boats, and paddleboards are not. These are mountain paths and the weather in the Salzkammergut turns quickly, so it is worth checking conditions before setting out and starting back in good light.