Die Jagd nach dem Bernsteinzimmer (2012)

While searching for a lost artifact in the coastal dunes near Sankt Peter-Ording, treasure hunter Eik Meiers is shot and seriously injured. When he comes to in the hospital, he is suffering from amnesia and can no longer remember the past twelve years. He does not even recognize his wife, Katharina, or his friend Justus; he remembers only his daughter Kriemhild, nicknamed Krimi, as a six-year-old girl. Together, they try to retrace Eik’s last steps. Apparently, Eik had been close to discovering the legendary Amber Room. In his search, Eik was accompanied by archaeobotanist Mila Marglund, who turns out to be Albert Einstein’s great-granddaughter. In 1944, Einstein returned to Germany from his exile in the United States. There, with the help of several supporters, he hid the Amber Room in a secret location from the Nazis, because they had learned the secret of the Amber Room—a secret that would have made their soldiers practically invulnerable. The secret of the Amber Room lies in the seeds of the extinct panacea plant Silphium, which have been trapped in amber for thousands of years. The plant’s active ingredient is said to be capable of restoring even the mortally wounded or incurably ill to health. At the same time, the unscrupulous CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Jan van Hassel, is trying to get hold of the Silphium, sensing a billion-dollar business if he can sell its active ingredient to the military. He does not hesitate to have two hired killers pursue the treasure hunters. Eik and the others find their first clues to the Amber Room’s whereabouts in an old film featuring Einstein, an amber necklace Eik had found earlier, and a gyroscopic compass further developed by Einstein. These clues eventually lead them to the Monument to the Battle of the Nations, whose construction was initiated by Clemens Thieme. Thieme appeared alongside Einstein in the old film. A beam of light they create inside the monument leads the adventurers to the grave of a relative of physicist Otto von Guericke. They can open it only after remembering his vacuum experiment. Inside, they find an Enigma cipher machine. Since Eik does not return Mila’s affection and cares only about the Amber Room, she now teams up with van Hassel, who promises in return to have her named as the discoverer of the Silphium. The markings on the Enigma machine turn out to be the registration markings of a Junkers Ju 52/3m aircraft. Krimi, who has by now also become a treasure hunter, learns from an elderly woman that one such plane is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. During a costume ball held at the museum, Eik, Katharina, and Justus make their way to the aircraft. After the hired killers intercept them there, and an image of an eagle with a nest inside the plane fails to help them, they manage to escape their pursuers in a hot-air balloon. Katharina suggests that the image must be a clue to the Kehlsteinhaus, also known as the Eagle’s Nest. Meanwhile, they discover pieces of metal trapped inside the amber necklace; fitted together, they form a key. In the Kehlstein elevator, the key opens an entrance to a shaft, at the end of which is a room containing a Zuse Z3 that blocks the next passage with a riddle. Einstein’s remark, “God does not play dice,” gives the treasure hunters the crucial clue to solving it, and the door opens. Beyond it are indeed the Amber Room and the medicinal plants. When van Hassel and Mila, who have followed them, also have to solve the Z3’s riddle, Mila enters the wrong answer. They gain access to the Amber Room too, but in doing so also trigger a self-destruct mechanism that works with nitroglycerin. The treasure hunters escape through a shaft, while van Hassel and Mila die in the explosion, which also destroys the Amber Room. The treasure hunters drive to the beach, where Krimi shows them a ring she received from the elderly woman. Justus recognizes it as a clue to the Ark of the Covenant.