Die Jagd nach der Heiligen Lanze (2010)

Archaeologist Eik Meiers and his future wife, Katharina Berthold, are searching for Professor Bachmann. The elderly scientist was kidnapped after discovering an old laboratory in a cave beneath the Bastei Bridge. In the laboratory, Eik and Katharina find a video message from the kidnapped professor, in which he holds a diary up to the camera. Their friend Justus identifies the handwriting in the images as that of the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The writer, who was interested in the natural sciences, was apparently a confidant of the French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte, who possessed the Holy Lance. To protect the spear with which the soldier Longinus pierced the crucified Jesus Christ, Goethe concealed all clues to the hiding place of this precious relic. Alongside the video camera, Eik and Katharina have also found a rod in Goethe’s laboratory. Using it, they decipher a Scytale cipher and reconstruct a poem that points to Goethe’s friend Friedrich Schiller. His skull is the next clue on the trail of the Holy Lance. To find it, the treasure hunters break into Schiller’s tomb in Weimar. There, with the help of a large camera obscura, they discover an image of Mephisto, but suddenly the criminal Erlanger, who kidnapped Professor Bachmann and now wants to obtain the Holy Lance with the help of martial artist Judith, confronts them. Erlanger is acting on behalf of Baron von Hahn, who considers himself Napoleon’s successor and therefore the relic’s rightful owner. Eik, Katharina, Justus, and their adversary Judith are nearly killed by a wall of thorns, but the treasure hunters manage to escape for the time being. They open Schiller’s skull and find a kind of clockwork mechanism inside. It projects a town emblem featuring a mouse onto a church wall. As they identify the emblem as belonging to St. Bartholomä on Lake Königssee, Erlanger catches up with the treasure hunters again and puts them under pressure. In the church, they interrupt a wedding and discover a telescope marked with symbols and a cross-shaped map. After trading the incomplete telescope for an opponent disguised as Bachmann in a sham deal, Eik and Katharina use a family celebration at the Baron’s to rescue the professor. Katharina is satisfied with this, but Eik is determined to find the Lance. Justus and Bachmann identify the building shown on the map as the Walhalla. There they meet Eik’s daughter Kriemhild (“Krimi”), who had wanted to see her father after an argument with her boyfriend. Together, they use the telescope to locate four busts in the Walhalla. Krimi connects the four heads with the thread of her knitted boa, and at the point where the lines intersect, a relief in the floor slab indicates the next clue: the Quadriga atop the Brandenburg Gate. They also find a large key. When Eik climbs up to the Quadriga, he finds the matching keyhole on the back of the statue of Victoria and opens a door leading to a temple-like structure beneath the Brandenburg Gate. As the treasure hunters reach a passage protected by flamethrowers, von Hahn arrives as well. The Baron reads aloud an entry from Goethe’s diary, which says they should proceed boldly and free of constraint. Eik then enters the passage and uses switches in the floor to turn off the flames one after another. Beyond it, he discovers the Holy Lance together with Napoleon’s extensive war booty. Eik stops the flame mechanism with a lever, and the other treasure hunters enter the chamber too. When von Hahn tries to take the Lance, Eik refuses to hand it over. The Baron shoots at Eik, but the Lance deflects the shot. The Baron does not give up, however, and now threatens Krimi, forcing Eik to hand him the Lance. As the Baron tries to escape with it, the anti-theft mechanism is triggered again and he burns to a heap of ashes. Eik takes the Lance back, and the four treasure hunters leave the underground chamber. At the reception that follows at the museum, only Napoleon’s treasure is put on display, while the Lance itself is hidden inside a statue. Justus receives a call pointing to the Amber Room.