German fisherman Konrad Fischer holds the message in a bottle from 1913. Photograph: Uwe Paesler/AFP-Getty

Message in bottle arrives after 101 years

German museum traces postcard inside beer bottle to baker's son Richard Platz and tracks down 62-year-old granddaughter 

• Agence France-Presse in Berlin
• theguardian.com, Monday 7 April 2014 
• Jump to comments (87)

A message in a bottle tossed in the sea in Germany 101 years ago and believed to be the world's oldest has been presented to the sender's granddaughter, a museum said on Monday.

A fisherman pulled the beer bottle with the scribbled message out of the Baltic off the northern city of Kiel last month, said Holger von Neuhoff of the International Maritime Museum in the northern port city of Hamburg.

"This is certainly the first time such an old message in a bottle was found, particularly with the bottle intact," he said.

Researchers then set to work identifying the author and managed to track down his 62-year-old granddaughter Angela Erdmann, who lives in Berlin. "It was almost unbelievable," Erdmann told the German news agency DPA.

She was first able to hold the brown bottle last week at the Hamburg museum. Inside was a message on a postcard requesting the finder return it to the writer's home address in Berlin.

"That was a pretty moving moment," Erdmann said. "Tears rolled down my cheeks."

A postcard dated 17 May 1913 and the old beer bottle sit on top of a map in Kiel, Germany. Photograph: Uwe Paesler/EPA

Von Neuhoff said researchers were able to determine based on the address that it was 20-year-old baker's son Richard Platz who threw the bottle in the Baltic while on a hike with a nature appreciation group in 1913.

A Berlin-based genealogical researcher then located Erdmann, who never knew Platz, her mother's father who died in 1946 at the age of 54.

Von Neuhoff said a handwriting comparison with letters penned by Platz later in life confirmed that he was "without a doubt" the author.

Erdmann told local newspapers that the surprise discovery had inspired her to look through family scrapbooks to learn more about her grandfather, a Social Democrat who liked to read.

Much of the ink on the postcard had been rendered illegible with time and dampness, Von Neuhoff said.

The discovery will be on display at the museum until 1 May, after which experts will set to work trying to decipher the rest of the message.

Guinness World Records previously identified the oldest message in a bottle as dating from 1914. It spent nearly 98 years at sea before being fished from the water.