STASHED away in an uncharted bunker sealed off by the Nazis lays an elusive art collection potentially worth billions.
And one hopeful writer has now told The Sun that he could unearth the stolen masterpieces by the end of this year.
German author Burkhart List has dedicated decades of his life to recovering the missing art collection of Baron Ferenc Hatvany.
The Jewish Hungarian’s treasures were plundered during World War II after he was persecuted by the Nazis – but they have never been found.
Theories speculate that either Adolf Hitler’s notorious SS or Joseph Stalin’s brutal Red Army looted the Hungarian collector’s fortune.
After fleeing Hungary, losing his collection and surviving the war, Hatvany died in Switzerland in 1958.
Treasure hunter List believes there are up to 800 of Hatvany’s collected paintings buried away in a depot near the German-Czech border – which could be worth billions of dollars today.
And although List, 75, is dead set on recovering the valuable hoard – authorities have stepped in his way at a crucial moment under what he calls “ridiculous circumstances”.
The determined German said that a groundbreaking geographical survey pointed to a man-made bunker which contained objects around 40 metres underground.
List claims to know the co-ordinates of this mysterious cache – which he believes is where the SS hid Hatvany’s stolen paintings in 1944.
He told The Sun: “This is the greatest collection of French Impressionists outside France – including fascinating paintings by Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Cezanne and more.”
He added that the renowned Hatvany family was “the most artistically outstanding family in Budapest”, and that Ferenc Hatvany himself was also a gifted painter.
List explained that the hidden collection would be valued at billions of euros.
“In 1963, the collection was valued at around 400 million Deutsche Marks – today, it is at least €4billion (£3.4billion),” the treasure expert said.
On top of the incredible Hatvany collection, the writer believes that the site conceals further art, gold and jewellery stolen from Jews who were persecuted during Hitler’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944.
These treasures were to be stored to build the wealth of Hitler’s regime, had he won the war.
List explained: “The cache was presumably the central storage of the SS and Gestapo. So it’s not just about the Hatvany collection.
“The contents of this storage unit were to be used to build up the Fourth Reich.”
The mystifying depot is located near the small village of Deutschkatharinenberg in the Ore Mountains.
This region is known for its sprawling mines and tunnels – many of which have been rumoured to harbour Nazi treasure over the decades.
These legends circulated through local gossip of SS lorries coming and going in the dead of night to offload the riches.
The survey which List is looking into was carried out by Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, director of Austria’s Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Virtual Archaeology.
The researcher was part of a team that made a game-changing discovery at Stonehenge using cutting-edge geophysical imaging in 2010.
His findings around Deutschkatharinenberg suggest that the entrance to the mysterious mine was sealed by an explosion.
List says it will be difficult but possible to unearth the sought-after loot by the end of this year.
He said his permit would need to be greenlit again but also needed extra funds.
The treasure hunter said: “We need investors who don’t put their money into defence companies, but instead donate it to this peace project.”
He said that €200,000 (£170,000) would be the minimum sum required to carry out the ambitious project.
According to List’s rigorous research, the SS took their pillaged loot from Budapest to Rosenheim by lorry, and then to Berlin by train.
But the story isn’t as simple as that – List says there were actually two carriages that decoupled from the train from Rosenheim to Berlin.
And these two separated carriages which held the stolen masterpieces were instead directed to Deutschkatharinenberg.
Despite List believing that the valuable collection is still down there – he can’t specify exactly which paintings might be found.
Unfortunately for List – his search was recently stopped at the last moment.
Authorities revoked his exploration permit in January 2024 after a Stone Age tool was found just over half a mile away.
The irritated treasure hunter is appealing against the decision to revoke his digging permit.
He complained: “My discovery is something completely different from the discovery of a stone club from the Neolithic period around 1,000 metres away.”
The furious expert blasted: “These circumstances are so ridiculous that it is impossible to understand how grown-up people could seriously use this as an argument to revoke my excavation licence – and they did.”
List said that the Saxon authorities were working against him to prevent the hidden Nazi loot from being brought to light.
He said: “The intention to prevent access was and still seems to be the declared aim of the Saxon authorities.”
The writer believes the “stubbornness of authorities and politicians” and more dubious forces are working against him.
“Obviously, it is part of the German Deep State’s policy to prevent the hidden Nazi looted treasures from being brought to light.
“The German authorities have done nothing to find it. But they are doing everything they can to prevent it from being recovered,” he added.
List’s ambitions for the enigmatic Hatvany collection are the latest in a long line of mostly fruitless Nazi treasure hunts.
Since the end of the Second World War, numerous have attempted to find a splurge of hidden riches.
Since the end of WWII, various explorers and researchers have been on the lookout for Nazi art that was taken from Jewish families or looted during the war.
Although some pieces have been recovered through extensive efforts – the whereabouts of several paintings by artists like Van Gogh, Monet, and Cézanne still remain unknown.
Among these lost masterpieces is the fabled Amber Room.
It was chamber of baroque antiques given to Peter the Great in 1716 by the first king of Prussia, Friedrich I.
The collection was stolen from a palace in Leningrad in 1941 by German soldiers and has been secreted in an Ore Mountains mine.
The Amber Room is the most iconic prize waiting to be found.
And a search for it has been ongoing since the 1990s near the village of Deutschneudorf – extremely nearby to List’s digging site.
List says he also has at least a hundred theories of where the Amber Room may be.
Last year, a mass hunt was sparked after a Nazi treasure map resurfaced showing where a £15million stash of gold coins and jewels had been buried during World War Two.
A mad hunt for the goods started in an obscure Dutch village named Ommeren, around 80 kilometres south-east of Amsterdam, after a hand drawn map was unearthed in 2023.
