A message in a bottle that was set afloat 101 years ago has been caught in a fisherman's net in the Baltic Sea.
"It was very surprising," Angela Erdmann, 62, granddaughter of the man who created the message, told the Guardian. "A man stood in front of my door and told me he had post from my grandfather. He then told me that a message in a bottle was found and that the name that was on the card was that of my grandfather."
A genealogical researcher tracked down Erdmann in Berlin, Germany, and presented her with the note from her grandfather, who passed away in 1946 before she was born.
The brown beer bottle was discovered by Konrad Fische, who found it in his fishing net. The bottle was brought to the International Maritime Museum before Erdmann was tracked down.
"There are documents that have been found without the bottle that are older and are in the museum," he said. "But with the bottle and the document, this is certainly the oldest at the moment. It is in extremely good condition," Holger von Neuhoff, curator for ocean and science at the museum, told the Guardian.
The bottle contained a postcard that was scribbled with a request to be brought to its original home in Berlin. The woman's grandfather, Richard Platz, is believed to have thrown the bottle into the sea in 1913, when he was just 20 years old and on a nature appreciation hike, the Huffington Post reported.
"I knew very little about my grandfather, but I found out that he was a writer who was very open minded, believed in freedom and that everyone should respect each other," Erdmann told the Guardian. "He did a lot for the young and later travelled with his wife and two daughters. It was wonderful because I could see where my roots came from."
"What he taught his two daughters, my mother taught me and I have then given to my sons," she said.
