A German woman thought she would never see her wedding ring again after it fell into a toilet in 1940. Hobby metal detectorists stumbled upon the ring 80 years later in an unlikely place.
Image: picture-alliance/F. May
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It's always in the last place you look.
A wedding ring flushed down a toilet in 1940 was found in a fruit orchard in Beelitz, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) southwest of Berlin in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg.
The ring belonged to Margarete Herzog, who apparently dropped the ring into a toilet in a public bathroom while washing her hands.
"She explained to me what happened at the time. She was heartbroken," the woman's daughter, Sonja Güldner, told the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, a Brandenburg-based newspaper.
Güldner said she never thought the ring would reappear, and her mother died in 1996 at the age of 87 never having seen it again.
Beelitz city spokesman Thomas Lähns told the MAZ that hobby metal detectorists came across the ring in a fruit orchard near a water mill in the city. Engraved with initials "H.H." and the date "30.03.1940" (March 30, 1940), the ring was taken to the civil registry office to discover whom the ring belonged.
"Based on the few details provided, it was determined that Hans Herzog and Margarete Fechner were the only couple who got married on the day engraved on the jewelry," Lähns said.
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