Finding a message in a bottle — from his grandfather

GOSLAR, GERMANY— On March 26, 1930, four roofers in this small west German town inscribed a message to the future. “Difficult times of war lie behind us,” they wrote. After describing the soaring inflation and unemployment that followed the First World War, they concluded, “We hope for better times soon to come.”

The roofers rolled up the message, slid it into a clear glass bottle and hid it in the roof of the town’s 12th-century cathedral. Then they patched up the roof’s only opening.

Eighty-eight years later, while doing maintenance work, 52-year-old roofer Peter Brandt happened upon the bottle. He recognized the letterhead of the receipt paper on which the note was written, as well as the name of one of the signatories: Willi Brandt — a shy, 18-year old roofing apprentice at the time of the note’s creation — was Peter’s grandfather.

“It was an exciting find,” Peter Brandt said, given the improbability of discovering the bottle in the roof his grandfather had repaired almost a century earlier. The letter, Brandt said, is from a dark chapter of Germany’s past. But its discovery offered a chance to reflect on today’s relative peace and prosperity.

He has memorized one of the message’s lines in particular: “We worked an entire week for 1 pound of butter and 1 bread,” wrote his grandfather and his colleagues in 1930.

“It’s shocking when you think about the country we live in today and all the things we can afford now,” he said. “They were already living in difficult times. But the war made everything even worse.”

A few years after his grandfather (not related to former chancellor Willy Brandt) signed the note, he enlisted as a soldier during the Second World War. After returning to Goslar, Willi resumed his profession. Peter would later take over the family business.

This month, Goslar Mayor Oliver Junk, along with Goslar residents and Peter Brandt, returned the 88-year-old message to its resting place. Although the original paper from 1930 is now in the town archives, a copy and an added message from the mayor were inserted in the bottle and placed in the roof of the 12thcentury cathedral.

Junk hopes that in 100 years, another roofer will discover the bottle. Although he won’t reveal exactly what he wrote in his message to future Goslar residents, he said he doesn’t hope for better times. Rather, he says: “If there’s still peace then and the people are doing just as well as they are today, that’s enough.”