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The Gilching “gold maker”: Kreisbote reader Otmar Raab reports on the fraudulent work of Franz Tausend

2021-10-19T09:16:48.573Z


Gilching - Goldmacherweg “is written on a street sign in Gilching. Anyone who sees it thinks ahead with question marks. Some short, many a little longer. Once upon a time: 100 years ago there was rumor and murmur in Gilching. Something secret is happening up in the Steinbergwald. Something to make gold. Perhaps it is better not to know too much about it.


Gilching - Goldmacherweg “is written on a street sign in Gilching.

Anyone who sees it thinks ahead with question marks.

Some short, many a little longer.

Once upon a time: 100 years ago there was rumor and murmur in Gilching.

Something secret is happening up in the Steinbergwald.

Something to make gold.

Perhaps it is better not to know too much about it.

What was special back then on the Steinberg has been written about several times. At the beginning I will tell you about the gold making in GIlching today.


It was in 1924 when a stranger named Tausend, of all people, moved into a house with his wife on Steinberg. Not far from his domicile, he began to build a "gold kitchen", hidden in the Steinberg Forest above. But the building was much more than the size of a kitchen. A chemical mix kettle came in; next to it rows of test tubes on shelves. In the time of need after the devastating inflation, celebrities and banks trusted a thousand that he could produce gold according to a special recipe. As a precaution, before any money flowed into a company, expert assessments had been obtained. These had shown that the corresponding evidence of a thousand was promising.

The green light was given. Financially involved people soon arrived, some of them in very elegant automobiles with chauffeurs. They wanted to convince themselves of a thousand gold arts. In several demonstrations, Tausend was able to show the investors that a lump of gold had formed in each of its mixtures in the melting pot. In the gold rush, the investors agreed to use more money for an efficient manufacturing plant elsewhere. A thousand, however, had completely different ideas in mind. He used the newly received money to buy private property, including a castle property for the family. The prominent partner Ludendorff got out and had his participation paid off. For a further demonstration of the gold extraction, it was agreed that all participants undress to the bare minimum.Any dizziness in the production of gold should be ruled out. Now it came to a catastrophe for Thousands: The keen eye of an Italian professor had not escaped the fact that Thousand had swindled something golden into the melting pot. Thousand was later arrested on it. The “gold maker” was convicted by a criminal court. And for many years he was imprisoned for his frauds.

The goldmaker's story can seem like something unreal and vague.

However, there is still something tangible about this story;

A few structural remains below the steep slope over which the goldsmith's workshop once stood: a chimney-head-like concrete part with remnants of brick and a short, broken stoneware pipe in the middle, a crooked and blasted iron pipe protruding far from the ground, it probably extends to a deeper water-bearing layer of a sewer pit from concrete rings.


Before the goldmaker's laboratory was demolished, it had served a good purpose in the great housing shortage after World War II.

A family could temporarily live there for a while.

About Franz Tausend

The Gilching “gold maker” Franz Tausend was born in Krumbach (Swabia) in 1884 and died in 1942 in Schwäbisch Hall.

His fraudulent enterprise has inspired numerous books and plays.

At the end of the 1960s, his story was even made into a film. 

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-10-19

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