However, when the artefact was passed along to Ludwig Wamser of the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection to be analyzed, it was identified as a 20th-century creation, possibly from the Nazi era.
[2] There was a suggestion "that it had been made on the orders of Hitler’s ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who was planning to set up a Nazi education centre near Chiemsee.
Albert Pietzsch, director of Elektrochemische Werke München, had been in personal contact with Adolf Hitler from 1920, and was known to have provided him with generous donations.
He became a member of the Nazi Party in 1927 and rose to the position of Military Economy Leader and president of the Reich Chamber of Commerce.
[5] The buyer, a Swiss entrepreneur, tried to attract investors by claiming that the cauldron was a genuine antique, and that it had a market value of between €250 and €350 million.
[5] An expert witness report from Oxford metallurgist Peter Northover concluded that "the cauldron was made by or under the direction of someone who knew about the Gundestrup vessel, i.e. after 1891.