The Lethal Engineering Behind the Ulfberht Viking Sword & More

Berlin, a city of refinement and regret, and at its heart, an island devoted to museums with secrets dark and strange. An Egyptian queen's mysterious beauty, a deadly Viking misadventure, the magic of a wizard's hat, and a sacred altar bent to the cause of evil. Secrets hidden in plain sight inside the Berlin Island Museums. Every morning in Berlin, Germany, several thousand people make a journey through the city center to cross a bridge to the past. The Spree River surrounds an island that boasts five renowned museums, including two that harbor secrets of the ancient world, the Neues and the Pergamon. Both museums were nearly destroyed in World War II. The Pergamon was rebuilt just as it was before. But when the Neues Museum reopened in 2009, its bold design didn't hide its recent past. Instead, architects left some bullet-riddled walls, evidence of a brutal conflict. In this gallery, there is evidence of another kind of warfare. We suspect this ancient Viking sword was ripped from a cold, dead hand. That's because Viking code proclaimed that a warrior and his sword were inseparable in life and in death. Today, the ancient Vikings are gone, but live on in feature films that require stunt fighters like Kelly Longbow and his son, Garnet. Like real Vikings, these men know what they like in a sword. Sharp as hell, flexible, well-balanced, and made of good steel. So it will cut perfectly through flesh. The Vikings claimed that their swords were indestructible, but there is a mystery about them that confounds historians. They are often discovered shattered into pieces. If they were so mighty, why did so many break? That is our museum secret. We begin our investigation with a closer look at the museum's sword. On one side, letters spell out the word Ulfberht. It is a word historians often see on broken Viking swords. During their forays on the coast of Europe, Vikings often sailed down the Rhine to buy swords made in German foundries, including one called Ulfberht. This modern foundry specializes in recreating ancient weapons. Here, we hope to discover why Ulfberht's swords were prone to shatter. So we ask swordsmith Jens Nettlich. But what he says surprises us. An Ulfberht sword was the Rolex, the Mercedes, under the medieval time. If you hit flesh, it's no problem to get inside. It was almost impossible that it breaks. We asked Jens to prove that swords really are strong when made the Ulfberht way. The first act is to have different types of steel. So you need weak or soft and hard metal. The combination can produce steel hard enough to take a sharp edge, but flexible enough to prevent shattering on impact. The key is to create a blade that contains just the right amount of carbon. This involves a lot of pounding to combine the metals, reheating in a coal fire, and twisting to get the molecular structure just right. There are so many steps in work for making a sword that in each step of them could get a failure inside somewhere. Jens is confident that the way he forges steel today is very similar to the method of the Ulfberht swordsmiths. It's done. Because the steel has just the right carbon content, the final blade is both sharp and shatter-resistant. This was the pride and also the soul of a real warrior. But what about the museum's Ulfberht sword? How good is this steel? Not far from the museum is a lab for testing the chemistry of ancient artifacts. Here, the sword was subjected to molecular analysis and an X-ray that reveals the physical structure of the metal. Conservation expert Dr. Hermann Born shares the results. It contained 0.6% carbon, which indicates a really good steel for a sword blade. But if Ulfberht swords were so good, why did so many shatter? It turns out not all 11th century weapons merchants were on the up and up. Some sold swords with the Ulfberht name that were really made by someone else. The name Ulfberht was a quality brand. And of course, the people knew this and they tried to imitate it. But the imitations lacked the strong steel created through labor-intensive effort. Metal went straight from the fire to its final form. A weak knockoff can look just like a strong sword made the Ulfberht way. At the right price and with the famous Ulfberht brand name, an unsuspecting Viking might well buy it. To find out what the deception would cost him, we will put these two swords to a practical test. One is Ulfberht quality, the other is not. Keller will test their cutting power. We haven't told him which blade is which. With this sword and a lot of effort, Keller inflicts some minor damage. Will the other sword be more effective? If you're thinking this sword was made the Ulfberht way, but in combat, you can't cut anything until you get through your opponent's defenses. The first blows are likely to be steel on steel. And that's when a Viking will discover whether his sword is strong or not. Good sword or bad, a Viking who dies with a sword in his hand dies happy. This was the key to go after his death to Valhalla, the Hall of the Death. Dying in the battlefield with a sword in his hand was the aim of each warrior. Inside the Neues Museum, there is one gallery that always draws the biggest crowds. The gallery displays a single artifact. But one is enough when it's the bust of Nefertiti. She was queen of Egypt 3,000 years ago in the age of the pharaohs. Today, she's a box office superstar. Normal time, we have between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors each day. And our first year after the opening of the Neues Museum, we have more than 1 million visitors. Some seem only mildly interested. Perhaps Nefertiti was simply on their bucket list. But some appear to be trying to peer through the glass into Nefertiti's soul. Why is she the object of such intense fascination? That is our museum secret. Our investigation begins a short tram ride from the museum on the outskirts of Berlin. Here, we enter a building filled with plaster gods and heroes. Some look like ancient artifacts. But looks can be deceiving. This isn't a museum. It's an artist's workshop. We're here because the people who might understand Nefertiti's fascination could be those who strive to recreate it. This is where reproductions are made for the museum's gift shop. As the workshop's manager Thomas Schelpe reveals, there have been many attempts to perfect Nefertiti replicas over the years. This is the latest model that has been used here since 2009. It was created using a modern laser scan. The 3D scan revealed the exquisite planes of Nefertiti's face in every detail. She is clearly a superstar who is ready for her close-up. But science can't reveal the source of her fascination. You don't know exactly what it's about, but she seems to have some kind of secret that makes her so popular. Perhaps the workshop's painter, Annette Schulz, knows what that secret is. Each day, she recreates the facial features that are crucial to Nefertiti's look. Annette also strives to capture something else. Subtle lines that reveal that Nefertiti was a mature woman. Is Nefertiti's life experience the true source of her fascination? She was really a queen and not only the wife of the king. We know that the couple together ruled over Egypt. Nefertiti's husband was the great king Akhenaten. He conceived a plan to enhance his power by decreeing that all the gods were aspects of one god. A god who spoke only through him. The idea of Akhenaten was to bring together all these ideas into one god, into the visible sun disk of Aten. To promote the new top-down religion, Nefertiti employed her prestige as a mother, as a warrior, and as a famous beauty. She maintained her mystique by remaining aloof. Those who gained an audience would find she had arranged herself for maximum effect. Anointed with special oils that made her skin glisten in the sun. Her calculated beauty helped sell the new religion. But after she died, the old one came back with a vengeance. All names of Nefertiti and Akhenaten was completely destroyed and it was erased from all king lists. Nefertiti's history might make her more fascinating. But many people in this room probably don't know much about her. They're fascinated by her likeness in the here and now. And Olivia Zorn thinks she might know why. Within Nefertiti's glass enclosure, the illumination has been designed to light up her glass eye. If you have a special light on the one eye of her, she can go to you directly. And if you are alone together with her, it's a very special feeling. It's a queen who has lived so many years before and now she is lifelike. This is a secret of Nefertiti. And if you want to take the secret home, she is available in the gift shop for 4,200 US dollars. Even after 3,000 years, this superstar doesn't come cheap. Berlin's museum island is for those who love the past. But the past can be a dangerous thing in the hands of those who use it in the cause of evil. And that is especially true of what lies beneath this glass roof, an ancient artifact so large that an entire building was constructed to contain it. It was unearthed in 1865 by a German archaeologist in the ruins of an ancient Greek city called Pergamon. And today it fills a hall six stories high with the area of a football field. It is known as the Pergamon Altar. This is certainly a monument celebrating the cultural ambitions of the Pergamon kings who really wanted to make Pergamon into a second Athens. Their ambitions are carved into the altar's walls in battle scenes of primordial giants defeated by the mighty gods of Olympus. It's the absolute summit of achievement in Greek relief sculpture. And if we consider the altar's original hilltop setting, it seems that the builders intended it to be a place of power. There is none with such a spectacular setting. The view you had from the monumental staircase towards the surrounding mountains and especially towards the Mediterranean which is roughly 30 kilometers away with a part of Pergamon which you could see the city of Elia. You could see the ships approaching the harbor. What is the power of the Pergamon Altar? That is our museum's secret. We begin our investigation by climbing the stairs. At the top, we discover a feeling of exhilaration. Looking down, one feels almost. Shortly before World War II, someone else stood here and felt the same thing. He was a young architect named Albert Speer, a loyal follower of Adolf Hitler. 1934, Albert Speer was appointed to the chief party architect and Hitler referred to him as the first architect of the Third Reich. Hitler assigned Speer to build a stadium in Nuremberg for Nazi party rallies. Recalling the powerful feeling of the Pergamon Altar, he made it his model. He adopted at first the symmetrical shape of Pergamon Altar and second, the combination of staircases and colonnades and returned to classical architecture and the use of huge stone blocks should give an impression of durability and strength. This is all that's left of the stadium that Albert Speer built. His initial design included a frieze of giants and gods but he decided against it. Albert Speer modified the angel model. He waved the relief of gods and he smoothed the whole structure because in Nazi Germany, there was only one god, the Führer. And this was the result. He created a structure of enormous scale to impress the people and he extended the central part to express the leadership principle as the main principle of Nazi ideology. At this podium, as he looked down on a massive crowd, Adolf Hitler proclaimed that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years. When you are here together with 100,000 of people, you feel superiority. You are a part of a strong and powerful nation and this is the effect Speer intended in creating this architecture. Speer understood the power of architecture but he never learned the true power or purpose of the Pergamon altar. Speer thought the structure in the museum was the entire original altar but it isn't. In reality, there was a large raised platform beyond the stairs open to the heavens. Speer also didn't know that when the altar was built, the hilltop complex already had an amphitheater for speech making. So what was the altar's purpose? Today, historians believe it was built not long after the city was attacked by an army of Gauls. Though outnumbered, the citizens of Pergamon rallied to defeat them. Their victories, the victories of the Pergamon kings were celebrated with many votive offerings and this is one aspect of the altar, to be a monumental votive offering to Zeus and Athena in thanksgiving for, yeah, saving the city from the Gauls. Very lavish sacrifices were usual on specific festivals. It was common to sacrifice 100 bulls at the same time. So the altar was not designed as a symbol of the power of a demagogue but as a place where grateful citizens gathered to give thanks for their survival. It was not about the power of man but of the spirits. Could there be a more striking contrast to the totalitarian spectacle offered up on a Nazi grandstand? On Berlin's museum island, ancient artifacts often arrive a little the worse for wear. They usually require careful cleaning and perhaps a spot of glue. And then there's this. A warehouse filled with shards and fragments all from the same place in a Middle Eastern desert and all over 3,000 years old. You might think that whoever excavated them found them like this, but they didn't. They were unearthed as intact artifacts each weighing several tons. How did they end up in so many pieces? And is there any hope of putting them back together? Those are our museum secrets. Our story begins in 1899 with a wealthy young Berliner named Max von Oppenheim. He moved to Cairo to take a diplomatic post but was soon bored with his job. Like his contemporary, Lawrence of Arabia, Max developed a love of Arab culture and a dream to seek adventure as a relic hunter. In nearby Syria, he embarked on a dangerous expedition to the headwaters of the river Kabul. Among the Bedouins, he heard astonishing tales of monoliths beneath the desert sands. Max wanted to believe. And on a hill called Tel Halaf, his belief was rewarded. He unearthed a strange stone statue, half human and half inhuman. For many years, Max's team continued to dig, excavating 30 complete statues that confirmed the existence of a biblical people called the Aramaeans. His new dream was to show the gods of Aramaea to the world. In 1930, Max returned to Berlin with his treasures, convinced that museums would compete to display them. And if they had, these fragments would not be laid out on a warehouse floor today. But with budgets stretched by other costly exhibitions, every museum in town showed Max the door. Not one to be thwarted, he renovated a former iron foundry into a private museum. Here sits enthroned the big goddess of the Tel Halaf, who has preserved her stony smile for 5,000 years. I would enjoy it immensely if once I would be able to show you in person my Tel Halaf Museum in Berlin. Then came World War II. On a November night in 1943, an Allied bombing raid struck Berlin and the Tel Halaf Museum was hit. Incredibly, the stone statues survived the blast. And when the floor beneath them caught fire, they withstood the inferno. Fire crews arrived to put out the blaze. And as cold water made contact with hot stone, the statues exploded. The ancient treasures of Aramea and the dream of a relic hunter were reduced to rubble. Before Max died in 1946, he wrote, how wonderful it would be if all the fragments could be reassembled. But what a horrendous task that would be. In 2001, some of the world's top restoration experts decided to attempt the impossible. It would be like doing a jigsaw puzzle without knowing if all the pieces are in the box. Dr. Nadja Kolidis is one of the project leaders. When we started, we didn't exactly know how many fragments they have recovered in 1944. Most of the pieces were in box slots and we had to organize pallets to unpack the fragments. And so it was really a hard job in the first year getting so much pallets and to spread out the fragments and then started with the identification process. Luckily, Max had taken pictures of the puzzle before it went to pieces. And his photographs had not gone up in flames. We have the photo in one hand and the fragment in the other hand and then compare both of them. And then you are able to say, this must be a fragment of the lion or for the lioness. But photos alone were not always enough. Sometimes you have fragments which are so hard to identify because we said it must belong to this sculpture and you try and try and try. When matching pieces are identified, some require special fittings to hold them in place. And most require careful application of special glue and cement to fuse the shards of ancient stone. Some fragments weigh over a ton while others are as small as a fingernail. The puzzle pieces went together one by one. And after nine years of painstaking effort, the restoration team transported the statues to a public gallery. Today, the public is once again invited to meet the gods of Aramea. Though Max von Oppenheim didn't live to see it, sometimes Nadja feels his presence. I believe during the years here, there are so many situations that I thought it must be Max von Oppenheim who look from the sky, what are they doing here and help us with, well, what is the intuition, or what's the feeling, or something like this. So, yes. But it's not for the camera, it's not for television. The museum calls the exhibit The Rescued Gods of Tel Halaf. Max von Oppenheim's dream has been rescued too. In Berlin's Neues Museum, one gallery is devoted to a single artifact of solid gold. It looks a lot like a wizard's hat, something straight out of a fairy tale. On the other side of the city lives this man, Manfred Boyaczewski. Manfred keeps bees, thousands of them. Manfred and the gold hat share a very special connection. That connection is our museum's secret. The hat is a masterpiece of the goldsmith's art. Its complexity led historians to believe it was made by a craftsman of the Middle Ages. But scientific dating methods proved that it was made 3,000 years ago, during the Bronze Age. Bronze Age humans lived at a bare level of subsistence, developing the skills and finding the time to create something like this would have been an enormous challenge. Why would people who were barely surviving create something so extravagant? Historians have been asking this question for decades. Dr. Wilfrid Mengen became determined to be the one to find the answer. My idea was to decode the ornament of the gold hat, so to see what really does this gold hat mean? What is his function in old times? For me, it was a kind of hobby, but it was also an obsession. Mengen was convinced the repeating patterns of circles and dots weren't just decorations. They must have something to do with numbers. But he couldn't figure out what. I woke up in the night and was counting, adding up, counting. Seventy-seven, five doesn't have nothing, but 365, 177, and so on and so on. Then at last, he had a eureka moment. He counted down the number of rows and the rings around each symbol and discovered two remarkable numbers, 365 and 354. Then it was clear, we have the sun here and the moon here. Dr. Mengen had discovered that the gold hat is a kind of calendar. The ornamentation accurately predicts the cycles of the sun and moon over a period of 19 years. But Dr. Mengen had only solved part of the puzzle. He knew what the symbols meant, but why were the cycles of the sun and moon so important to Bronze Age humans that they expended such great effort to inscribe them on a gold hat? For the answer, we return to Manfred's Berlin rooftop and his bees, because Manfred uses Bronze Age methods to keep his bees healthy and productive. You can kiss him. To guide his work on any given day, Manfred relies on the cycles of the sun and moon. One day in the solar cycle is particularly important for honey production. Maximum bees means maximum honey. In some ancient cultures, the summer solstice was called the honeymoon as it was the best time to harvest honey from bees. Today, many farmers rely on modern calendars of sun and moon to tell them when to plant and when to harvest. Dr. Mengen thinks a Bronze Age human provided the same vital information by observing the solar and lunar cycles and inscribing them onto a gold hat. And someone very special in their community used the gold hat to show them how to do it. You can say it like this. This is a sorcerer who tells the community something interesting. He has a secret knowledge about things that a normal man cannot think about. And so you can say these hats have been the hats of wizards. On Museum Island, the Neues Museum specializes in treasures from long ago and far away. Every gallery displays artifacts that are at least a thousand years old. But here, there is one exception to the rule. Recently, less than a kilometer from the museum, excavation began for a new subway station. One morning, construction worker Hendrik Scholz noticed something unusual in the dirt. Within days, the pit became an archaeological site. The finds that emerged were not ancient artifacts but important treasures of modern art. Today, they are in the Neues Museum. Eleven startling sculptures by respected European artists of the 20th century. What were they doing underground? And why are they displayed in a museum dedicated to ancient history? Those are our museum secrets. Our story begins in 1937 when the Nazis were confiscating works of modern art, art that Hitler called degenerate. They go to the museums and collections all over Germany and took all these objects out of the museums. In his deranged mind, Hitler had decided that modern art was the evil work of the Jews. Under his direction, Nazi propagandists mounted an art exhibition called Degenerate Art. Loyal Germans were expected to line up to view the art with derision. It was part of Hitler's plan to unify the German people through hate. The exhibition included sculptures and paintings by artists now considered to be modern masters. Though only a small handful were actually Jewish, propagandists featured their work. This sculpture by Otto Freundlich is on the cover of the exhibition's catalogue. The Nazis have two aims to make a propaganda exhibition and to sell the objects in foreign countries to get foreign currency. After the exhibitions, which were ended in 1942, a lot of objects came back to Berlin and there also still were a lot of objects which haven't been sold in the years before. But after the war, it seemed that no one knew or remembered the whereabouts of the confiscated Degenerate Art. It was a great question for many art historians what happened with these objects. Recently, a researcher discovered a clue in a wartime letter from the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. And this letter stood that they have to bring the objects from the exhibition back to the Koenigstrasse 50. So this is a very important letter. It was something like an official storage in this house. In 1944, Allied bombs ignited a firestorm on Koenigstrasse. Untold lives were lost. Nearly every nearby building was destroyed except for Berlin's City Hall. And that's why 66 years later, 11 statues lay beneath the earth waiting to be discovered. Archaeologists believe they have found some paintings too, but they have been reduced to ashes. Now we know how the modern sculptures ended up underground. But how did they end up in a museum dedicated to ancient history? For the museum's German visitors, a visit to the distant past is an escape from a nearer past that many would like to forget. Dr. Wemhoff believes the museum should encourage remembering. This object was in the fire. It burned very strong and that gets a very strong patina. And so it was really signed from the wall and signed from the history. And so these objects have really a kind of transformation made. They are not only art. They also tell us something about an important dark part of the German history. The artworks also provide a way to remember the artists who made them. Some disappeared during the war. Some became refugees. And at least one of the Jewish artists died in a concentration camp. You see this head and this head is broken. And it's come from a very important sculpture from Otto Freundlich. And the most of his objects were demolished during the Nazis' time. And he was killed in Meiderneck. If you look to the picture from Otto Freundlich, you can see that this could be a self-portrait of him. A museum is not an island, but a bridge to the past. For every mystery we reveal, far more must remain unspoken. The secrets some try to forget and those we long to remember, hidden in plain sight inside the Berlin Island Museums.