Wooden Teapot Handle from Hitler’s Berghof

Amid the ashes of the Berghof - Adolf Hitler's alpine residence, annihilated by Allied bombing in 1945 - a fragment endured. Not a weapon, not a document, but a domestic object: the wooden handle of a teapot, scorched by fire yet intact in its curve.
It was discovered in the months following the war by a local farming family, scavenging the ruins for firewood, scrap metal, or perhaps simply answers. Alongside other remnants - crockery, splintered furniture, a shattered wall clock - this handle emerged from the dust like a silent relic. No one could say to whom it had belonged, but its presence spoke volumes: even horror paused for tea.
The wood, likely walnut, still bears the scars of fire: cracks, burns, traces of lime and soot. And yet its form remains - a curve shaped for the human hand, for the everyday gesture of pouring. It is an object that reveals the intimacy of power, the banality of evil, the quiet routines that unfold beside the abyss.
In my archive, this handle is no mere curiosity. It is a threshold. A fragment that has passed through ruin and time, and that now, in its charred silence, continues to ask questions. About what remains. About what deserves to be remembered. About what wood, more than gold, is capable of preserving.
Doktor Lazarus Archaeologist, Historian, Collector, Independent Curator