By Sarah Goodwin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Thousands of Germans are expected to descend on the eastern region of Thuringia this summer after pensioner Heinz Martin chanced upon a gold nugget in a stream.

Martin, 64, spotted a glinting object in water near the town of Katzhuette, 220 miles south of Berlin, while he was out for a walk.

It proved to be the biggest gold find in Germany for 200 years -- a 9.64 gram nugget with a collector's value of 1,000 pounds.

The news spread across Germany, aided by hordes of TV crews who have converged on the former gold-mining area.

Tourism officials are confidently predicting the media invasion will be followed by a gold rush and say hotel bookings are picking up.

Hundreds of fortune-hunters pan the region's streams each year and Martin's nugget should draw more.

"People finally believe us that gold can be found in this area and want to have a go themselves," said Elisabeth Pauli, head of the tourist office in the Thuringian town of Limbach.

"Hotels in this area are fully booked and we are expecting a summer of rich pickings."

Martin plans to keep the nugget, the size of a smallish coin, but will let a local museum exhibit it temporarily.

The media attention is starting to get to his wife Liane.

"We are utterly worn out by the whole thing. My husband has to travel everywhere by car now because television camera crews and photographers are so intrusive," she said.

Thuringia has a gold-mining history dating back to the 12th century, said Karin Schade, of the Gold Museum in the town of Theuern.

But visiting prospectors are unlikely to strike it rich these days -- Martin's find was the biggest in the region in 500 years.

Commercial gold mining in Thuringia was abandoned at the end of the 17th century because the depletion of gold resources made extraction too expensive.

Serious fortune-seekers then turned their sights on Africa and America.

Thuringia could do with a gold boom.

Unemployment in eastern Germany is twice the national average and young people have been leaving the area to find work.