Amber Room

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For other uses, see Amber Room (disambiguation).
The Amber Room before WWII
The Amber Room before WWII

The original Amber Room (English sometimes Amber Chamber, Russian: Янтарная комната, German: Bernsteinzimmer) in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg was a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Due to its singular beauty, it was sometimes dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World".

The Amber Room was created from 1701 to 1709 in Prussia and remained at Charlottenburg Palace until 1716 when it was given by Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I to his then ally, Tsar Peter the Great of the Russian Empire. The Amber Room was looted during World War II by Nazi Germany and brought to Königsberg. Knowledge of its whereabouts was lost in the chaos at the end of the war. Its fate remains a mystery, and the search continues.

A reconstructed Amber Room was inaugurated in 2003 in the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Creation

Section of the reconstructed Amber Room.
Section of the reconstructed Amber Room.

The Amber Room was made from 1701 onwards in order to be installed at Charlottenburg Palace, home of Friedrich I, the first king of Prussia, at the urging of his second wife, Sophie Charlotte. The concept of the room and its design was by Andreas Schlüter. It was crafted by Gottfried Wolfram, master craftsman to the Danish court of King Frederick IV of Denmark, with help from the amber masters Ernst Schacht and Gottfried Turau from Danzig.[1]

It did not, however, remain at Charlottenburg for long. Peter the Great admired it on a visit and in 1716, Friedrich Wilhelm I, the first king's son, presented it to him, and with that act cemented a Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.

In 1755 Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia had it transferred and installed, first in the Winter Palace, and then in the Catherine Palace. From Berlin, Frederick II the Great sent her more Baltic amber, in order to fill out the originals in the new design by the tsarina's Italian court architect, Bartolomeo Rastrelli.

The Amber Room represented a joint effort of German and Russian craftsmen. After several other 18th-century renovations, it covered more than 55 square meters and contained over six tonnes of amber. It took over ten years to construct.

[edit] World War II evacuation

Shortly after the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II (Operation Barbarossa), the curators responsible for removing the art treasures in Leningrad tried to disassemble and remove the Amber Room. Over the years the amber had dried out and become brittle, so that when they tried to remove it, the fragile amber started to crumble. The Amber Room was therefore hidden behind mundane wallpaper, in an attempt to keep Nazi forces from seizing it. However, this attempt to hide a well-known piece of art in such a manner failed.

German soldiers disassembled the Amber Room within 36 hours under the supervision of two experts. On 14 October 1941, Rittmeister Graf Solms-Laubach commanded the evacuation of 27 crates to Königsberg in East Prussia, for storage and display in the town's castle. On 13 November 1941, the newspaper Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung reported about an exhibition of part of the Bernsteinzimmer in Königsberg Castle.

[edit] Last days in Königsberg

Orders by Hitler given on 21 January 1945 and 24 January 1945 allowed the movement of possessions. From that day onwards, Albert Speer's administration could move culture goods of priority "I (o)". Erich Koch was in charge in Königsberg. Eyewitnesses claimed that crates had been sighted at the railway station. They might have been put aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff which left Gdingen on January 30, and was sunk by a Soviet submarine. Another possible location is Weimar, the location of a planned propaganda center.[citation needed]

Later in the war, Königsberg was heavily bombed by the Royal Air Force. It suffered further extensive damage at the hands of the advancing Soviets before and after its fall on April 9, 1945.

[edit] Disappearance and mystery

The Amber Room was never seen again, though reports have occasionally surfaced stating that components of the Amber Room survived the war. Indeed, two elements of the room's decoration (but not the amber panels themselves) were eventually rediscovered (see below).

There have been numerous conflicting reports and theories, among them that the Amber Room was destroyed by bombing, hidden in a now-lost subterranean bunker in Königsberg, buried in mines in the Ore Mountains, or taken onto a ship or submarine which was sunk by Soviet forces in the Baltic Sea.

Many different individuals and groups, including a number of different entities from the government of the Soviet Union, have mounted extensive searches for it at various times since the war, without any success. At one point in 1998, two separate teams (one in Germany, the other in Lithuania) announced that they had located the Amber Room, the first in a silver mine, the second buried in a lagoon; neither produced the Amber Room.[2]

However, in 1997 one Italian stone mosaic that was part of a set of four which had decorated the Amber Room did turn up in western Germany, in the possession of the family of a soldier who had helped pack up the Amber Room.[3]

[edit] Destruction theory

Reconstructed amber room detail
Reconstructed amber room detail

Recently, British investigative journalists Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, conducted lengthy research on the fate of the Amber Room, including extensive archival research in Russia. In 2004 their book, The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure, concluded that the Amber Room was most likely destroyed when Königsberg Castle was burned out, shortly after Königsberg surrendered to occupying Soviet forces.[2]

Documents from the archives showed that that was also the conclusion of the report of Alexander Brusov, chief of the first formal mission sent by the Soviet government to find the Amber Room, who wrote in June, 1945: "Summarizing all the facts, we can say that the Amber Room was destroyed between 9 and 11 April 1945". [4] Some years later, Brusov gave a contrary opinion; the book authors insinuate that this change of opinion was likely due to pressure from other Soviet officials, who did not want to be seen as responsible for the loss of the Amber Room.[5]

Among other information from the archives was the revelation that the remains of the rest of the set of Italian stone mosaics were found in the burned debris of the castle.[6] The authors' reasoning as to why the Soviets conducted extensive searches for the Amber Room in the years after WWII, even though their own experts had concluded that it was destroyed, is that it served the differing motives of several elements in the Soviet government: some wished to obscure (even from other branches of the Soviet government) the fact that Soviet soldiers may have been responsible for its destruction; others found the theft of the Amber Room a useful Cold War propaganda tool, and did not want to let go of a grievance that could be aired advantageously; still others did not want to share the blame for its destruction (through their failure to evacuate the Amber Room to safety at the start of the war).[7]

Russian officials have denied the book's conclusions - angrily, in some cases. Said Adelaida Yolkina, senior researcher at the Pavlovsk Museum Estate: "It is impossible to see the Red Army being so careless that they let the Amber Room be destroyed." Other Russian experts were less sceptical, and had a different emphasis in their responses. Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, was very cautious in his comments, and said: "Most importantly, the destruction of the Amber Room during the Second World War is fault of the people who started the war". In reply, Catherine Scott-Clark, one of the authors, indicated that they only came to their conclusions with reluctance: "when we started working on this issue we were hoping to be able to find the Amber Room."[8]

Since the book came out, a Russian veteran has given an interview in which he confirmed their basic conclusion as to the fate of the Amber Room, although he denies that the fires were deliberate. "I probably was one of the last people who saw the Amber Room", said Leonid Arinshtein, a literature expert with the nongovernmental Russian Culture Foundation, who was a Red Army lieutenant in charge of a rifle platoon in Königsberg in 1945. "The Red Army didn't burn anything", he said.[9]

A variation of this theory is common currency amongst present-day residents of Kaliningrad. This is that part at least of the room was found in the cellars after WWII by the Red Army, in relatively good condition. This was not admitted at the time in order that blame should continue to rest upon the Germans. To preserve this story access to the ruins of the castle, which were substantial after WWII, was restricted, even to historical/archaeological surveys. During the 1960s, access to the site was suddenly withheld and the ruins were blown up by the Army, sealing any access to the underground area. The still uncompleted Dom Sovetov was built over the central area. The remains of the room may still be sited underground; however, as mentioned above, amber which is not cared for will crumble into dust. It is presumed that this is what has happened and that the Russian authorities, even after Communism, have been unwilling to admit this.[10]

[edit] Reconstructions

Reconstruction-workshop of the Amber Room
Reconstruction-workshop of the Amber Room
Detail of the reconstructed Amber Room.
Detail of the reconstructed Amber Room.
  • In Kleinmachnow, near Berlin, there is a miniature Amber Room, fabricated after the original. The Berlin miniature collector Ulla Klingbeil had this copy made of original East Prussian amber. The exhibit fee at Europarc Dreilinden is donated to the Arilex-Verein Foundation to aid handicapped children.
  • In 1979 a reconstruction effort began at Tsarskoye Selo, based largely on black and white photographs of the original Amber Room. Financial difficulties to the project were solved with USD $3.5 million donated by the German company Ruhrgas AG.[11] By 2003 the titanic work of the Russian craftsmen was mostly completed. The new room was dedicated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder at the 300-year anniversary of the city of Saint Petersburg.

[edit] Possible 2008 discovery

The latest discovery, as reported in February 2008[12], is of a 20-metre pit in Deutschneudorf, a small town near the German-Czech border. The site reportedly matches intelligence from survivors who helped loot the fabled room, and initial probe reports are said to indicate the presence of a large quantity of gold or silver. Hans-Peter Haustein, mayor of the town, said "We're confident it's part of the Amber Room".

On 20th Feb 2008, German treasure hunters claimed to have found the Amber room.[1] The discovery of an estimated two tons of gold or silver was made at the weekend when electromagnetic pulse measurements located the man-made cavern 20 meters underground near the village of Deutschneudorf on Germany's border with the Czech Republic.[2]

Opening the cavern to get into the chamber can not be completed until approximately Easter because it may contain booby traps and has to be secured by explosives experts and engineers.[3]

According to a recent article in Der Spiegel, Heinz-Peter Haustein - who has been leading the most recent searches into the "Ore Mountains" region of Germany - believes that he has found the Amber Room. Digging resumed February 26, 2008 at a site in the southeastern German town of Deutschneudorf, where treasure hunters believe there are close to two tons of Nazi gold and possibly clues to the whereabouts of the legendary Amber Room.[13]Treasure hunter Christian Hanisch said February 28, 2008 that the hunt for Nazi Gold and possibly the legendary Amber Room will end February 29, 2008 after the two men leading the expedition disagreed.[14]

The very latest discovery was made by the Amber Room Organization in the mountains of the county of Saalfeld, about 30 miles east of Weimar. Henry Hatt, the German spokesman told the media that he knows where the Amber Room is hidden. It was brought to Weimar together with a treasure of the Hohenzollern and Prussian Crown Insignia. From Weimar, it was transported to the county of Saalfeld and hidden in an old underground mining chamber. Henry Hatt says that there is very strong evidence. Currently, the group is searching for a production company to make a movie about the discovery. The ARO claims to have solved the "biggest mystery of WWII".

[edit] Appearances in fiction

The mystery of the Amber Room has been the basis for the plot of several films, books and art exhibitions.

"The Devil Dances for Gold" by Regina Ross

  • Mosaic, by Gayle Lynds
  • "Cold Hit", by Linda Fairstein

[edit] References

[edit] Citations

  1. ^ Blumberg, Jess. A Brief History of the Amber Room, Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved: 3 April, 2008.
  2. ^ a b Hall, Allan. "Amber Room hunt makes lake the Tsar attraction", Scotland on Sunday, 2006-04-16. Retrieved on 2007-06-26. 
  3. ^ Yutaka Shigenobu (Producer). (2006). The Amber Room: Lost in Time (Part I) [Documentary]. NHK. Event occurs at approx. 31:00.
  4. ^ Scott-Clark, Catherine; Adrian Levy (2004). The Amber Room: The Untold Story of the Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century. London: Atlantic Books, pp. 356–57. ISBN 1-84354-340-0. OCLC 56452462. 
  5. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 330, 309
  6. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 322-323, 328
  7. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 108-109, 325
  8. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 301-313
  9. ^ Stolyarova, Galina (2004-06-15). Outrage At Amber Room Book. Saint Petersburg Times. Archived from the original on 2007-06-22. Retrieved on 2007-06-26.
  10. ^ Isachenkov, Vladimir. "Mystery of the Amber Room resurfaces", MSNBC.com, 2004-06-09. Retrieved on 2007-06-26. 
  11. ^ RIA Novosti. "Restoration of the Amber Chamber is Coming to an End", Pravda.RU, 2003-05-08. Retrieved on 2007-06-26. 
  12. ^ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080226/ap_on_re_eu/germany_nazi_gold
  13. ^ CNN: Treasure hunters dig for Hitler's gold
  14. ^ CNN: Nazi gold hunt ends, treasure hunter claims

[edit] Other sources

  • Bruhn, Peter (2004). Das Bernsteinzimmer in Zarskoje Selo bei Sankt Petersburg : Bibliographie mit über 3800 Literaturnachweisen aus den Jahren 1790 bis 2003 : von der Schenkung des Bernsteinzimmers durch den König von Preussen an den Zar, über das ungeklärte Verschwinden des Bernsteinzimmers im Zweiten Weltkrieg, bis zur Vollendung der Rekonstruktion des Bernsteinzimmers im Jahre 2003 (in German). Berlin: Bock & Kübler. ISBN 3-86155-109-8. OCLC 63196950.  (International bibliography of publications about the Amber Room)
  • Massie, Suzanne (1990). Pavlovsk: The Life Of A Russian Palace. Boston: Little Brown. ISBN 0316549703. OCLC 21443818. 
  • Scott-Clark, Catherine; Adrian Levy (2004). The Amber Room: The Untold Story of the Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 1-84354-340-0. OCLC 56452462. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links