Remains unsolved for more than 70 years mysterious disappearance, famous " amber room" In the fall of 1941, the Nazis took it from Tsarskoe Selo to Koenigsberg, where it remained throughout the war, but in 1945, when Koenigsberg was occupied by our troops, it turned out that the room had disappeared without a trace.
The passions around her have not subsided to this day. Today there are more than 600 officially declared locations of the amber room. This unique rarity is surrounded by a huge number of myths, legends and strange incidents. Many of which are associated with the death of people.
17 people who were on the verge of its discovery died. There are many similar stories of its discovery. Why did the search for the amber room become deadly, for which all those people who came close to revealing this secret were killed.
And what the most famous search enthusiast, German citizen Georg Stein, wanted to tell at his press conference, but never had time to do it. It is worth noting that Stein fought on the side of Germany, who subsequently decided to restore justice to Soviet Union. Why did a simple German set out to find this room, showing such zeal?
Koenigsberg 1945, where the invisible connection between the fate of Stein and the amber room began. In this city, a tragedy occurred in the family of a simple soldier Georg Stein, the events of which turned his entire future destiny upside down. The entire Stein family was arrested for their association with family friend Karl Goerdeler, who was a participant in the conspiracy against Hitler.
Amber Room Königsberg: the beginning
On April 6, 1945, the entire Stein family was executed by order of Koch. After the death of his family, Georg Stein found his father's suicide note, in which his father asked him to finish all the things he had started. Stein Sr. was an archivist and scrupulously kept records of all exported valuables stolen by the Nazis. A special place his archive was occupied by an amber room.
Most likely, Mr. Stein was on the trail of the famous amber room, but he paid for his discovery with his life. Georg Stein left the keys to investigate the disappearance of the amber room; these are his notes and notes. Bavaria August 20, 1987 Georg Stein goes to a meeting with two former officers of the special group of Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
This is exactly what the people who called him on the phone told him, promising to tell him important information through the amber room. Stein devoted almost his entire life to her search and finally made a sensational discovery. He was already preparing for the upcoming press conference when this call came. Georg, without hesitation, responded, not even suspecting that he was driving towards his death.
His body was found on the outskirts of the town of Aldorf by a passerby. Eight stab wounds were found on the body, a brutal and terrible crime that remains unsolved to this day. All the unique information collected over the years of searching remained in Stein’s archive. Realizing the value and importance of these documents, the researcher's friend and comrade-in-arms, Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, bought the archive from relatives and solemnly handed it over to the Soviet Union.
What do the archives know about the amber room?
Not knowing what to do with such a gift, Moscow officials sent the documents to the Kaliningrad Regional Archives and successfully forgot about everything. One translator, a former SMERSH officer, worked with him in this storage facility, who, by the way, died suddenly. The materials remained in the archive for 30 years, a real historical sensation and the key to revealing the mystery of the disappearance of the amber room and many other valuables taken by Germany from the Soviet Union. In all 30 years, only a few employees looked at his records.
In the spring of 1942, the amber room, stolen by the German occupiers from Tsarskoe Selo, was reassembled in one of the premises of the Royal Castle and entered the museum inventory of artistic treasures of Königsberg, but under a different name “German amber cabinet”. Later, it is this recording that plays a cruel joke on the room.
In fact, initially there were several options for the amber room, the first one that was given to Peter I by the Prussian King Frederick, a small amber cabinet, which was later doubled in size. Architect Francesco Rastrelli converted it into one of the halls of the Catherine Palace, adding an upper tier of panels, mosaics, candelabra and carved decorative elements made of tinted amber. This is the second one full version and was subsequently called the amber room.
Amber fever
The first version, presented to Peter I by King Frederick, excited the minds of historians and military leaders of Germany; they decided to recognize it as a national treasure of Germany; the second part, the modification to the amber room, did not interest them at all.
A version of the room donated by Frederick was restored in the Royal Castle of Königsberg, while the remaining part was boxed and stored in the castle cellars. Few people were interested in them.
In the spring of 1942, at the grand opening of the Prussian relic, the entire color of Koenigsberg gathered. Among the first visitors to the room was 18-year-old Georg Stein. The room made an indelible impression on him. The young man ran home, full of impressions; his parents were then visiting a friend of the family, the same Karl Goerdeler, one of the organizers of the assassination attempt on Hitler.
In the spring of 1942, at the grand opening of the Prussian relic, the entire color of Koenigsberg gathered. Among the first visitors to the room was 18-year-old Georg Stein. The room made an indelible impression on him. The young man ran home, full of impressions; his parents were then visited by a family friend, the same Karl Goerdeler Dean, one of the organizers of the assassination attempt on Hitler.
Herder rather abruptly interrupted Stein's story about the amber room with the phrase: “remember Georg, everything that is stolen cannot be beautiful, and must be returned to where it was taken from.” With such parting words, Georg Stein went to the front.
The war reached Königsberg in August 1944, the British tested napalm bombs specially created for civilian population. More than 4,000 city residents burned in their homes and bomb shelters. The entire historical center of the city was irretrievably lost, leaving 200,000 people homeless.
Most terrible bombing It was the night of August 30, during which 6 basement panels of the amber room melted. What happened next to the amber room?
From Stein's archive on the value movement:
"February 1943 - August 44 in the Reichsbank vault"
It turns out that even before the bombing, the amber room was dismantled, packed and lowered into the castle's vault. There they were saved from the fire, but the edges of several panels were still damaged. Then they were moved to a deeper vault, a branch of the Reichsbank. Moreover, this could be done without going to the surface; an underground corridor from the Royal Palace led there.
"since July 1944, an amber room on the estate of Eric Koch in the suburbs of Königsberg."
Georg Stein learned that the room was on the Koch estate from his father’s diaries, although there was a question mark in the margin of this entry, but Stein did not attach any importance to this.
Later, in the archives of Königsberg, it was found out that the room had not left the Royal Castle, and Stein the elder saw a copy of the amber panels of the room, made by amber craftsmen from the Koch estate, for unknown purposes.
From interrogations of eyewitnesses, it became known that the amber room still remained in the Royal Castle, although it moved to another part of it, the popular Blutgericht restaurant. It was the most safe place in the castle, the ancient part of the castle consisted of three tiered stone cellars that could withstand any bombing.
Why didn’t the room leave Königsberg before the bombing, because Hitler personally gave the order for its evacuation? The answer is simple, caretaker Rode stubbornly did not want to take the room away, he took his dangerous game with Hitler. Instead of sending the very first room donated by Frederick to Peter I, he began to send in different ways, unnecessary details“amber modifications” by the architect Francesco Rastrelli, which lay in the basements of the castle and were not used in the arrangement of the rooms of the Royal Castle.
This fact was established in the interrogation protocol of Rode, which was discovered in the archives of Alexander Kuchumov, the head of the state commission to search for the amber room and other stolen valuables.
Alexander Mikhailovich was not only a famous art critic, but also the former custodian of the amber room in Tsarskoe Selo, and dreamed of the day when the amber room would return to its place. These documents have never been published anywhere; perhaps it was beneficial for someone to keep them secret.
On April 9, 1945, at dawn, the first Moscow-Minsk division crossed the Pregel River and captured the Cathedral and the Royal Castle. When Soviet artillerymen entered the castle, they found many boxes in the Great Knights' Hall. Frightened Germans were sitting on some of them, when the Russian colonel asked: “What’s in the boxes?” They answered, “museum valuables.”
In the castle register, the amber room was listed as number 200, as an exhibit of a German museum, i.e. property of East Prussia, not the Soviet Union. The colonel, deciding that these were captured valuables, handed the panels over to a special captured brigade of the NKVD.
Documents about these events were discovered in the archives of Kuchumov, the head of the state commission, after his death.
Having compared all the facts, it turns out that the Germans sat on the boxes of the German amber cabinet donated to Peter I, and the amber panels not used in its construction were sent to Roda by rail.
There was great secrecy, it was not customary to talk about it, to take an interest, management and structures had no time for this, it was necessary to deal with captured German valuables looted from all over Europe. Inspection commissions came to Koenigsberg twice, and each time the conclusion was made that the rarity could not be found because it had burned down.
The head of the commission for the search for Kuchumov, of course, guessed that the original of the amber room did not burn, but ended up in the hands of a special NKVD team, which transported it to secret funds of trophy valuables. Where she was safely lost among other trophy valuables and post-war confusion.
Subsequently, the special services began to cover their tracks, fearing responsibility. A lot of misinformation began to appear in the media about the amber room in Soviet and German newspapers. The Soviet special services, having made an unfortunate mistake with the amber room, could no longer correct anything, because they did not know where it really was now and, in order to get themselves out of harm’s way, began to direct their searches in the wrong direction.
A simple German, Georg Stein, also read the note about the amber room and decided to restore the chronology of events. Using his own money, he began to conduct an investigation. Doing this was mortally dangerous; we were talking about very large amounts of money, which former Nazis who managed to escape from retribution continued to receive at auctions for stolen valuables. Germany did not allow anyone to access its post-war archives; Stein had to hide behind a legend about searching for former Nazis.
In the archives of Rosenberg's headquarters, Georg Stein found the trail, but not of the amber room, but of the treasure of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, which with its help returned to their homeland. Stein did not receive a penny of money from the Soviet leadership for his help in returning the treasures.
The GDR also searched for treasures on its territory, maintaining secrecy. Stasi intelligence officers introduced an intelligence officer into Stein's circle under the guise of a journalist, who began to bring Stein very interesting documents. These included documents about the Grosleben mine in Saxony; treasures looted by the Nazis were hidden in this mine, including the supposed amber room. It was a sensation, Stein was holding a press conference and suddenly there was a call, they promised to give him very important information. He went to a meeting that turned out to be fatal.
The fact is that there were no more valuables in the mine. From Stein's notes:
“On the night of April 10–11, 1945, a group of SS officers took parts of the amber room along with other valuables to the Groslebene mine in Lower Saxony, and placed it at a depth of 430 meters.”
“On April 15, 1945, the mine was occupied American troops and on May 10, 1945, the Americans took the exhibits of the amber room through Wiesbaden to the USA."
In response to Steine's request in Wiesbaden, he was told that all documentation on this case was classified.
This begs the question of how the amber room could be in two places in the NKVD trophy warehouses and the Grosleben mine in Saxony. Stein still found the amber room, but not the whole one, but part of it, which caretaker Rohde managed to evacuate from the Royal Castle of Königsberg, this is an amber continuation of the room of the architect Francesco Rastrelli, which ended up in the hands of the American military. The question remains, where is the main part of the room, which the Germans called the “German Amber Cabinet”.
At the end of the war, the amber cabinet was sent from Königsberg to the Berlin Museum; it ended up in the Eastern Sector, which later became the capital of the GDR. After examination, the amber room was transferred to the American sector of the museum.
How did the Americans get it? The fact is that payment for Lend-Lease began 5 years after the end of the war. There was nothing to pay with; there was no gold or currency. In addition to gold, the Americans also accepted valuable property, which included works of art. It turns out that instead of money, the Americans took captured cultural property under Lend-Lease. Thus, the amber room may be among the things that Germany used to pay for Lend-Lease to America.
The Americans did not export the so-called “Prussian Amber Cabinet” to the USA; most likely it remains on German territory in the museum storages of Kassel. Where the amber room was originally planned to move from Königsberg.
- Adults (basic rate) - 1,000 rubles.
- Adults (preferential tariff - for tax residents of the Russian Federation) - 500 rubles.
- Pensioners of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus - 290 rubles.
- Cadets, conscripts, members of the unions of artists, architects, designers of Russia - 290 rubles.
- Pupils (from 16 years old), students - 290 rubles.
- Visitors under 16 years of age are free.
: “The Catherine Palace worked at the limit of its capabilities back in 2015: then attendance reached the permissible maximum. Therefore, now the museum artificially curbs the flow of tourists. We are very dependent on the weather: when it rains, the parade ground in front of the palace is almost empty, and on sunny days, visitors line up in huge queues. At such times, we are very careful to ensure that people in queues stand honestly: for example, so that travel agencies on the approach to the palace do not put a whole group in place of one person.”
How to buy a ticket
Tickets to the Catherine Palace are sold only at the box office (there is no opportunity to purchase them on the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum website). Please note that the Amber Room is very popular with tourists, so on sunny days during the tourist season, the waiting time in line can be several hours. As museum workers say, about a quarter of all those who want to visit the palace never get there.
Olga Taratynova, director of the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum: “Half of our visitors are people in tour groups, and the rest are single visitors. Many of them are people who came from afar; they often live in the provinces and do not have constant access to the Internet. We could do what they do, for example, in many museums in Italy - recording only via the Internet. But I understand that tourists come to us from all over the country, and many may simply not have a computer or the ability to sign up online.”
Excursions to the Catherine Palace and the Amber Room
Single visitors to the Catherine Palace rubles take an audio guide in English, German and French. The cost of the service is 150 rubles. There is no audio guide in Russian: for Russian-speaking visitors, a tour of the Catherine Palace is organized as part of an excursion group, which is formed in the palace lobby after purchasing tickets.
The history of the authentic Amber Room
The idea of creating the Amber Room belongs to the German architect Eosander. It was originally intended that she would decorate Litzenburg, the summer palace of the Prussian Queen Sophia-Charlotte in Berlin, now known as Charlottenburg. The creation of the amber masterpiece began in 1707 by two Polish masters - E. Schacht and G. Turau, who worked on the finishing for six years. Peter the Great, who saw the amber panels during his visit to Prussia in 1712, was delighted, and four years later Frederick William donated them to the Russian Emperor. In the Great Tsarskoye Selo Palace, the Amber Room was installed only in 1755, and this was done by Peter’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth.
The story of the theft of the Amber Room
When in 1941 it became clear to the residents of Pushkin that the front line would soon move to Leningrad, an emergency evacuation of valuables from the museums of Tsarskoye Selo began. It was dangerous to dismantle the fragile panels of the Amber Room, so the staff decided to preserve them: the panels were covered with paper, gauze, cotton wool and wooden shields. This did not save the masterpiece from the Nazis: the Amber Room was taken to Germany, and the last time it was shown at Konigsberg Castle in 1944. After the retreat, the Nazis dismantled the amber panels and since then their whereabouts have been unknown.
The history of the restoration of the Amber Room
Work on recreating the lost masterpiece began in 1983, and the first amber panels created by restorers of the Tsarskoye Selo Amber Workshop saw the light of day after the collapse of the USSR. Elements of the original decoration of the room were returned to their homeland in the spring of 2000: these were a Russian chest of drawers from the late 18th century discovered in Germany and a Florentine mosaic “Touch and Smell.” In total, the restoration of the Amber Room took almost a quarter of a century, and it again received visitors in 2003, the year of the celebration of the tercentenary of St. Petersburg.
Olga Taratynova, director of the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum: “Many people go to the Catherine Palace just to see the Amber Room. Unfortunately, it is located in the middle of the golden enfilade, so there is no way to organize a separate entrance to it. We have several main routes around the palace. We launch two streams simultaneously: they move along parallel enfilades and meet in the Amber Room. Sometimes there are 4-5 groups in it at the same time. We are developing standards for visiting the palace (no more than nine hundred people per hour), including in the interests of the Amber Room.”
Amber Room and Agate Rooms
In addition to the world-famous Amber Room, shrouded in many myths and legends, in Tsarskoe Selo there are also agate rooms, undeservedly deprived of the attention of many tourists. This is an architectural masterpiece of the 18th century, located in the Cold Bath pavilion. The Agate Rooms are the former apartments of Catherine the Great and have no analogues in the whole world. Unlike the Amber Room, they are original, and their authentic decoration has been preserved to this day.
Olga Taratynova, director of the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum: “The Agate Rooms have not become a brand like the Amber Room, and do not have such beautiful legend. But we’re even glad about this: they definitely wouldn’t have been able to withstand the huge flow of tourists. Still, you need to understand that the Amber Room is a very accurate recreation, and the agate rooms are the original of the 18th century. We take great care of them: for example, in rainy weather they are closed to the public.”
Text: Svetlana Shirokova
Amber Room (Pushkin, Russia) - expositions, opening hours, address, phone numbers, official website.
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The Amber Room in Pushkin is a magnificent work of world art with bright and interesting fate. Real masters worked on the creation - architects and sculptors, artists and stone cutters, and later restorers, meticulously restoring the lost masterpiece.
The history of this room begins in Prussia - a country that has long used "gold" Baltic Sea as a material for jewelry - hence the name. In 1701, King Frederick I of Prussia demanded that an office of unique beauty and decoration be made for him. It is still unknown who designed it; according to one version, the idea belonged to Johann Eosander, the queen’s favorite, and according to another, to the famous architect Andreas Schlüter. It is impossible to say how long the work took; all that is known for sure is that by the time of the monarch’s death in 1713, the room had not yet been completed. Frederick William I, who came to the throne, closed all his father’s expensive projects, and those amber panels and decorations that they managed to create decorated the office on the main floor of the Grand Royal Palace in Berlin.
The Amber Room's Round Trip
In 1716, Prussia and Russia entered into an alliance, and Frederick William I presented the Amber Cabinet as a sign of respect to Peter I, who had long wanted such a curiosity for himself. It is not known where the great autocrat placed the amber gifts; they are remembered only in 1743, already during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, during the creation of the new Winter Palace. The construction was led by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, a Russian architect of Italian origin. Creating a single ensemble from disparate parts, Rastrelli placed mirror pilasters in gilded frames between three amber frames. Then, a little later, a fourth frame with imperial symbols joined the collection - a gift to the Empress from the Prussian king. For a long time the room served for an audience of ambassadors and nobles in the capital's residence, until it was moved to Tsarskoe Selo, and 18 carts were required for transportation. There was more space in the summer residence - Rastrelli filled it free space Florentine paintings of agate and jasper, graceful figurines of cupids and gilded wooden carvings.
In the 60-70s. The 18th century room is complemented by artistic parquet flooring made of colored wood and mosaic paintings. It will remain like this for another 200 years, causing admiration among visitors. The room was restored many times - the amber was destroyed due to numerous temperature changes. In the first week of the Great Patriotic War, the most valuable exhibits began to be removed from the Catherine Palace, but the Amber Room was mothballed right on the spot - there were too many fragile objects. On September 18, 1941, Pushkin was occupied by the Germans and the room was taken to Königsberg. When the Soviets attacked in 1944, most of them were packed up and taken away to an unknown location - the masterpiece disappeared.
Our days
The Council of the RSFSR in July 1979 decided to restore the room - work began in 1983 under the leadership of A. A. Kedrinsky. In an effort to recreate the original as accurately as possible, the restorers even obtained some of the furniture and several Florentine mosaics from Germany - they were part of the original decoration. The painstaking work of the restorers ended only on the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, and since 2003, the revived Amber Room has delighted thousands of guests from different countries who decided to inspect it.
Practical information
The Amber Room is part of the Catherine Palace, which is located 25 km south of the city, in the Tsarskoe Selo State Museum. Address: St. Petersburg, Pushkin, st. Sadovaya, 7.
You can get there in several ways:
By electric train from Vitebsky station to Tsarskoye Selo station, then by bus or minibuses No. 371, 382.
From the Zvezdnaya and Kupchino metro stations in St. Petersburg by bus No. 186.
From the Moskovskaya metro station by minibuses No. 286, 287, 342 or 347. Transport does not drive directly to the palace - you will need to walk half a kilometer.
The Catherine Palace is open from 10:00 to 18:00 all week except Tuesday and Monday of the last month, but tickets are only sold until 16:45.
Under 16 years of age, admission is free, tickets for students, schoolchildren and pensioners of the Russian Federation - 350 RUB, adult tickets - 700 RUB. You can also buy an audio guide, it costs 150 RUB. Visa, MasterCard, UnionPlay and Maestro cards are accepted at the box office. Photography is prohibited in the Amber Room. Prices on the page are as of November 2018.
The story of the Amber Room could be an excellent script for a historical detective story. This story has it all: royal generosity, fabulous wealth, war, Nazi theft, the tireless search for the Soviet Union, mysterious deaths and a truly priceless treasure that seemed to have fallen through the ground. However, they continue to search for it today, putting forward the most unexpected versions of where the legendary Amber Room may be located today.
The creation of the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” as the Amber Room is called, began in 1701 at the direction of the Prussian King Frederick I. Although estimates of its size vary, according to some sources, the area of the Amber Room was about 55 square meters after its reconstruction in the 18th century. Its creation took more than six tons of amber, as well as gold, diamonds, rubies and emeralds. As a symbol of peace between the allies, the Amber Room “moved” twice from its place in Charlottenburg Palace, first to the Human Chambers in St. Petersburg, and then to the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo.
With the outbreak of World War II, the priceless treasure was lost forever. In 1941, invading Nazi soldiers dismantled it, packed the amber panels into 27 boxes and shipped them to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Germany. When the city was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, the room went missing. Since then, governments, historians, archaeologists, treasure hunters, and everyone else have tirelessly searched for the Amber Room, interviewed thousands of witnesses, checked historical records, excavated throughout Europe, etc. But it is still there Haven't been able to find it yet. So, let's consider theories of where a unique treasure could be located.
1. Remained from Kaliningrad
Although a popular theory states that the Amber Room was most likely destroyed in the bombing of Königsberg, some evidence contradicts this. The more than 1,000-page report, compiled after a decade-long Soviet investigation, claimed that no witnesses reported any unusual smells as the city burned after the bombing.
It would seem that what the smell has to do with it. The fact is that when amber burns, it emits a characteristic odor similar to church incense. And it would be hard to miss the burning of the equivalent of 6 tons of incense. In 1997, a German commission in Bremen confirmed the idea that the room survived the explosions. One of her Florentine mosaic panels appeared at auction and was indeed authenticated. The seller stated that he did not know where it came from.
2. Hidden in a silver mine on the Czech border
Treasure hunter Helmut Hansel in the late 1990s and early 2000s was on the trail of the decorated precious stones panels of the Amber Room. Former SS officers living in Brazil told him where many high-ranking Nazis hid their trophies towards the end of the war. According to them, the panels were hidden in the 800-year-old Nikolai Stollen mine near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic.
Hansel was far from the only one who learned about this story. And while he and a team of engineers, mining specialists and historians were trying to excavate the mine from the German side, another group led by Peter Haustein (at that time he was the mayor of Düsseldorf) was trying to excavate from the Czech side. Nobody found anything.
3. Hidden in the dark depths of the lagoon
The mayor of the Lithuanian city of Neringa believed that the Amber Room was hidden under dirty waters neighboring lagoon. According to Stasis Mikelis, towards the end of the war, local residents saw SS soldiers trying to bury wooden boxes on the coastline. They clearly did not expect sea levels to rise. Mikelis not only believed in his theory, but also assembled a research team in 1998 to find the Amber Room. However, everything was unsuccessful.
4. Lost in the Bavarian Forest
Georg Stein was a farmer and treasure hunter who devoted his entire life to searching for the Amber Room. He claimed to have discovered a secret radio frequency and overheard the last known transmission of the Amber Room on it. It is reported that this message was sent from Lauenstein Castle on the border of Thuringia via direct short wave to Switzerland. Stein then arranged a meeting with a “competitive search engine” in Bavaria, but the meeting never took place. In 1987, Stein was found dead in the woods, stripped naked, his stomach ripped open with a scalpel. The cause of death was recorded as suicide.
5. Near Wuppertal, West Germany
Pensioner Karl-Heinz Kleine believes he knows the location of the Amber Room and who hid it. According to Kleine, the Nazis' chief Reich Commissioner for East Prussia, Erich Koch, hid the treasure in his hometown of Wuppertal in the industrial Ruhr region. This would not be surprising for Koch, since even the Nazis were at one time surprised by his brazen theft and use of concentration camp prisoners for personal gain.
Koch was tried for corruption in 1944 and sentenced to death penalty, but the sentence was overturned, and the Reich Commissioner continued to accumulate his personal fortune until the end of the war. After he was captured in Poland, Koch was sentenced to death for killing 72,000 Poles and sending another 200,000 to labor camps. But he again escaped sentencing and went to prison, where he remained until his death for 27 years, never repenting.
6. Drowned in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea
The death of the liner "Wilhelm Gustloff" on the night of January 30, 1945 became one of major disasters in history maritime transport. The ship, designed to carry fewer than 2,000 people, had 10,582 people on board trying to evacuate. But at sea the ship was torpedoed by a submarine and sank to the bottom. An estimated 9,343 people died that night, half of them children. The exact location of the remains of the Gustloff has long been known and searched. But some still claim that the panels of the Amber Room may be hidden in its hold. Since the wreckage of the Gustloff was recognized as a war grave, it is prohibited to search it.
7. On board the "Ghost Train", Walbrzych, South-Western Poland
There have long been rumors that a Nazi train loaded with treasure was lost in secret tunnels under the mountain in Wałbrzych. No one knows the name of the train, its mission, or where its precious cargo came from. Some believe that the lack of records of the train only confirms their hypothesis. Some theorize that the train may have been carrying gold and other valuables from interned Jews, while others insist that the train contained panels from the Amber Room. In 2015, two people, a German and a Pole, claimed to have found the train. The local government in Walbrzych declined to comment on the claim, but warned that the train could be bombed if it even existed.
8. In a bunker in Mamerki, northeastern Poland
In 2016, staff at the Mamerki Museum reported finding a hidden room in a World War II bunker using ground penetrating radar. Bartłomiej Plebanczyk from the museum considered it possible that the panels of the Amber Room were hidden inside this room. His theory was based on the testimony of a Nazi defector. In the 1950s, former german soldier told the Poles that in the winter of 1944 he witnessed how trucks, who arrived under heavy escort, were unloading something into the bunker.
9. Buried in tunnels under the Ore Mountains in East Germany
In 2017, treasure hunters Leonard Blume, Peter Lohr and Gunther Eckhardt claimed to have located the room using archival documents and radar. Both East German and Russian secret police conducted a years-long search for the Amber Room. In their notes (or so it is claimed) evidence was found that a clue to the location of the room had been discovered.
Eyewitnesses claimed that many boxes were carried into the tunnels, after which the entrance to the tunnels was blown up. Blum, Lohr and Eckhardt eagerly explored the "Prince's Cave" near the Czech border, and the results were astonishing. Mr Blum said: "We discovered a very large, deep and long tunnel system, but we could not go any further." Their search continues.
10. Secret place in the USSR, known only to Stalin
According to the official protocol, the curators of the Catherine Palace after the start of the war tried to dismantle and hide the Amber Room. But when the fragile panels began to collapse, they decided not to touch it and preserved it in place. But they could not outwit the Nazis, who immediately discovered the Amber Room and dismantled it in two days. This conspiracy theory claims that Joseph Stalin deceived everyone. The panels that the Nazis took away were replicas, and the real Amber Room had already been shipped and hidden somewhere else. If this is true, the Amber Room may have been saved, but was ultimately lost forever.
History of creation
Fragment of the restored Amber Room
The Amber Room was created by master Andreas Schlüter for the Prussian king Frederick I. When the work was completed in 1709, the poorly secured amber panels collapsed. The king was angry and sent the master out of the country. Already his son, King Frederick William I, presented the office to Peter I as a gift. Peter appreciated the gift: “The king gave me a fair gift of a yacht, which was beautifully decorated in Potsdam, and the Amber office, which had long been desired,” he wrote to his wife Catherine. The Amber Cabinet was packed and, with great precautions, transported to St. Petersburg in 1717.
Disappearance of the Amber Room
Many legends are associated with the disappearance of the Amber Room.
According to one of them, immediately after the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact of 1939, A. N. Tolstoy suggested that Stalin, in order to strengthen the emerging friendship with Germany, give her the Amber Room as a gift, citing the fact that it was in a deplorable state. But Stalin did not dare to part with the original, and instead, the remarkable restorer and stone carver A. O. Baranov was asked to make a copy of the Amber Room. At the same time, two amber rooms were made: a copy of Baranov and a model on a 1:1 scale, which was made by his students. 20 days before the start of the Great Patriotic War The original of the Amber Room was dismantled, and a copy was installed in its place. It was photographed, dismantled, and placed in boxes, which were lowered into the basements of the Catherine Palace. And the model was installed in the hall where the Amber Room stood for two centuries. Thus, there were three amber rooms in Tsarskoe Selo. Further fate all of them are unknown.
Another version looks like this. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, museum valuables from the Catherine Palace were taken to Novosibirsk. They decided not to touch the Amber Room due to its fragility; they preserved it on site. The panel was covered first with paper, then with gauze and cotton wool. This became a fatal mistake that predetermined the tragic fate of the masterpiece, since the Nazis, having robbed the Catherine Palace, stole the Amber Room.
The main versions of the fate of the Amber Room are as follows:
1. The room burned down in a fire, which arose due to the fault of the English raiders who bombed Koenigsberg. However, these statements are refuted by witnesses who claim that there really was a fire, but after it the room was dismantled, packed into boxes and hidden in the basements of the castle, as they say, “out of harm’s way.”
2. The room was hidden by German troops on the territory of Königsberg and is still there. According to the German magazine "Spiegel", which financed the excavations carried out in 2001-2008, the famous treasures are located under the ruins of the former Royal Castle, destroyed in 1969. The publication's staff found eyewitnesses who claim to have seen how, a few days before the assault on Königsberg, 30 boxes with an amber panel were hidden in the basements of the northern outbuilding. In this case, unfortunately, the room can be considered lost, since experts who study the properties of amber claim that in none of the dungeons the famous Amber Room could have survived to this day: its storage requires a special regime of humidity and temperature, otherwise “ the sunstone" will simply begin to decompose.
3. The room was nevertheless evacuated from Königsberg and subsequently ended up in one of the still unfound caches in Germany, Austria, Poland or the Czech Republic. In this case, it can also be considered lost - for the same reason.
4. The cache ended up in territory occupied by the Allies (American, British or French troops) after the end of the war. The room was discovered by special units of the US Army, who were searching for art objects stolen by the Nazis, and was secretly taken to the United States, after which it fell into the hands of private collectors.
5. The Nazis managed to secretly take the Amber Room to South America and it is still in the hands of descendants of the Nazis who managed to escape after the collapse of the Third Reich. Since almost nothing is known about the owners of the “surfaced” items, this fact can serve as confirmation of this version.
On the other hand, these items could simply have been stolen by German soldiers, and the vast majority of the room's elements were hidden in a cache. Therefore, most likely, the Amber Room nevertheless perished - either during the storming of Koenigsberg, or subsequently - as a result of a long stay in completely unsuitable conditions storage
Recreation
Specialists from the specially created “Tsarskoye Selo Amber Workshop” worked on the scientific reconstruction of the masterpiece of stone-cutting art: art historians, chemists, criminologists, historians, and restorers. Several years were spent developing the project, scientific concept, recreating recipes, amber processing technologies, and training the working team. In the 1990s, work was suspended due to lack of funding and problems with the supply of raw materials.
See also
Notes
Literature
- Bruhn, Peter: Bibliographie Bernsteinzimmer (International bibliography of publications about the Amber Room from 1790 to 2003). - Berlin, 2nd revised and expanded edition, 2004. - 468 p. ISBN 3-86155-109-8
- Aksenov V. E. The case of the Amber Room: it began in 1743 on January 3 and has not ended to this day / V. Aksenov; Hood. V. Gorin. - St. Petersburg. ; M.: Neva: Olma-Press, 2000. - 399 p., l. photo, portrait - ISBN 5-7654-0498-7.
- Aksenov V. E. The Case of the Amber Cabinet: The Eighth Wonder of the World / Vitaly Aksenov. - 2nd ed., rev. and additional - SPb.: Producer. Center “Culture and Communications”, 2004. - 237 p.: ill. - ISBN 5-98338-001-X.
- Voronov M. G., Kuchumov A. M. Amber room. Masterpieces of decorative and applied art made of amber in the collection of the Catherine Palace Museum. - L.: Artist of the RSFSR, 1989. - 288 p., ill. - ISBN 5-7370-0176-8.
The Kestrel Strategy, novel by C B Leonard http://www.thekestrelstrategy.com/ (ISBN 978129111346)
- Gorlyak A. The magic of the Amber Room. - M., 2002. - 216 p. - ISBN 5-93721-107-3.
- Ovsyanov A. P. The Amber Room: Revival of a masterpiece / P. O. Ovsyanov; edited by T. G. Tetenkina. - Kaliningrad: Amber Tale, 2002. - ISBN 5-7406-0590-3.
- Przhezdomsky A. S. Amber Ghost. Documentary story. - Kaliningrad, 1997. 384 pp., with illustrations. ISBN 5-7406-0061-8.
- Przhezdomsky A.S. Secret objects “W”. Fiction and documentary story. - Kaliningrad, 1999. - 368 pp., with illustrations. - ISBN 5-7406-0264-5
- Mosyakin A.G. Behind the veil of the amber myth. Treasures behind the scenes of wars, revolutions, politics and intelligence services. – Moscow, ROSSPEN, 2008.
Links
- “Return of the Amber Room” One of the central events of the celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of St. Petersburg in May 2003 was the opening of the famous Amber Room, recreated in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo.
- Bibliographic database of international publications about the Amber Room. Contains more than 4000 items of world literature from 1790 to 2008.
- L. V. Nikiforova. Amber cabinet of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo
Filmography
- “Unraveling the mysteries of the story with Ollie Steeds. Nazi Treasures" "Solving History with Olly Steeds. Treasures of the Nazis" listen) is a film produced by Discovery in 2010.
Categories:
- Tsarskoe Selo (museum-reserve)
- Prussian culture
- Culture of the Russian Empire
- Fine art of Germany
- Amber
- Sights of St. Petersburg
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See what the “Amber Room” is in other dictionaries:
Amber room- (Amber Cabinet) the name accepted in literature for one of the premises of the Great Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo (now the city of Pushkin as part of the Pushkinsky district St. Petersburg). The history of the Amber Room is full of legends and mysteries. Exists… … Encyclopedia of Newsmakers