The Amber Room is a world famous chamber decorated in amber panels backed with
gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near
Saint Petersburg. Originally constructed in the 18th century in Prussia, the
Amber Room disappeared during World War II and was recreated in 2003. Before the
room was lost, it was considered an "Eighth Wonder of the World".
Construction of the Amber Room first took place around 1701 in Prussia. The
room was designed by German baroque sculptor Andreas Schlüter and Danish
amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. Schlüter and Wolfram worked on the room
until 1707, when work was continued by amber masters Gottfried Turau and Ernst
Schacht from Danzig. The amber cabinet remained in the Berlin City Palace until
1716 when it was given by the Prussian King Frederick William I to his then
ally, Tsar Peter the Great of the Russian Empire. In Russia, the room was
expanded and after several renovations, it covered more than 55 square metres
and contained over 6 tonnes of amber. The Amber Room was looted during World
War II by Army Group North of Nazi Germany and brought to Königsberg for
reconstruction and display. Knowledge of its current whereabouts remains a
mystery. In 1979, efforts were undertaken to rebuild the Amber Room at
Tsarskoye Selo. In 2003, after decades of work by Russian craftsmen and
donations from Germany, the reconstructed Amber Room was inaugurated
at the Catherine Palace near Saint Petersburg.
History = Creation=
The Amber Room was begun in 1701 with the purpose of being installed at
Charlottenburg Palace, the residence of Frederick, the first King of Prussia, at
the urging of his second wife, Sophie Charlotte. The concept and design of the
room was drafted by Andreas Schlüter. It was fabricated 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.
Although originally intended for installation at Charlottenburg Palace,
the complete panels were eventually installed at Berlin City Palace. The
Amber Room did not, however, remain at Berlin City Palace for long. Peter the
Great of Russia admired it during a visit and in 1716, King Frederick I's
son Frederick William I presented the room to Peter as a gift, which forged a
Russo-Prussian alliance against Sweden. The original Berlin design of the Amber
Room was reworked in Russia in a joint effort by German and Russian craftsmen.
It was Peter's daughter Empress Elisabeth who decided the amber treasure
should be installed at Catherine Palace, where the Russian Imperial family
typically spent their summers. After several other 18th-century renovations,
the room covered more than 55 square metres and contained over 6 tonnes of
amber. The room took over ten years to construct.
= Evacuation during World War II= Shortly after the beginning of the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, the curators responsible
for removing the art treasures in Leningrad tried to disassemble and
remove the Amber Room. However, over the years the amber had dried out and became
brittle, making it impossible to move the room without crumbling the amber.
The Amber Room was therefore hidden behind mundane wallpaper, in an attempt
to keep German forces from seizing it. Predictably, the attempt to hide such a
well-known piece of art failed. German soldiers of Army Group North
disassembled the Amber Room within 36 hours under the supervision of two
experts. On 14 October 1941, the priceless room reached Königsberg in
East Prussia, for storage and display in the town's castle. On 13 November 1941,
a Konigsberg newspaper announced an exhibition of the Amber Room at
Königsberg Castle. = Last days in Königsberg=
Orders given by Hitler on 21 and 24 January 1945 ordered the movement of
looted possessions from Königsberg. This allowed Albert Speer, Reichminister of
Armaments, and his administration team to transport cultural goods of priority.
However, before the Amber Room could be moved, Erich Koch, who was in charge of
civil administration in Königsberg during the final months of the war,
abandoned his post and fled from the city, leaving General Otto Lasch in
command. In August 1944, Königsberg was heavily
fire bombed by the Royal Air Force. It suffered further extensive damage from
artillery from the advancing Red Army before the final occupation on 9 April
1945. Reconstruction
In 1979, the Soviet government decided to construct a replica of the Amber Room
at Tsarskoye Selo, a process that was to last 24 years and require 40 Russian and
German experts in amber craftsmanship. Using original drawings and old
black-and-white photographs, every attempt was made to duplicate the
original Amber Room. This included the 350 shades of amber in the original
panels and fixtures that adorned the room. Another major problem was the lack
of skilled workers, since amber carving was considered a nearly lost art form.
The financial difficulties that plagued the reconstruction project from the
start were solved with the donation of $3.5 million from the German company
E.ON. By 2003, the 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 300th anniversary of the city of Saint
Petersburg. 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.
Architecture The Amber Room is a priceless piece of
art, with extraordinary architectural features such as gilding, carvings, 450
kg amber panels, gold leafs, gemstones, and mirrors, all highlighted with candle
light. Additional architectural and design features include statues of
angels and children. Because of its unique features and singular beauty, the
original Amber Room was sometimes dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World".
Disappearance and mysteries After the war, the Amber Room was never
seen in public again, though reports have occasionally surfaced stating that
pieces of the Amber Room survived the war. Several eyewitnesses claimed to
have spotted the famous room being loaded on board the Wilhelm Gustloff,
which left Gdynia on 30 January 1945. In 1997, an Italian stone mosaic that
was part of a set of four stones which had decorated the Amber Room was found
in Germany, in the possession of the family of a soldier who claimed to have
helped pack up the amber chamber. The mosaic came into the hands of the
Russian authorities and was used in the reconstruction effort.
In 1998, two separate teams, one German and one Lithuanian, announced they had
located the Amber Room. The German team pointed to a silver mine while the
Lithuanian team believed the amber treasure was buried in a lagoon; neither
of the two suggestions turned out to hold the Amber Room.
In 2004, a lengthy investigation by British investigative journalists
Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy concluded that Amber Room was most
likely destroyed when Königsberg Castle was heavily damaged, first during the
bombing of Königsberg by the Royal Air Force in 1944, when the castle
completely burned down and later by the Soviet shelling of the remaining walls.
Documents from the Russian National Archives revealed this as the assessment
of a Soviet report, written by Alexander Brusov, head of the Soviet team charged
within locating the Amber Room following the war. The report stated:
These dates correspond with the end of the Battle of Konigsberg, which finished
on 9 April with the surrender of the German garrison. A few years later,
Brusov publicly voiced a contrary opinion; this is believed to have been
done due to pressure from Soviet authorities, who did not want to be seen
as responsible for the loss of the Amber Room.
Among other information retrieved from the archives was the revelation that the
remaining Italian stone mosaics were found in the burned debris of the
castle. Scott-Clark and Levy concluded in their report that the reason the
Soviets conducted extensive searches for the Amber Room, even though their own
experts had concluded that it was destroyed, was because they wanted to
know if any of their own soldiers had been responsible for the destruction.
Scott-Clark and Levy also assessed that others in the Soviet government found
the theft of the Amber Room a useful Cold War propaganda tool. Russian
government officials have since denied these conclusions. Adelaida Yolkina,
senior researcher at the Pavlovsk Palace, reportedly stated: "It is
impossible to see the Red Army being so careless that they let the Amber Room be
destroyed". After the report was made public, Leonid
Arinshtein, who was a Lieutenant in the Red Army in charge of a rifle platoon
during the Battle of Konigsberg, said: "I probably was one of the last people
who saw the Amber Room". At the same time, he explained that the whole city
was burning due to artillery bombardments, but also denied
allegations that the Red Army burned the city on purpose by saying: "What
soldiers would burn the city where they will have to stay?"
A variation of this theory by some present-day residents of Kaliningrad, is
that at least parts of the room were found in the Königsberg Castle cellars
after World War II by the Red Army. The Amber Room was allegedly still in good
condition; this was not admitted at the time so the blame could fall upon the
Nazis. To preserve this story, access to the ruins of the castle, which was
allowed after World War II, was suddenly restricted to all, including historical
and archaeological surveys. Then in 1968, despite academic protests
worldwide, Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev ordered the destruction of
Königsberg Castle, thus making any onsite research of the last known
resting place of the Amber Room all but impossible. In more recent years, the
search for the Amber Room has continued in different locations including near
Wuppertal, Germany. See also
Štěchovice Treasure Art of the Third Reich
Siege of Leningrad References
Sources = Printed=
Denny, Isabel. The Fall of Hitler's Fortress City: the Battle for
Königsberg, 1945. MBI Publishing. ISBN 978-1935149200.
Khatri, Vikas. World Famous Treasures Lost and Found. Pustak Mahal Publishing.
ISBN 978-8122312744. Lucas, James. Last Days of the Reich:
The Collapse of Nazi Germany, May 1945. Cassell Publishing. ISBN 978-0304354481.
Scott-Clark, Catherine; Levy, Adrian. The Amber Room: The Untold Story of the
Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Atlantic Books. ISBN 1-84354-340-0.
Torney, Austin. The Guide to the All-Embracing Realm of the Ultimate.
Torney Publishing. ISBN 978-1448617272. Wermusch, Günter. Die Bernsteinzimmer
Saga: Spuren, Irrwege, Rätsel. Yale University. ISBN 978-3861530190.
= Online= "60-year Hunt For Russian Czars' Missing
Amber Room May Be Over After Discovery in Germany". Daily Mail. 2011. Retrieved
19 February 2015. "A Brief History of the Amber Room".
Smithsonian Institution. 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
"Amber Room Hunt Makes Lake the Tsar Attraction". Scotland on Sunday. 2006.
Retrieved 19 February 2015. "Amber Room Remnants Found? —
Discoveries Delight Russian Art Experts". Seattle Times. 1997. Retrieved
19 February 2015. "Catherine Palace". St. Petersburg.
2001. Retrieved 23 February 2015. "Erich Koch, Regarded as One of Cruelest
of Hitler's SS Men, Dies in Prison at 90". Los Angeles Times. 1986. Retrieved
19 February 2015. "Greed, Glory and a Tsar's Lost
Treasure". The Guardian. 2004. Retrieved 22 February 2015.
"Inside the £300 Million Room: Incredible Story of Amber and Gold
Living Space That Once Belonged to Catherine the Great Revealed in BBC
Documentary". Daily Mail. 2014. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
"Mystery of the Amber Room Resurfaces". ABC News. 2004. Retrieved 19 February
2015. "Red Army, Not the Nazis, Destroyed
Tsar's Amber Room". Telegraph. 2004. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
"Resurrecting Königsberg: Russian City Looks to German Roots". Der Spiegel.
2014. Retrieved 19 February 2015. "Restoration of the Amber Chamber is
Coming to an End". Pravda. 2007. Retrieved 26 June 2007.
"Russian Jeweller Recreates the Amber Room In His Workshop". Russia Beyond the
Headlines. 2013. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
"Top 10 Famous Pieces of Art Stolen by the Nazis". Toptenz. 2014. Retrieved 19
February 2015. "The Amber Room: History, Figures, Facts
and Mysteries". RIA Novosti. 2010. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
"The Amber Room: Long Lost Treasure". AskMen. 2004. Retrieved 19 February
2015. "The Amber Room". About. 2014. Retrieved
19 February 2015. External links
Amber Room 3D panorama with high-resolution pictures of decor
elements and function drag and zoom by Classic Studio
Bibliographical Database of the International literature about the Amber
Room by Peter Bruhn Amber Room Recreation – Recollection of
an Eye-witness