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Amber Room

Coordinates: 59°42′57″N 30°23′44″E / 59.71583°N 30.39556°E / 59.71583; 30.39556
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Reconstructed Amber Room.

The Amber Room (sometimes known as the Amber Chamber ; Template:Lang-ru Yantarnaya komnata ; Template:Lang-de) in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg is a complete chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors. Created in the 18th century, it disappeared during World War II, and was recreated in 2003.

Before it was lost, the Amber Room was sometimes dubbed the "Eighth Wonder of the World" due to its singular beauty. Construction of the Amber Room took place from 1701 to 1711 in Prussia. The room was designed by German baroque sculptor Andreas Schlüter and Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram in the service of the Prussian king worked on it until 1707, then work was continued by amber masters Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht from Danzig.[1] The amber cabinet remained in Berlin City 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. In Russia it was expanded and after several renovations, it covered more than 55 square metres and contained over six tons of amber. It was finished in 1755 and restored in 1830. 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.

In 1979, efforts were undertaken to rebuild the Amber room at Tsarskoye Selo. In 2003, after decades of work by Russian craftsmen, financed by donations from Germany, the reconstructed Amber Room was inaugurated in the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

History

Creation

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.[2]

Although originally intended for installation at Charlottenburg Palace, the complete panels were eventually installed at Berlin City Palace.[3] The Amber Room did not, however, remain at Berlin Castle 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.

The original Berlin design was reworked into the Amber Room in Russia in a joint effort of German and Russian craftsmen. After several other 18th century renovations, it covered more than 55 square metres and contained over 6 tonnes (13,000 lb) of amber. It took over ten years to construct.

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 German forces from seizing it. However, the attempt to hide such a well-known piece of art 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 on an exhibition of part of the "Bernsteinzimmer" in Königsberg Castle.

Last days in Königsberg

Orders by Hitler given on 21 January 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 Gotenhafen (Gdynia) on 30 January 1945, and was sunk by a Soviet submarine.[4]

In August 1944, 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 9 April 1945. It remained thereafter under Soviet control, eventually renamed Kaliningrad.

Disappearance and mystery

The Amber Room was never seen in public 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 are many disagreeing theories about the fate of the Amber Room, which can be categorized into two basic theories. One, the room was destroyed in the war or two, the room survived the war but was hidden. Both theories can be divided further into two subtheories; the room or its remnants, remained in Konigsberg at the end of the war or the room or its remnants was moved to a new location outside Konigsberg near the end of the war. The lack of hard evidence and the numerous conflicting testimonies from public and secret sources has either supported or denied these theories.

Many different persons 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.[5]

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.[6][7]

Destruction theory

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 down, shortly after Königsberg surrendered to occupying Soviet forces.[5]

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".[8] These dates correspond with the end of the Battle of Königsberg which concluded on 9 April with the surrender of the German garrison. 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.[9] In 1968, Soviet Premier, Leonid Brezhnev citing Prussian Militarism ordered the demolition of Konigsberg Castle, despite protests from academics worldwide. Thus making any onsite research of the last known resting place of the Amber Room all but impossible.

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.[10] The authors' reasoning as to why the Soviets conducted extensive searches for the Amber Room in the years after World War II, 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).[11]

Russian officials have denied the book's conclusions - angrily, in some cases. According to 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 skeptical, 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 the 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."[12]

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.[13]

A variation of this theory by some present-day residents of Kaliningrad, is that at least part of the room was found in the Konigsberg 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 in order that blame should continue to rest upon the Nazis. To preserve this story, access to the ruins of the castle, which which was allowed after WWII, was suddenly restricted to all, even to historical/archaeological surveys right up to the demolition of the ruins in 1968. The Dom Sovetov was built over the central area. According to some, the remains of the room may still be underground. [14][15]

Reconstructions

  • 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.[16] 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.

Appearances in fiction

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

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Page 91, Amber room was finished by Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht
  2. ^ Blumberg, Jess. A Brief History of the Amber Room, Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved: 3 April 2008.
  3. ^ Wermusch, Günter, Die Bernstein-Zimmer-Sage, Berlin 1991, p. 15; Bönisch, Georg (21 August 2007). "Der Soldaten König". SPIEGEL.de. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
  4. ^ Lucas, Last Days of the Reich, p. 27
  5. ^ a b Hall, Allan (16 April 2006). "Amber Room hunt makes lake the Tsar attraction". Scotland on Sunday. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  6. ^ Yutaka Shigenobu (Producer) (2006). The Amber Room: Lost in Time (Part I) (Documentary). NHK. Event occurs at approx. 31:00.
  7. ^ The Kestrel Strategy
  8. ^ Scott-Clark, Catherine (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. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 330, 309
  10. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 322-323, 328
  11. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 108-109, 325
  12. ^ Scott-Clark and Levy (op cit.), pp. 301-313
  13. ^ Stolyarova, Galina (15 June 2004). "Outrage At Amber Room Book". Saint Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  14. ^ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-27/stasi-s-secret-quest-for-czar-s-lost-amber-room-cost-millions
  15. ^ Isachenkov, Vladimir (9 June 2004). "Mystery of the Amber Room resurfaces". MSNBC.com. Archived from the original on 15 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-06-26. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ RIA Novosti (8 May 2003). "Restoration of the Amber Chamber is Coming to an End". Pravda.RU. Retrieved 2007-06-26.

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 0-316-54970-3. OCLC 21443818.
  • Scott-Clark, Catherine (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. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

59°42′57″N 30°23′44″E / 59.71583°N 30.39556°E / 59.71583; 30.39556