The Amber Room
(This article is one of several history blogs I wrote for a now defunct history blog that I have posted here for posterity)
I love a good lost treasure story: Indiana Jones, The Uncharted video games, The Mummy films; they all have a special place in my heart. But none of those compare to the history of the Amber Room, a real lost treasure.
The Amber Room, for those unfamiliar with the story, was a golden, jewel-encrusted, amber panelled wonder. Consisting of 180 square feet (six tonnes) of amber and other precious stones, this baroque masterpiece was designed by German sculptor Andreas Schüter and constructed by Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. Although initially installed in the Charlottenburg Palace, home of the first King of Prussia Friedrich I, in 1701, it was eventually gifted to the Tsar of Russia Peter the Great in 1716 as a means of cementing a Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden. With the Russians now possessing the Amber Room, it was installed in the Winter House in St Petersburg where it stayed for a further 30 years. In 1755, Czarina Elizabeth decided to move the masterpiece to the Catherine Palace in Pushkin. It was redesigned by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to fit the larger room, with additional amber being added. During this time it served as a meditation chamber for Czarina Elizabeth, a meeting room for Catherine the Great and one huge trophy room for everyone’s favourite serf liberator Alexander II. The Amber Room would undergo several other renovations and additions throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, with modern historians estimating the room’s value to be £111 million in modern currency.
Yet in 1940 the Nazi’s launched Operation Barbarossa. Not content with just being genocidal maniacs, the Nazi’s decided to ruin this as well. Operation Barbarossa saw over three million German soldiers invade the Soviet Union, brutally killing millions but also looting tens of thousands of priceless art pieces, including the beloved Amber Room. While the curators of the Soviet-controlled Catherine Palace attempted to hide the Amber Room behind thin wallpaper, the Nazi’s quickly uncovered their secret and tore down the amber panels within 36 hours of its discovery, rapidly shipping them to Königsberg (modern day Kaliningrad). It was then reinstalled in Königsberg castle museum on the Baltic Coast, where the museum’s director, Alfred Rohde studied the room. But happily for fans of democracy and all things good, the Nazi’s reign of fear and evil would come to a brutal end. In 1943, with an Allied victory fast approaching, Rohde was advised to dismantle the Amber Room for its protection but he seemingly failed to heed these warnings. A bombing raid in August 1944 obliterated the castle and all it’s artefacts. And with that, the Amber Room met its tragically explosive end.
Or did it?
Time and time again historians and treasure hunters have reported finding clues and remnants of this Russian wonder. Since the end of the war in 1945, conspiracy theorists have floated the idea that the room was shipped off before the bombing raid, and that it remains hidden in some secret bunker. While this may seem like the usual conspiracy nonsense, there does seem to be an alarming amount of evidence that suggests the Amber Room did indeed escape fiery destruction. In 1997, a group of German art detectives (think fedoras and lots of smoking with some German severity and 90s European Techno) received a tip that someone was attempting to sell a section of the fabled Amber Room. Upon raiding the office of the seller’s lawyer they uncovered an actual amber panel from the room. The seller was the son of a former German soldier but unfortunately could shed no light on how his Father came to possess such an amazing object. Could it be that the Germans did indeed smuggle the Amber Room out of Königsberg castle before its destruction? Was this former soldiers involved in the operation and somehow stole a piece? Or perhaps the rumours were true and Stalin had constructed a fake Amber Room which is what the German soldiers actually stole.
Perhaps more troubling than the disappearance is the curse that seems to surround the Amber Room. Alarmingly, a high number of people connected to the room have met with tragic deaths. Königsberg castle museum director Alfred Rodhe and his wife died of typhus while the KGB were investigating the whereabouts of the Amber Room. General Gusev, a high ranking Russian intelligence officer, tasked with investigating the Amber Room, died in a car crash just days after talking to a journalist about his work. Then in 1987, treasure hunter and former German soldier Georg Stein was murdered in a Bavarian forest while searching for the lost treasure. Is the Amber Room actually causing the deaths of this people, cursing their involvement in it’s destruction and stopping anyone from finding it? Or is something more sinister going on, perhaps someone, or a certain Eastern European government is trying to cover up the real location of the Amber Room. (Please don’t hack my emails, I’m just a poor writer).
Yet despite the many deaths surrounding the Amber Room, every few years some more treasure hunters come out of the wood work proclaiming they’ve definitely found the location. No seriously, this time its definitely in this bunker, honest guys. Just this month (June, 2019), a new claim has surfaced. Bartlomiej Plebanczyk, from the Mamerki Bunker museum in Poland reassured journalists they had indeed uncovered the famous Amber Room.
“We can categorically say we’ve made a breakthrough in the search. Thanks to the use of a professional geo-radar, we were able to determine the location of an underground tunnel. After digging up the place indicated by the device, we actually found a hatch, which has almost certainly not been opened since the war.”
Call me cynical, but until they’ve actually uncovered the Amber Room itself, I’m not classifying this one as win, sorry Mr Plebanczyk. But why haven’t they actually entered the bunker and scoped it out if they’re so sure the lost Russian treasure is in there? Well I’ll let Bartlomiej handle this one:
“Several dozen years have passed since the entrance was buried. At that time, on the original 1.5m x 1.5m plate, which closes the entrance, a tree has grown. Until the tree is cut down, there is no physical possibility of opening the entrance.”
Right, maybe the lesson here is don’t announce you’ve found one of the biggest lost treasures until you‘ve actually found the lost treasure. Also if Plebanczyk ends up mysteriously disappearing, someone should check the KGB’s basement.
So there we have it, the mysterious history of the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’. If you, or someone you know is in possession of the Amber Room why not get in touch? We cannot be held responsible if you never see your priceless artefact again and all trace of this article, and its author, disappear off the face of the Earth.
Sources
Jess Blumberg “A Brief History of the Amber Room”. Smithsonian Magazine (July 21, 2007).
Scott-Clark, Catherine; Levy, Adrian The Amber Room: The Untold Story of the Greatest Hoax of the Twentieth Century (2004)
