The Great History Mystery
While I’m in Kaliningrad, I’ll certainly be on the treasure trail. Kaliningrad doesn’t have many claims to fame, but one of them is rare and precious deposits of amber. The other is the last sighting of the Amber Room, looted from St Petersburg by the Nazis.
Created by Rastrelli in 1771, with carved amber panels, Venetian mirrors and exquisite chandeliers, it was Catherine II’s favourite room in the palace.
The Amber Room. As It Was From 1771 Until 1941
I always thought amber was a stone. Not. It’s a hardened resin. Countless years ago in prehistory - really can’t be more precise - there were amber pine forests where there is now the Baltic sea. The amber pine resins were laid down in strata in the earth. Until recently, Kaliningrad had an important amber mine, but it suffered from workers stealing the product and other ‘amber-related crimes‘.
But did Russians steal the Amber Room? We only know for sure that the famous room was taken to Kaliningrad - then Konigsberg - in 1941, packed in 27 trunks aboard 18 trucks. In April 1942, the Berliner Zeitung reported that the Amber Room had been re-created in the great castle at Konigsberg. But there are conflicting eye-witness accounts about whether this actually happened or it was still in the vaults. Then the castle was firebombed by the RAF in 1944 and shortly after the Red Army sacked Konigsberg and founded Kaliningrad. The Amber Room was never seen again.
Konigsberg Castle In 1944
Treasure seekers, though, refused to give up. In 1998, two Indiana Jones types claimed to have located the room. One said it was buried in a silver mine near Berlin, the other, in a lagoon in Lithuania. Many more believe it’s still somewhere around the site of the castle, in the grounds or foundations of Kaliningrad’s great egg-box concrete monster, The House Of Soviets.
So I’ll be keeping eyes peeled on the streets in the city centre. So far I’ve found several shiny roubles and half a pair of ear-rings. As for natural amber, you can beachcomb for that at Kaliningrad’s nearby resorts, amongst the seaweed.
Fishing For Amber. Foto by Galen R Frysinger.
many of such historic sites were destroyed in ww2. luckily the hermitage museum in st. petersburg has survived the horror. just like you, i was convinced amber was a stone, it’s interesting to find out it’s not
HItler looted on a grand scale and it was well known.
When German troops arrived in Russia, Peterhof alone hosted 34,214 paintings, art works and sculptures as well as 11,700 valuable books. About 20,000 were hurriedly packed up by women for safekeeping or buried at the last minute.
Wartime documents show that the High Command of the German 18th Army had a shopping list for St Petersburg which included 55 objects with the exact location of 17 museums, 17 archives and libraries and 6 churches. Many objects were later recovered - but as long as 30 years after the war ended.
When I was in Brussels, I learned that Hitler planned to steal the Cinquantenaire - the triumphal arch over the Avenue de Tervuren. A colossal project. All the pieces were carefully marked and numbered for re-assembly in Berlin. But . . . he ran out of time.
Bizarre this put up is totaly unrelated to what I was looking out google for, nevertheless it was once listed at the first page. I suppose your doing one thing right if Google likes you enough to place you at the first page of a non comparable search.