The Mystery of the Amber Room: Russia's Lost Wealth

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

the Amber Room - one of the most famous sights of St. Petersburg. The luxurious hall in the Great Catherine Palace, decorated from floor to ceiling with amber, gold and precious stones, attracts tourists from all over the world. However, not everyone knows that this room is a copy of the one that was once created by Prussian craftsmen, but then disappeared during the Second World War.

The idea of the amber room came from the Germans, it was supposed to be the winter residence of Frederick I, King of Prussia. The room was designed by German sculptor Andreas Schlüter. When Peter I saw the room in 1716, Frederick William I gave it to the Russian emperor as a gift to strengthen the Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.

At first, the amber cabinet was installed in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and after Peter's daughter Elizabeth decided to move it to the Catherine Palace in 1755.

In 1941, after the Nazi invasion, the mass export of cultural property from the USSR began. It was not possible to evacuate the amber room, the material was too fragile. To protect it from robbery, museum workers tried to hide the precious jewelry under the wallpaper. For preservation, the amber was pasted over with paper, and gauze and cotton wool were laid on top. True, such measures did not save the works of art: the Germans were able to dismantle the precious panel in just 36 hours and send it to Konigsberg.

From 1942 to 1944, the panel was exhibited in one of the museums in Koenigsberg. Due to the fact that the hall was smaller in size than the St. Petersburg one, part of the panel was kept separately. This castle-museum was captured by Soviet soldiers, but because of the bombings there was a fire, and, according to one version, the amber room was lost.

However, there are other versions: according to some of them, the amber room is still kept in secret dungeons of Kaliningrad (formerly Koenigsberg), according to other sources it was taken secretly to one of the nearest European countries (Germany, Austria or the Czech Republic). there are also more fantastic versions that it was allegedly transferred to the USA or South America.

Historians refute most of these versions, the main argument is that without a special temperature regime in the dungeons, amber simply cannot be stored for a long time. In St. Petersburg, the reconstruction of the amber room began in 1981. Dozens of craftsmen worked on an ambitious project, and by 2003 the restoration work was finally completed.

The Amber Room is one of lost wealth of the 20th century, which were never discovered.