For more than 70 years, the mysterious disappearance of the famous “amber room” has remained unsolved. In the fall of 1941, the Nazis took it from Tsarskoye Selo to Koenigsberg, where it remained throughout the war, but in 1945, when Koenigsberg was occupied by our troops, it turned out that the room had disappeared without a trace.
The passions around her have not subsided to this day. Today there are more than 600 officially declared locations of the amber room. This unique rarity is surrounded by a huge number of myths, legends and strange incidents. Many of which are associated with loss of life.
17 people who were on the verge of its discovery died. There are many similar stories of its discovery. Why did the search for the amber room become deadly, for which all those people who came close to revealing this secret were killed.
And what the most famous search enthusiast, German citizen Georg Stein, wanted to tell at his press conference, but never had time to do it. It is worth noting that Stein fought on the side of Germany, who subsequently decided to restore justice to the Soviet Union. Why did a simple German set out to find this room, showing such zeal?
Koenigsberg 1945, where the invisible connection between the fate of Stein and the amber room began. In this city, a tragedy occurred in the family of a simple soldier Georg Stein, the events of which turned his entire future destiny upside down. The entire Stein family was arrested for their association with family friend Karl Goerdeler, who was a participant in the conspiracy against Hitler.
Amber Room Königsberg: the beginning
On April 6, 1945, the entire Stein family was executed by order of Koch. After the death of his family, Georg Stein found his father's suicide note, in which his father asked him to finish all the things he had started. Stein Sr. was an archivist and scrupulously kept records of all exported valuables stolen by the Nazis. The amber room occupied a special place in his archive.
Most likely, Mr. Stein was on the trail of the famous amber room, but he paid for his discovery with his life. Georg Stein left the keys to investigate the disappearance of the amber room; these are his notes and notes. Bavaria August 20, 1987 Georg Stein goes to a meeting with two former officers of the special group of Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories.
This is exactly what the people who called him on the phone told him, promising to provide important information about the amber room. Stein devoted almost his entire life to her search and finally made a sensational discovery. He was already preparing for the upcoming press conference when this call came. Georg, without hesitation, responded, not even suspecting that he was driving towards his death.
His body was found on the outskirts of the town of Altdorf by a passerby. Eight stab wounds were found on the body, a brutal and terrible crime that remains unsolved to this day. All the unique information collected over the years of searching remained in Stein’s archive. Realizing the value and importance of these documents, the researcher's friend and comrade-in-arms, Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein, bought the archive from relatives and solemnly handed it over to the Soviet Union.
What do the archives know about the amber room?
Not knowing what to do with such a gift, Moscow officials sent the documents to the Kaliningrad Regional Archives and successfully forgot about everything. One translator, a former SMERSH officer, worked with him in this storage facility, who, by the way, died suddenly. The materials remained in the archive for 30 years, a real historical sensation and the key to revealing the mystery of the disappearance of the amber room and many other valuables taken by Germany from the Soviet Union. In all 30 years, only a few employees looked at his records.
In the spring of 1942, the amber room, stolen by the German occupiers from Tsarskoe Selo, was reassembled in one of the premises of the Royal Castle and entered the museum inventory of artistic treasures of Königsberg, but under a different name “German amber cabinet”. Later, it is this recording that plays a cruel joke on the room.
In fact, initially there were several options for the amber room, the first one that was given to Peter I by the Prussian King Frederick, a small amber cabinet, which was later doubled in size. Architect Francesco Rastrelli converted it into one of the halls of the Catherine Palace, adding an upper tier of panels, mosaics, candelabra and carved decorative elements made of tinted amber. This second complete version was later called the amber room.
Amber fever
The first version, presented to Peter I by King Frederick, excited the minds of historians and military leaders of Germany; they decided to recognize it as a national treasure of Germany; the second part, the modification to the amber room, did not interest them at all.
A version of the room donated by Frederick was restored in the Royal Castle of Königsberg, while the remaining part was boxed and stored in the castle cellars. Few people were interested in them.
In the spring of 1942, at the grand opening of the Prussian relic, the entire color of Koenigsberg gathered. Among the first visitors to the room was 18-year-old Georg Stein. The room made an indelible impression on him. The young man ran home, full of impressions; his parents were then visiting a friend of the family, the same Karl Goerdeler, one of the organizers of the assassination attempt on Hitler.
Herder rather abruptly interrupted Stein's story about the amber room with the phrase: “remember Georg, everything that is stolen cannot be beautiful, and must be returned to where it was taken from.” With such parting words, Georg Stein went to the front.
The war reached Königsberg in August 1944, the British tested napalm bombs specially created for the civilian population. More than 4,000 city residents burned in their homes and bomb shelters. The entire historical center of the city was irretrievably lost, leaving 200,000 people homeless.
The worst bombing was the night of August 30, during which 6 basement panels of the amber room melted. What happened next to the amber room?
From Stein's archive on the value movement:
"February 1943 - August 44 in the Reichsbank vault"
It turns out that even before the bombing, the amber room was dismantled, packed and lowered into the castle's vault. There they were saved from the fire, but the edges of several panels were still damaged. Then they were moved to a deeper vault, a branch of the Reichsbank. Moreover, this could be done without going to the surface; an underground corridor from the Royal Palace led there.
"Since July 1944, the amber room on the estate of Erich Koch in the suburbs of Königsberg."
Georg Stein learned that the room was on the Koch estate from his father’s diaries, although there was a question mark in the margin of this entry, but Stein did not attach any importance to this.
Later, in the archives of Königsberg, it was found out that the room had never left the Royal Castle, and Stein the elder saw a copy of the amber panels of the room, made by amber craftsmen from the Koch estate, for unknown purposes.
From interrogations of eyewitnesses, it became known that the amber room still remained in the Royal Castle, although it moved to another part of it, the popular Blutgericht restaurant. This was the most reliable place in the castle; the ancient part of the castle consisted of three tiered stone cellars that could withstand any bombing.
Why didn’t the room leave Königsberg before the bombing, because Hitler personally gave the order for its evacuation? The answer is simple, caretaker Rohde stubbornly did not want to take the room away, he played his dangerous game with Hitler. Instead of sending the very first room donated by Frederick to Peter I, he began to send in different ways, the extra parts of the “amber modifications” by the architect Francesco Rastrelli, which lay in the basements of the castle and were not used in the arrangement of the rooms of the Royal Castle.
This fact was established in the interrogation protocol of Rode, which was discovered in the archives of Alexander Kuchumov, the head of the state commission to search for the amber room and other stolen valuables.
Alexander Mikhailovich was not only a famous art critic, but also the former custodian of the amber room in Tsarskoe Selo, and dreamed of the day when the amber room would return to its place. These documents have never been published anywhere; perhaps it was beneficial for someone to keep them secret.
On April 9, 1945, at dawn, the first Moscow-Minsk division crossed the Pregel River and captured the Cathedral and the Royal Castle. When Soviet artillerymen entered the castle, they found many boxes in the Great Knights' Hall. Frightened Germans were sitting on some of them, when the Russian colonel asked: “What’s in the boxes?” They answered, “museum valuables.”
In the castle register, the amber room was listed as number 200, as an exhibit of a German museum, i.e. property of East Prussia, not the Soviet Union. The colonel, deciding that these were captured valuables, handed the panels over to a special captured brigade of the NKVD.
Documents about these events were discovered in the archives of Kuchumov, the head of the state commission, after his death.
Having compared all the facts, it turns out that the Germans sat on the boxes of the German amber cabinet donated to Peter I, and the amber panels not used in its construction were sent to Roda by rail.
There was great secrecy, it was not customary to talk about it, to take an interest, management and structures had no time for this, it was necessary to deal with captured German valuables looted from all over Europe. Inspection commissions came to Koenigsberg twice, and each time the conclusion was made that the rarity could not be found because it had burned down.
The head of the commission for the search for Kuchumov, of course, guessed that the original of the amber room did not burn, but ended up in the hands of a special NKVD team, which transported it to secret funds of trophy valuables. Where she was safely lost among other trophy valuables and post-war confusion.
Subsequently, the special services began to cover their tracks, fearing responsibility. A lot of misinformation began to appear in the media about the amber room in Soviet and German newspapers. The Soviet special services, having made an unfortunate mistake with the amber room, could no longer correct anything, because they did not know where it really was now and, in order to get themselves out of harm’s way, began to direct their searches in the wrong direction.
A simple German, Georg Stein, also read the note about the amber room and decided to restore the chronology of events. Using his own money, he began to conduct an investigation. Doing this was mortally dangerous; we were talking about very large amounts of money, which former Nazis who managed to escape from retribution continued to receive at auctions for stolen valuables. Germany did not allow anyone to access its post-war archives; Stein had to hide behind a legend about searching for former Nazis.
In the archives of Rosenberg's headquarters, Georg Stein found the trail, but not of the amber room, but of the treasure of the Pskov-Pechersk Monastery, which with its help returned to their homeland. Stein did not receive a penny of money from the Soviet leadership for his help in returning the treasures.
The GDR also searched for treasures on its territory, maintaining secrecy. Stasi intelligence officers introduced an intelligence officer into Stein's circle under the guise of a journalist, who began to bring Stein very interesting documents. These included documents about the Gorsleben mine in Saxony; treasures looted by the Nazis were hidden in this mine, including the supposed amber room. It was a sensation, Stein was holding a press conference and suddenly there was a call, they promised to give him very important information. He went to a meeting that turned out to be fatal.
The fact is that there were no more valuables in the mine. From Stein's notes:
“On the night of April 10-11, 1945, a group of SS officers took parts of the amber room along with other valuables to the Gorsleben mine in Lower Saxony, and placed it at a depth of 430 meters.”
“On April 15, 1945, the mine was occupied by American troops and on May 10, 1945, the Americans took the exhibits of the amber room through Wiesbaden to the United States.”
In response to Steine's request in Wiesbaden, he was told that all documentation on this case was classified.
This begs the question of how the amber room could be in two places in the NKVD trophy warehouses and the Gorsleben mine in Saxony. Stein still found the amber room, but not the whole one, but part of it, which caretaker Rohde managed to evacuate from the Royal Castle of Königsberg, this is an amber continuation of the room of the architect Francesco Rastrelli, which ended up in the hands of the American military. The question remains, where is the main part of the room, which the Germans called the “German Amber Cabinet”.
At the end of the war, the amber cabinet was sent from Königsberg to the Berlin Museum; it ended up in the Eastern Sector, which later became the capital of the GDR. After examination, the amber room was transferred to the American sector of the museum.
How did the Americans get it? The fact is that payment for Lend-Lease began 5 years after the end of the war. There was nothing to pay; there was no gold or currency. In addition to gold, the Americans also accepted valuable property, which included works of art. It turns out that instead of money, the Americans took captured cultural property under Lend-Lease. Thus, the amber room may be among the things that Germany used to pay for Lend-Lease to America.
The Americans did not export the so-called “Prussian Amber Cabinet” to the USA; most likely it remains on German territory in the museum storages of Kassel. Where the amber room was originally planned to move from Königsberg.
December 1st, 2017
Hello dears.
An interesting #slovokalininggrad marathon is starting and I just can’t get past it. Therefore, I will write a couple of posts, and I hope you, dears, will find this interesting.
So, I propose to start with one artifact that is directly associated with Konigsberg and Kaliningrad. Of course, we will talk about the “Amber Room” (aka the Amber Cabinet, aka the Amber Chamber, aka Ella Katsnelbogen..:-) In general, when we say Kaliningrad, we mean the “Amber Room” and vice versa :-)
Who in this world has not searched for this wonderful artifact (including your humble servant) - from Yulian Semenov to Baron Eduard Falz-Fein. Many people are concerned about her fate - this is a fact. And it’s not just about its material value, it’s more about finding the greatest work of art. What can be seen in Pushkin’s Catherine Palace since 2003 is only a weak semblance of what it was originally. No matter what they tell you otherwise.
Of course, titanic work was done, and the restorers, led by Alexander Zhuravlev, and the sponsors did a great job, for which we thank them very much. But still, this, I repeat, is a weak copy. Why? Well, a simple example. The room is decorated with stucco molding covered with thin plates of amber. But in the real room, these elements were not made from plaster, but were entirely carved from pieces of amber. Considering the fragility and complexity of the material, you can imagine the cost and quality of this work. And so, in general, in everything.
Let's take a little look at why most of those interested in the topic associate the Amber Room with the City of Kings :-)
First, a little history in order to understand what exactly this room is.
Once upon a time there was such an interesting architect and engineer Andreas Schlüter. He was a popular architect in Europe and after his triumph in Poland, the Prussian King Frederick I invited him to his court, giving him good funding. Schlüter, as an ambitious man, was looking for a way to leave his name in history, and one day, looking at a large royal collection of amber, he decided to make one of the rooms of the Great Royal Palace in Berlin, which he was rebuilding, entirely from amber. So what? Nobody has done this before - the material is too capricious and complex. He got so fired up that he extracted additional funds from Frederick and ordered from Denmark a certain master Wolfram, a leading amber specialist at that time. Wolfram got down to business earnestly (fortunately they paid well), and Schlüter switched to other projects, essentially not participating in the creation of the amber hall. 
A. Schluter
The work was in full swing when Schlüter lost the title of chief royal architect to the Swede von Goethe in a behind-the-scenes fight and all his undertakings, including the amber cabinet, ceased to be funded. The work was only half completed at best. Wolfram went home, where he soon died. Schlüter tried for several years to regain the king's favor, and he succeeded. The king agreed to make an office in his Charlottenburg castle. But first they spent a long time looking for new craftsmen, then they installed the finished panels so unsuccessfully that they fell and broke. Afterwards there is a long recovery. And this lasted until 1713, when King Frederick died. The office was never completed. The new king Friedrich Wilhelm I did not need it, and all the parts were collected and taken to the Berlin workshop.
Charlottenburg Castle in Berlin
Schlüter switched to Russian service, where he told Peter I, who loved all sorts of wonders, about this project of his. The Russian Tsar caught fire and a few years later received this very office as a gift. More precisely, there was an exchange - the Prussian king gave away an amber cabinet and a yacht, the Russian tsar gave 55 Russian grenadiers and a cup of his own making. In general, diplomacy, such diplomacy :-) 
And so in 1717 the cabinet arrived in St. Petersburg. But... it was not clear what to do with him. Schlüter had died by that time, although, they say, he had a hand in the construction of Monplaisir in Peterhof, the Menshikov palaces on Vasilyevsky Island and in Oranienbaum, as well as the Kikin Chambers. Without him, not only could no one assemble this office, but also advise efficient amber craftsmen. Again, let’s not forget that Alexander Danilovich Menshikov himself was responsible for the transportation and transportation of the artifact. The Duke of Izhora was an outstanding personality, but he also stole on a large scale. So, it may well be that part of the cabinet “stuck” to his hands :-)) Whatever it was, they couldn’t assemble the Amber Cabinet (they planned for it to be in the Kunkstkamera) and panels made of precious amber were simply lying around in the Summer Palace. And there they were forgotten for 20 years
G. H. Groot. Portrait of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna
In 1743, Empress Elizabeth I, “Petrov’s daughter,” remembered the room and decided to install it after all. She instructed master Alexander Martelli, under the supervision of chief architect F.B. Rastrelli, to deal with the problem. They zealously got down to business, but soon two problems arose. 1 - the amber was seriously damaged in many places, and second - the room in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo, where the office should have been located, was twice its size. A craftsman like Rastrelli quickly found a way out of the situation by making a symbiosis of amber elements and gilded wood carvings, mirrors and mosaic paintings made of agate and jasper. Plus Florentine mosaics. it looked very nice. 
The next empress, Catherine II the Great, decided to go even further. Under the leadership of the same Bartolomeo Rastrelli, by 1770 the amber cabinet was completely transformed into the Amber Room. Now there is only amber and this is a real wonder of the world! The Germans turned out to have a lot of “spare parts” that were handed over to us, plus the craftsmen worked and created a single ensemble. It is since 1770 that we can talk about the phenomenon that we understand by the term “Amber Room”. But amber (I repeat once again) is too difficult a material to use, which required an eye and an eye. It spoils all the time. From heating, candles, draft, sun... Therefore, we had to constantly make small repairs. And 4 large ones. They were in 1833, 1865, 1893-1897 and 1933-1935. Some of the panels were changed, some were made “in reserve” and it is fashionable to say that by the beginning of the war there were almost one and a half “Amber Rooms” available (including spare parts and additional elements not included). They say that another repair was supposed to be carried out in 1941, but they didn’t have time because of the war....
And here is the first and important question. Why wasn't the Amber Room evacuated? The official version is that we didn’t have time. Like, it’s very fragile... It was “preserved” by covering it with paper, gauze and cotton wool. On September 17, the Nazis took Pushkin and settled in the palace. They got the room.
To be honest, at first I decided that such a strange decision was caused by the fact that during the renovation of 1933-1935, the real room was dismantled and secretly sold to the West (the USSR really needed currency), and a fake one was made in the Palace.
Therefore, knowing the true cost of this “room”, we were not particularly worried about its safety. But after digging through the archives, I came to the conclusion that this is not so. A lot of valuables were taken away. but they didn’t give in to the room. It was planned to be exported, but there was not enough time. And then, when the enemy approached the city, panic began (to be honest) and there was simply no time for the room. Again, the German Sonderkommando, which included experts in art, gave a positive conclusion about the veracity of the room as a work of art. Therefore, in the spring of 1942, the Amber Room was dismantled and, with German pedantry, transported to Königsberg Castle. 
Königsberg Castle.
It is interesting that they placed it in a room that was noticeably smaller than the hall of the Catherine Palace. Therefore, we can say that half of the Amber Room decorated the walls of the castle, the second half (including spare parts) was hidden in storerooms - in the dungeons of this very Castle. The room was definitely in Königsberg until the spring of 1944, but then the speculation begins.
Here we need to clarify one more point - why Königsberg, and not Berlin or Nuremberg. And this is an interesting question. Because, as far as I understand, the interests of two very powerful people of the Third Reich - Hermann Goering and Eric Koch - collided on the issue of owning the Amber Room.
The latter’s team reached the room earlier and therefore, out of harm’s way, Koch transported it to East Prussia, whose Gauleiter he was and where he could effectively repel the advances of the Reichsmarshal. Again, the key person in the story of the Amber Room, Alfred Rohde (we'll talk about him a little later), of course, could only partially be considered Koch's man, but he was definitely an antagonist of Goering, with whose team of art historians he was in a state of open hostility.
In general, whatever one may say, until the spring of 1944 the room was in Königsberg. And here's what's next...
And here we are forced to sort the versions. And everyone chooses for themselves
Let's start from the beginning.
I- The Amber Room perished in Königsberg
II The Amber Room survived safely until the end of the war.
For those who adhere to the first version, there are several points of specific destruction of the room. Late spring 1944, January 30, 1945, April 9, 1945, April 11, 1945.
On any of these dates the room could have been destroyed. The first date was a raid by British aviation, as a result of whose bombing fires started in the Castle, which, however, were quickly extinguished. And we know how defenseless amber is against fire. However, according to the official version, the room was not damaged; its room was dismantled and placed in special boxes, hidden in the dungeon of the Castle. After that, no one saw the room again.
The second date is the death of the supership "Wilhelm Gustlov", torpedoed by our submarine S-13. It is still not known exactly how many people died (data vary almost significantly), and it is not clear at all how many and what kind of material assets were transported then. Could the Amber Room be among them? Easily!
Wilhelm Gustlow
The third date is the final assault on the city, when Koenigsberg, destroyed and smoking in ruins, was taken at the bayonet by the heroic Red Army. True, at the cost of considerable losses, the Germans fought fiercely.
The last date is a sudden fire for no reason in the basements of the castle, 2 days after the end of the fighting.
Castle after the war
On each of these dates, the Amber Room could have died with a high degree of probability. And I perfectly understand those who adhere to this particular version.
Apologists for version II - the Amber Room survived safely until the end of the war - are divided into 2 large subcategories.
A) Those who are looking for the room and its traces outside the Kaliningrad region
B) Those who dig the earth in Kaliningrad and the surrounding area X.
The former, naturally, are the majority. There are about 25 serious versions of where she went. Some say that it was taken out by Soviet trophy teams and transferred as payment for Lend-Lease, others say that the Germans took it out and hid it in Austria, the Czech Republic, Bavaria, Thuringia, Poland and even in Danish Jutland, who -this speaks of the move of many valuables, including the Amber Room, to South America. There are plenty of versions, and we won’t go through each one, because the post is already very long :-)
Among those searching in Kaliningrad and its environs, one can single out researcher Sergei Trifonov. He has certainly been trying to find a room in Königsberg for about 15 years. A very enthusiastic person. A healthy fanatic :-)) True, there is no success yet :-) This is not surprising, because I have already changed the possible location of the artifact a couple of times. I don’t quite understand what sources he uses, but he assumed that the room was located in one of the underground tunnels under the Pregol River, either in the dungeons of the Castle, or in some secret laboratory “Konigsberg 13”, or in the bunker of the last commandant of Konigsberg, Otto von Lyasch , then somewhere else.
Well, let the person search. Maybe he will find something necessary and good. Even if not the Amber Room :-))) 
S. Trifonov
What is the true fate of the "Amber Room"? I think only 2 people could know her. And this is not Goebbels (who did not know exactly where exactly) and Koch (who was kept out of solving this problem), who, by the way, spent 40 years in prison, and if he had known, this knowledge would have been shaken out of him. These are smaller figures. Alfred Rohde, whom I already mentioned above, is an art critic and, perhaps, the main amber specialist in Europe. It was he who took the Amber Room from Leningrad and took care of it in Königsberg. And he knew exactly what happened to her. After the occupation of Königsberg, the Soviet services found him and were able to talk. He gave extremely confusing testimony (which, by the way, I could not find in the archives. Apparently classified). And most importantly, after some time he died along with his wife. And his death is completely incomprehensible.
A. Rode
The second is SS Obersturmbannführer Gustav Wiest, who first worked with Koch, but then turned out to be Goering’s confidant (I don’t understand how this could happen). His son claims that his father carried out a certain operation “Grun”, to evacuate the Amber Room (or part of it) to one of Goering’s secret storage facilities - a certain bunker B3. Wist died in 1947.
SS Obersturmbannfuehrer's jacket
And finally, if you are interested, I can tell you my version. Fortunately, I haven’t been doing this for a long time :-))) I think that the room is not destroyed. I have already told you that the dimensions of the Amber Room were much larger than the hall in the Castle in Königsberg, so the room was originally divided into 2 parts. One of the units was evacuated at the beginning of 1945 (Rode's team). In my opinion, it was transported to South America, from there it ended up in the USA in one of the private collections, in exchange for support and a “green corridor” for the Nazis’ flight abroad as part of the future ODESSA project. Moreover, the level was higher than that of Koch himself. I think either Goebbels or Himmler, or maybe the Fuhrer himself. Rode was simply eliminated to clean up loose ends.
The second part is still in bunker B3. Where is he? Well...I looked for it in Poland :-)
Something like this :-)
Thank you for reading to the end of my “sheet”, and still I hope (somewhere in the depths of my soul) that you were interested :-))
Have a nice time of day.
Königsberg Castle or Königsberg Castle (German name Das Königsberger Schloß) is the symbol and pride of Königsberg. It was from this castle that the birth of Königsberg began.
The name of this castle (“Königsberg”) gave the general name for the city that arose near the castle walls - Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).
Königsberg Castle is also called the Royal Castle.
Once upon a time, Königsberg Castle, along with the Cathedral, was the most important and oldest landmark of the city.
The castle has a very long and very rich history, but, unfortunately, the castle has not survived to this day. Currently, on the site of the once majestic and, without a doubt, beautiful Royal Castle, only a small part of the ruins remains (archaeological excavations):
Fragments of the castle dungeons;
A fragment of the South Terrace of the Royal Castle, which can be seen from Moskovsky Avenue.
The southern terrace of the castle was equipped in the 19th century. To build the terrace, a complex of old buildings in the northern part of Altstadt was demolished. A portal with a niche was made in the wall, where a sculpture of King Friedrich Wilhelm I, the work of I. Meisner (1730), was installed. In the summer, tubs with exotic plants were placed along the retaining wall. The southern castle terrace was a popular place for walks and recreation for townspeople.
Now, we can see the past greatness and beauty of the castle only from the few surviving photographs, some of which are on display in the permanent exhibition.
Castle courtyard
Northeast corner of the castle
Also, the royal castle is depicted on the model of Koenigsberg in 1937, the author is the artist-architect of the Kant Museum - Dyryshchev Albert Mikhailovich. The layout is in .
Foundation and history of Königsberg Castle
At the end of the 12th century, the Teutonic Order was founded in Palestine during the Crusades, along with other monastic orders. The Crusaders in Palestine were defeated by the Muslims and were forced to leave the Holy Land and return to Europe.
By the beginning of the 13th century in Europe, only the population of the South-Eastern Baltic region (the ancestors of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian peoples, as well as the ancient Prussians) remained pagans. The Polish prince Konrad of Mazowiecki, who fought with the Prussians, called on the Teutonic Order for help. Having secured the support of the Pope, the Teutonic Order began the forcible Christianization of the Prussians. The systematic conquest of Prussian lands began, stretching from the mouth of the Vistula to the mouth of the Neman. During the campaigns, the knights founded castles, relying on which they moved further.
In December 1254, detachments of volunteer knights led by the Czech king Otakar II Přemysl and Margrave Otto II of Brandenburg set out to help the defeated knights of the Order.
At the beginning of 1255, the united army of knights reached the area called Tuvangste by the Prussians. According to legend, it was here, on the high bank of the Liptsa River (German name - Pregel, Russian - Pregolya), King Otakar advised the knights of the Order to build a castle and left “rich gifts” for this. In memory of the king, the castle was named “Königsberg” (“Royal Mountain”).
Construction of the fortress lasted several decades. The castle turned into the center of the command of Königsberg, which included the north-eastern lands of Prussia, and, along with the military, the castle also performed administrative functions.
Since 1323, Königsberg Castle became the residence of the Supreme Marshal of the Order and the organized center of the crusades against Lithuania that continued until the end of the 15th century.
Since 1457, Königsberg Castle has been the seat of the Grand Master, the head of the Teutonic Order.
In 1525, the order state was transformed into the Duchy of Prussia, and the castle housed the court of the Duke of Prussia.
In the second half of the 16th century, the convention house (the western part of the castle) was demolished, and construction of an outbuilding began in its place. This defensive structure had two powerful round towers on either side, the wall between which was reinforced with buttresses. A gate was made to exit into the castle courtyard.
The outbuilding had basements for storing food supplies and, later, ammunition. On the first floor there were service premises, on the second - the castle church.
In 1697, within the walls of a large celebration hall, which was located on the third floor of the castle, then Elector Frederick III received the Great Moscow Embassy, which included Tsar Peter I. Perhaps it was after this reception that the hall received the name “Muscovite Hall”.
In 1701, the coronation of the first Prussian king, Frederick I, took place within the walls of the castle.
After the First World War, the provincial museum “Prussia” moved to the castle, and weapons collections were presented in the Muscovite hall. The round towers housed office space, workshops and libraries.
In August 1944, as a result of air raids, the castle was damaged, calling into question its continued existence.
Photo of Königsberg Castle after the Second Pestilence
The ruins of the castle survived until the second half of the 1960s, when the regional authorities decided that it was impossible for them to continue to be located in the city center and that it was inappropriate to restore an object of a different, non-Soviet, culture.
The ruins were demolished; the foundation was covered with Kaliningrad Square slabs; the remains of the retaining walls of the southern terrace were gradually dismantled to restore other city objects, and at the turn of the 1970s-80s the lower retaining wall was finally dismantled, while the small remaining fragments of the upper retaining wall were covered with concrete and lined with limestone slabs.
This is exactly how, sadly, the full history of Königsberg Castle ended.
Fragments of the dungeons and southern terrace of the castle were discovered during archaeological excavations in 2001 - 2005 and 2016.
In 2018, landscaping work was carried out on the territory of the former castle, funded by a private investor, in preparation for the FIFA World Cup. Conservation of the remaining remains of the castle has been carried out.
Approximately on the site of the southeastern part of Königsberg Castle, the House of Soviets, which was built (and unfinished) during Soviet times, currently stands.
The Amber Room and Königsberg Castle
Königsberg Castle is the last precisely known location of the legendary Amber Room (1942-1945).
During the assault on Königsberg by Soviet troops in April 1945, the Amber Room disappeared without a trace. Her further fate still remains one of the mysteries of history.
Some researchers of the location of the room believe that it is still located in the basements of the castle, although no reliable sources have been found to confirm this information. The search for the amber room was one of the goals (not the main one) of the castle excavations carried out in 2001-2008 by the German magazine Der Spiegel.
There are also other versions related to the location of the amber room (its remains and parts). Some suggest that it was taken to Berlin, then transferred to the United States, other versions say that the room was taken out and buried in the northern part of the Jutland Peninsula, or even hidden in one of the caves near Dresden, or perhaps it was simply dismantled into small parts and transported to various parts of the world.
What to visit near the ruins of the Royal Castle in Kaliningrad
On which are located: the Cathedral, the Honey Bridge connecting the island with the Fishing Village, Kant’s grave and the sculpture park.
- one of the most famous attractions 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 masters, but then disappeared during the Second World War.
The idea for 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 sculptors 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.
Initially, the amber cabinet was installed in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and then Peter’s daughter Elizabeth decided to move it to the Catherine Palace in 1755.
In 1941, after the Nazi invasion, the massive export of cultural property from the USSR began. It was not possible to evacuate the amber room; the material was too fragile. To
To protect her from robbery, museum workers tried to hide the precious jewelry under the wallpaper. For preservation, the amber was covered with paper, and gauze and cotton wool were placed 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 Königsberg.
From 1942 to 1944, the panel was exhibited in one of the museums in Königsberg. Due to the fact that the hall was smaller in size than the St. Petersburg one, part of the panels were stored separately. This castle-museum was captured by Soviet soldiers, but due to bombing there was a fire there, 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 the secret dungeons of Kaliningrad (formerly Koenigsberg); according to other sources, it was secretly taken 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 the ambitious project, and by 2003 the restoration work was finally completed.
The Amber Room is one of.
- one of the biggest mysteries not only of the Second World War, but, perhaps, of the entire 20th century. Scientists around the world are still arguing about the fate of the pearl of the imperial residence in Tsarskoe Selo, which was given to Peter the Great by the Prussian ruler and taken away by Reich troops to an unknown destination in 1945.
Today there are approximately six hundred suspected locations where it has been claimed to be stored. And the number of myths, legends and strange mysterious events associated with it is beyond counting. This article is about the creation, arrival in Russia and the mysterious disappearance of the Amber Room.
- The Amber Cabinet was created in Berlin in 1709 by the German architect and sculptor Andreas Schlüter.
- In 1716, the Amber Cabinet was presented to Peter I as a diplomatic gift by the Prussian Emperor Frederick William I.
- In 1770, the architect Rastrelli, by order of Catherine II, created the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo.
- In the fall of 1941, the Germans occupied the city of Pushkin. The Catherine Palace was brutally looted, and the Amber Room was taken to East Prussia, where it was exhibited in the Royal Castle.
- In 1945, before the storming of Koenigsberg by the Red Army, the Amber Room disappeared. Traces of it are lost in the territory of the former East Prussia, which became the territorial reparations of the USSR - the Kaliningrad region.
- By 2003, a copy of the Amber Room was completely recreated, which can be seen by everyone in the Catherine Palace in the city of Pushkin.
- The Amber Room became a symbol of the colossal damage caused by Germany to the USSR during the Great Patriotic War.
Where to see the Amber Room
Website Museum-Reserve "Tsarskoe Selo": http://tzar.ru. Opening hours: Closed on Tuesday, from October to April - Tuesday and the last Monday of the month.
The Amber Room is located in the suburbs of St. Petersburg - in the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve in the Catherine Palace. The Amber Room is a popular attraction. People who want to see it come from all over the world; interest in this relic only increases over the years.
According to the museum administration, in order to reduce visitor traffic and reduce the load on the palace and museum values, it is necessary to set fairly high ticket prices. Tickets can only be purchased at the museum box office; there are no online sales. The purchased ticket to enter the palace is valid for 1 hour.
To get into the Amber Room in the summer, you have to wait in a long, lively queue lasting from 1 to 5 hours to enter the palace. Moreover, there will be queues in the palace itself, and crowds of people in the halls. Therefore, some tourists, coming to Pushkin in the summer, enjoy walking around the Catherine Park, and come to the Catherine Palace at other times of the year, when the queue is significantly shorter.
Disabled people of groups I and II with an accompanying person and disabled children can skip the line.
You cannot take photographs in the Amber Room even without a flash, unlike other halls of the palace. The museum administration explains the ban on photography due to the high photosensitivity of amber. To ensure that the color scheme of the organic stone does not change, you cannot take photographs in the Amber Room.
Ticket price
Free Entrance to the park and palace is for children under 16 years old.
To enter the Catherine Palace, you must first buy a ticket to the Catherine Park. Admission to the park is paid from April 27 to October 21, the rest of the time admission is free. Cost of a park ticket - 150 rub.., students (from 16 years old), students, cadets and conscripts - 80 rubles, pensioners of the Russian Federation and Belarus - 40 rubles, free - for an adult accompanying a child in a stroller.
The cost of a ticket to the palace depends on the time of day. Cheaper from 12.00 to 18.00:
- for tax residents of the Russian Federation - 700 rub.
- for non-residents - 1000 rubles.
- 350 rub.
After 18.00 the cost of a ticket to the palace:
- For tax residents of the Russian Federation – 850 rub..
- for non-residents – 1200 rub.
- for pensioners of the Russian Federation and Belarus, students over 16 years old, students, cadets, conscripts - 430 rub.
If you stood in a long line to the palace and got to the ticket office after 18.00, you will have to pay for more expensive tickets.
History of creation and entry into Russia
The idea of the grandiose project belongs to Andreas Schlüter, who at the beginning of the 18th century held the position of chief architect of the royal court of Prussia. It was he who decided to try to decorate the palace premises with amber, which had never before been considered as a finishing material.
The Prussian ruler Friedrich Wilhelm wanted to create an office, the walls of which would be decorated with amber, in his castle, but this idea was not brought to life - the monarch died. And his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm I, was not happy with this idea, so all the elements of the masterpiece were transported to Berlin. The creation of the brilliant Prussian masters would have remained lying in one of the many armory warehouses and would have been forgotten if Emperor Peter I had not found out about it, who was inspired by the idea of getting such an office for himself.
Peter's wish was soon fulfilled - in 1716, Frederick William I gave him the Amber Room. No one knows why the cabinet parts were missing, but during Peter’s lifetime the Amber Room was never installed. Luxurious panels gathered dust for a long time in the chambers of the Summer Palace, until his daughter Elizaveta Petrovna decided to decorate one of the rooms of the Winter Palace with them. The lack of amber components was made up for with mirrors and paintings. However, the room was located not in the Winter Palace, but in Tsarskoe Selo.
The area of the room was approximately one hundred square meters. In addition to amber, mirrors and paintings, the room was decorated with mosaics made of real marble. In the middle of the 18th century, when no one expected this, missing decorative details were suddenly discovered, and Elizabeth received the fourth panel of the amber cabinet. As a result, the Amber Room was finally assembled and began to be used for diplomatic meetings.
The room appeared in its final form under Catherine the Great, who slightly changed its decoration. It became a real asset of the imperial court; prominent Europeans also sought to come here. Throughout its existence, this design masterpiece has been restored five times. The next restoration work was scheduled for the tragic year 1941.
Export to Koenigsberg
Once the war and the siege began, many works of art were in danger of being destroyed due to constant bombing and shelling carried out by the German army. To protect them, it was decided to evacuate to the east of the country at least what could be taken away. Unfortunately, the Amber Room was not included in the evacuated art objects, since its parts were too fragile and simply would not have survived the evacuation. Therefore, it was mothballed. The most beautiful panels were covered with improvised materials - gauze, paper, cotton wool, various fabrics. It was assumed that these measures would protect it from destruction by blast waves.
On September 18, 1941, the Nazis entered the city of Pushkin and the barbaric destruction of architectural monuments and looting of palaces began. Conservation saved the Amber Room from destruction in explosions, but did not save it from the greedy hands of the Nazis. The decoration of the Amber Room was carefully removed from the walls and transported to Konigsberg by the Kunstkomission commission, specially created in 1941 to remove valuables from the occupied regions of the USSR and transport them to Germany.
The Amber Room adorned the Royal Castle, where the Amber Museum was located under the direction of Alfred Rohde. Rohde, a German art critic and renowned amber specialist, had a special relationship with the Amber Room. In a letter to Erich Koch, he strongly recommended urgently transporting the Amber Room from Tsarskoe Selo to Konigsberg. The Amber Room was exhibited in one of the halls of the Royal Castle. It had a smaller area than the premises of the palace in Pushkin, so many decorative elements were not even removed from the boxes in which they were transported. Because of this fact, the fate of the Amber Room subsequently became even more confusing.
Mysterious disappearance
The Royal Castle of Königsberg is the last known location of the Amber Room.
In 1945, when it was already clear that Germany’s plans would inevitably fail, the highest authorities of the Third Reich decided to hide the stolen valuables, including the Amber Room. The magnificent decorations were again removed from the walls and packed into boxes and crates. Three days before the assault on Koenigsberg - April 6, 1945 - the Amber Room was seen for the last time. From this moment on, nothing is known about her fate; versions, assumptions and mysteries are multiplying, but so far to no avail.
The Germans resorted to a trick - they deliberately destroyed one of the trucks so that pieces of amber would remain on the road. Then everyone would think that the Amber Room no longer exists. Where the original sample went was never found out. The daughter of the Nazi art critic Rohde later recalled that in January 1945, the boxes with amber decoration were supposed to be transported by rail, but they were not loaded into the carriages and no one received the corresponding order from the Reichstag.
The German command understood perfectly well that the air, water and railway were completely controlled by the troops of the Red Army, so the art critic Rohde, already mentioned above, recommended in a letter to the leadership to hide the valuables in a bunker, which was done subsequently.
In 1945, Rohde was arrested by Soviet troops and during interrogation spoke about the existence of a certain system of underground cities of the Third Reich, where treasures taken by the Nazis were allegedly stored. He also mentioned the Amber Room. However, something strange happened next - the interrogation protocol disappeared without a trace, and Rode himself and his wife died under unclear circumstances. The bunker he was talking about was never opened.
Location versions
The search for the original Amber Room has not stopped since the end of the war. Until now, they are carried out both by single treasure hunters and by entire expeditions. And if it is ever found, it will be a great event not only for Russia, but for the entire world community. Today, among the main assumptions about what happened to the magnificent creation of human hands, the following can be distinguished:
- the room was completely destroyed in a fire that occurred in 1945 in the Königsberg castle, where it was exhibited in one of the halls after being transported from Tsarskoye Selo;
- room - in East Germany, in one of the many dungeons of the Third Reich;
- some of the amber panels were exported to the USSR and then came to the states under the Lend-Lease program;
- the room should be looked for on the Jutland Peninsula, between the North and Baltic seas;
- the masterpiece is still kept in the cellars under the ruins of the Königsberg castle;
- the room was distributed in parts to private collections in North America;
- the creation must be sought in Argentina or Brazil, where today the descendants of fascists who escaped criminal prosecution live;
- The room is placed in one of the grottoes in the vicinity of Dresden.
Each of these versions has the right to life, but only one of them has more or less plausible confirmation - that the room ended up in private collections in the USA. This is evidenced by authentic elements of its decor, found in the period from 1994 to 1997. All other versions have not been confirmed and are still only assumptions.
Curse of the Amber Room
The Amber Room is not only a work of art, but also a very mystical object. It is clear that the matter of her mysterious disappearance was not without mysticism. So, there is a legend that everyone who has ever tried to find her or shed at least a little light on where she is died under strange circumstances. Perhaps its roots lie in the mysterious death of the art critic Rode, who at first claimed memory loss and put forward directly opposite versions of the location of the Amber Room, and was once found dead in his apartment. The official version of death was suicide, but now no one will ever say whether Rode was really losing his memory or was deliberately trying to confuse the search.
The search for the Amber Room has another victim - Soviet Major Ivan Kuritsa, who died mysteriously in Konigsberg while trying to investigate the circumstances of the mysterious disappearance. He was on his way to meet a man who was supposed to tell him where the subject of the search was, but someone pulled a wire on the road, and the major’s head was cut off. Later they started talking about the death of the agent with whom the meeting was scheduled.
The German Georg Stein has been searching for the lost property for more than two decades. From time to time he received letters with threats and urgent requests not to get involved in this matter and to stop searching. In the late 80s, he came into possession of sensational information on this issue, which he wanted to make public at a press conference specially assembled for this purpose. Shortly before this, he told his friend that looking for the Amber Room in Europe was a waste of time, since it had long been in the United States. However, the conference was not destined to take place - Stein, like many of those who came too close to the solution, died. The official version is that he committed suicide by stabbing himself. Of course, few people believed this.
In 1992, the media reported the death of Russian serviceman Yuri Gusev. It was said that he died in a car accident. The mysticism is that literally a couple of days before his death, in a conversation with journalists, he mentioned that he knew where the Amber Room was located. , but he won’t say this, because he fears for his life.
Nobody knows who is behind the deaths of all these people. But it is absolutely clear that these are not accidents and those who died one way or another had information that could shed light on one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th century and the Second World War.
Restoration of the Amber Room
In the 70s of the 20th century, the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR decided to restore the lost masterpiece. The work took two decades from 1983 to 2003 and cost incredible money: 11.35 million dollars, of which 3.5 million were donated by the German company Ruhrgas AG, and the efforts of the best master restorers. The restoration of the Amber Room took 6 tons of amber.
The grand opening of the Amber Room took place on the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg on May 31, 2003. It was created anew from a few photos and images.
Today, as before, the Amber Room is located in the city of Pushkin, in the Catherine Palace. Those few who visited the first Amber Room and lived to see its opening in a restored form noted that it was much more luxurious and beautiful than the lost one. Unfortunately, there is now no way to judge whether this is true or not, so we can only take our word for it.
