75 years after burglary by Nazis, Amber Room still not found
Exactly 300 years ago – on Oct 14th 1716 – King Friedrich Wilhelm we of Prussia gave a Amber Room as a present to a Tsar of Russia, Peter a Great. 75 years ago – on a really same day – a world-famous cover was stolen by German troops, and taken behind to former Prussia.
The whole room was distant by a German army from a Catherine Palace nearby St Petersburg, before Leningrad, in 1941, from where it was returned to Germany and shortly after disappeared, never to be seen again.
The Amber Room, famous as a Bernsteinzimmer in German, was a cover built for a initial King of Prussia. Its construction began in 1701 according to a pattern of justice sculptor and designer Andreas Schlüter, whose many famous works also embody a equestrian statue of Friedrich Wilhelm we that now stands outward Charlottenburg Palace.
The cover is so called since a infancy of a panels were done from amber, a changed naturally occurring substance, that is shaped by a fossilisation of plant resin. Alongside a contentment of amber, a room was bordered with bullion leaf, and inlaid with many mirrors.
However, it is a abounding story that still fascinates many today, and compels value hunters, historians, and archivists comparison to continue a hunt for this singular art piece.
Initially dictated to be placed during Charlottenburg Palace, it was eventually commissioned in a Berlin City Palace, the building now being easy in a centre of a collateral city. Whilst on a state outing to Prussia from Russia in 1716, Tsar Peter a Great visited a newly finished room, and was pronounced to be fascinated by it.
After his trip, as a pitch of a dual states’ clever relationship, a Prussian ‘Soldier King’ means a room to a Tsar. The room was therefore messy and ecstatic to Russia, where it was reassembled and lengthened during a Catherine Palace usually south of St Petersburg, in complicated day Pushkin.
Over 200 years later, during a German advance of a Soviet Union and a barbarous encircle of Leningrad, a appreciated room was taken behind by a Nazi army. Theft of art and trinket had turn increasingly common as a Wehrmacht extended a fronts, though this was one of a many gross examples of a war.
Packed adult into crates, it was ecstatic behind to Königsberg, a former Prussian pier city, that is now called Kaliningrad in a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania. The room was reassembled during Königsberg Castle until a advancing Soviet Red Army began to nearby a city.
Königsberg Castle as seen from a eastern side, 1900. Photo: Unknown – Original picture / Wikimedia Commons
Once again, a room was disassembled, packaged into crates, and dark in a cellar. The city was heavily inebriated and a palace was roughly wholly razed to a ground. Since then, not one sighting has been reported.
A reproduction of a room was combined in a Catherine Palace in 2003, though a locale of a genuine Amber Room sojourn a loyal mystery.
Such a poser has captivated hundreds of researchers and value hunters over a years to try to find this dead wonder.
All sorts of opposite theories have been posited, though it seems that a room could possibly have been broken by a bombing, still be dark in Kaliningrad, or have been taken elsewhere in a final months of a war.
Heinz-Peter Haustein, a mayor or Deutschneudorf in a Ore plateau nearby a Czech border, is assured that a Amber Room is dark somewhere in a intricacy of aged mines there. Documentary justification was rescued in 1996 that high value products were ecstatic to a segment in a final years of a war. According to Deutsche Welle, his initial catastrophic review in 2008 has not deterred him, and excavations continue in a region.
Another treasure hunter, Sergei Trifonov, claimed he knew where a cover was located in 2010. Using an earth-penetrating radar, he rescued a brick-lined room usually 300 metres divided from a Königsberg Castle, that was demolished in 1967. His speculation is also nonetheless to be proved.
As recently as this May, Erich Stenz claimed that a distant cover is dark underneath Schloss Friedland, a palace now in a Czech Republic. Stenz’s justification hinges on a cook, who claimed to have seen SS trucks offload crates into a palace in 1945, according to Bild Online. The prepare died in 2013, and left no serve evidence.
Schloss Frýdlant in a Czech Republic (Friedland in German), where Stenz believes a Amber Room to be hidden. Photo: Rawac / Wikimedia Commons
These are not a usually efforts, and many amateurs are carrying out searches opposite Germany.
But one cause that competence put off impending hunters is a predestine suffered by many people related to a treasure. Dr. Alfred Rohde, who was in assign of a Amber Room in Königsberg in a 1940s, died of typhus along with his mother in 1945, allegedly a day before they were due to be interrogated by a Soviets.
General Yuri Gusev, who was emissary conduct of Russia’s unfamiliar comprehension unit, died in a automobile pile-up in 1992 while presumably perplexing to give information to a publisher about a changed room. Georg Stein, another Amber Room hunter from Germany, was found murdered in a Bavarian timberland in 1987.
Despite stability efforts, 75 years to a day after a disappearance from Russia, a universe is no closer to anticipating a genuine Amber Room.
By Alexander Johnstone
Article source: https://www.thelocal.de/20161013/still-no-trace-of-amber-room-on-its-double-anniversary-nazi-theft-treasure