The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [100]
Enke traced the growth of ERR-Ost, Rosenberg's Eastern art-looting organization, as it spread its tentacles into every city and town. In Lithuania, ERR-Ost was operating out of the capital, Kaunus. In Latvia it was based in Riga. In Estonia it had offices at Tallinn and Tartu. It was based in the Belarus capital at Minsk and in the Ukraine, where the wealthy republic kept busy four offices at Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kherson. There were ERR-Ost operations in the Caucasus, the Crimea and in Russia proper, where units fanned out in an arc west of Moscow, 'at Pskov, Smolensk, Voroschilovgrad [sic] and Voronezh'. Rosenberg's staff were everywhere.
But it was all of academic interest until Enke found an ERR-Ost report about the Amber Room itself. On 28 April 1944 Dr Nerling at the ERR-Ost depot in Riga advised Rosenberg's ministry in Berlin about 'the works of art salvaged from the operational area Army Group North [in October 1941]'.17
Dr Nerling wrote: '[Captain Solms] sent five coaches with art treasures to Konigsberg... via stations Siverskaya, Luga, Pskov and Riga... Among the treasures sent were the Amber Room and various precious paintings and furniture...'18 If Alfred Rosenberg's ERR-Ost had supervised the removal of the Amber Room to Konigsberg in 194E, had it retained responsibility for transporting it again in 1945, as Konigsberg fell, Enke asked?
But our file is finished.
We return to Enke's personal papers. Judging by what we have just read, Enke clearly devoted all of his energies to his research, so it is surprising to read that he found time to marry (Gerda, 1950) and to have a daughter (Sonia, 1952). It is not known if he mourned the deaths of his estranged parents (Klara, 1958, and Paul, 1959).
In 1962, one year after the Berlin Wall was erected, at a time when a second reinforcing wall was being raised parallel to it, Enke faced a serious set-back that threatened to terminate his Amber Room hobby and his career. A reorganization within the Ministry of the Interior left him out of favour and his post as the deputy director of Department Administration Training was axed. On 17 September 1962, one month after GDR teenager Peter Fechter was shot, falling into the death-strip between the Berlin walls, where he was photographed bleeding to death in full view of the GDR border guard, Enke came up with a survival plan.
The next document reveals that he was spying on his colleagues and students at the Ministry of the Interior. Stasi Oberstleutnant Hut wrote that Enke informed on his co-workers 'without hesitation' and appeared to be objective. 'In this context, it should be mentioned that good contacts had always existed between Comrade Enke and the [Ministry for State Security]...'19 We had wondered how a lowly bureaucrat in the Ministry of the Interior was allowed unfettered access to what were obviously sensitive wartime documents. Now it is clear that he had done so by forging a relationship with the Stasi.
Oberstleutnant Hut continued: 'Towards the conclusion of [our discussions] Comrade Enke was asked whether he was prepared to cooperate with the Ministerium fiir Staatssicherheit [MfS] even more closely than before. He declared his agreement.' Enke was asked to submit a list of relatives who were to be investigated before he could be put on the Stasi pay roll. He signed a pledge not to reveal anything that had been discussed at the meeting. A pattern of behaviour was emerging, a man willing to sacrifice friends and family to ensure his betterment.
As security around the Berlin Wall was bolstered with minefields and trip-wires, Enke ascended through the ranks of betrayal, from casual work-a-day sneak to a dedicated informer. He was attached to Directorate XX, the Stasi department responsible for recruiting and maintaining informants: cameras mounted in tree trunks, concealed in traffic lights and car doors, microphones