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Enke applied himself to the Erzgebirge region, a dense and uneven strip of pine forest hugging the mountainous border between Saxony and Czechoslovakia. Erzgebirge means 'Mountain of Ore' and the region had been heavily excavated for zinc, silver and lead since the twelfth century. Enke visited a 'mountain archive' at Freiberg, a small town on the northeastern tip of the Erzgebirge, a document centre mapping the region's disused mines. He reported to Seufert: 'It is imperative that the search must be precisely targeted because the stock of files extends to several thousands of metres of shelving, as well as around 76,000 individual mine and shaft sketch plans.'

Enke learned from local residents that on 11 May 1945 the bodies of Hitler's brother-in-law, as well as four members on the staff of the Gauleiter of Saxony, Martin Mutschmann, had been found in the Erzgebirge. He recalled the correspondence from 1944 in which Koch debated with Mutschmann about the best places to conceal the Amber Room. Mutschmann himself had been arrested in this area in May 1945, found by the Red Army in the hamlet of Tellerhauser and allegedly taken back to the Soviet Union. Enke speculated that Mutschmann had fled to what he thought was the safest part of his state. This would be the area where the Stasi would dig for the Amber Room. All that Enke needed was the Secretariat's approval.

In an attempt to focus his inquiries, Enke began to work on identifying the Nazi officer who had transported Koch's treasures in through Weimar. Enke reported to Seufert that, using a combination of archival resources and eyewitnesses, he arrived at the name Albert Popp, an NFSK Brigadefuhrer in Gruppe-7 (Saxony) and, more importantly, Gauleiter Mutschmann's nephew.

Enke reported that Popp had acted for the Nazi High Command already, evacuating Angela, Hitler's half-sister, from Dresden to Berchtesgaden in March 1945. To demonstrate further the proximity of Popp to the Nazi High Command, Enke advised Seufert that, while Popp fled to the West after the war, his wife remained in the GDR and adopted the children of missing Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann.18

Enke tested the name Albert Popp on the old art dealer, the only surviving eyewitness to the arrival of Koch's crates at Weimar museum in February 1945. Enke reported: 'The dealer said, that if he could hear or read the name, he would probably remember it. So, we wrote down two dozen names, some of them fairly similar, with the name of Albert Popp in thirteenth place. The old man read through the names... and then he said: "Yes, the driver was called Popp."'19

Enke also tried out his theory on a Soviet source. Our Friend the Professor has found two letters from him to Anatoly Kuchumov in the St Petersburg archive, written while Enke was conducting his Saxony research. We never knew that the two men had ever corresponded. The first letter, dated 24 July 1976, began with 'heartfelt greetings to my battle comrade'. Enke wrote:

And now to a... problem... You told me about the last statement of Erich Koch regarding possible connections between the Amber Room and his private collection. Do you think it likely that maybe Erich Koch thought to hide them together? This idea corresponds exactly with a version of the story that I have been researching... as I told you in April in Pushkin and Pavlovsk.20

So Enke and Kuchumov had met, in Leningrad in April 1976, and discussed the possibility that Erich Koch had evacuated the Amber Room along with his own art collection from East Prussia. Until now we had thought that the Stasi and Soviet investigations had gone their separate ways and that Enke had never left the GDR.

Enke continued:

I have found a list of Koch's vast stolen collection and on that list is a great amount of silver candelabras. I recalled the description of the Amber Room in Pushkin and above all remembered the light emitted by the large number of candles that were reflected by the huge mirrors. According to my calculations, from photographs, there