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By Root 1849 0

and Geissler, the SS man had registered with the Crimmitschau police on 6 February 1945. His wife claimed he then disappeared for ten days and did the same in March and April 1945. In February 1946, the 'Ringel' family moved again, to Schlema (a suburb on the edge of the Erzgebirge). In nearby Greiz hospital, Enke located the death certificate for the SS Sturmbannfiihrer, 'dated 14 October 1947 (lung disease)'. It was in the cellar of the family's Schlema house that 'Rudi Ringel' claimed to have found the map pouch in July 1949 as his family prepared to move again to Elsterberg, west of the Erzgebirge, a place that Enke discovered had been Albert Popp's hometown. Popp and the 'Ringel' family's proximity to the Erzgebirge was tantalizing for Enke (although it seems to prove little to us).21

We read on impatiently, as Enke reported to Seufert:

There had been many voices that claimed 'Rudi Ringel' is a swindler, a fantasist and for these reasons he does not have to be taken seriously. Initially we too had some doubts, but we wanted certainty and therefore we dealt thoroughly with 'Rudi Ringel's' past... We do not consider the radio message ["Action Amber Room concluded. Storage in BSCH. Accesses blown up. Casualties through enemy action."] to have been a mistake or a forgery, but we only query the opinion mentioned by several investigators that the message had been sent from Konigsberg.22

Enke was so certain of his breakthrough that a few months after writing to Kuchumov he factored the Koch-Weimar-Popp-Ringel theory into a plan for a book that he gave the provisional title 'Traces of the Amber Room: A Historical Criminological Investigation'. This was the start of what would eventually become Bernsteinzimmer Report. Chapter 6 promised 'New Tracks That Point to Western Saxony'.23

We flick ahead through the file, looking for a report on the outcome of the 1976 digs in the western Erzgebirge and instead find something baffling. Two years later, Paul Enke had been taken off the Amber Room investigation altogether. Now based at home, he composed this letter to Generaloberst Bruno Beater, Deputy Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke's right-hand man, first among several deputies.

Enke wrote: '30 January E978, E18 Berlin-Griinau, Dear Comrade Beater! I am in need of your good advice and practical assistance and I am asking for the possibility of a personal consultation. My request is for information about the BZW [Amber Room file]... With the best will in the world I cannot accept the recommendation to give up the search.'24

One minute he was digging in the Erzgebirge. Now he was begging for access to the Amber Room files that surely he had compiled. We read on, trying to understand what had happened to Paul Enke. What had gone wrong?

Enke continued:

The result of ten years' research is now to hand in the form of an art-historical-criminological study... in which I am furnishing proof that the Amber Room was brought on 9 February 1945 to Thuringia and was then conveyed in the beginning of April 1945 to Saxony. I am contradicting all other versions (East Prussia, Konigsberg, the Baltic, Bavaria, Lower Saxony)... Dear Comrade Beater, please do find a possibility for me and ascertain how I could report directly to you... I remain, with the best regards of an old Fighter [sic], yours Paul Enke.

The situation must have been critical for Enke to go over the heads of his immediate superiors and make contact with Beater, one of the most powerful men in the GDR; with the Stasi from the start, a member of the notorious kidnapping gangs sent out by Mielke in the 19 50s to bring back defectors.

Six days later, Enke wrote again:

5 February 1978, 118 Berlin-Griinau, Dear Comrade Beater! Initially please accept my most sincere wishes for the rudest of rude health and I hope that you will continue to be successful at your work! The enclosed work might perhaps be suitable to clarify somewhat the extent of the problem BZ [Amber Room]... The difference between my manuscripts and all other publications consists