The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [134]
The letter revealed how Mielke had used his scheduled September 1982 trip to Moscow to resuscitate 'Operation Puschkin'. Although the Stasi must still have been smarting from seeing George Stein reach Moscow before them, Mielke put the episode behind him and sought out Chebrikov, who was then KGB deputy chairman.
'Dear Comrade Tschebrikow!' Mielke wrote. 'During my visit in the autumn of 1982 I passed to you a progress report on the state of the search [for the Amber Room] in the GDR. As it made clear the search on the territory of the GDR has been and still is justified. I wish to assure you that the GDR and her MfS will not rest or relax in their search for the whereabouts of the Amber Room and other treasures of world culture.'
Viktor Chebrikov, KGB chairman, with Erich Mielke (right), East Germany's Stasi chief, at Stasi headquarters, East Berlin, 1987
The minister wrote that he was certain that documents, witnesses and maps could still be found in East Germany to help unravel the mystery. But he was also at pains to assure the KGB that he did now recognize 'the possibility' that the Amber Room could have remained in the former Konigsberg 'or its nearer or further vicinity'.48 Mielke was distancing himself from the German theory, banked on by the Stasi for so many years, most likely in recognition of the damage caused by the 'Rudi Ringel' episode.
In February 1983 the Stasi received a response to Mielke's Amber Room progress report, but it did not come from the KGB. Oberst Seufert reported that Professor Vladimir Andreievich Bojarsky, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, had made contact and 'stated that he was running a commission for research into the natural resources of the earth and... that his academy had recently been commissioned to carry out a further search after the Amber Room'. Seufert concluded: 'Bojarsky stated his conviction that it would be helpful to arrange a working consultation to be held in Moscow with Paul Enke.'49
That was it. No round of toasts at the Lubyanka, KGB headquarters. No dinner at the Kremlin. There was no way to disguise the poverty of relations. But the Stasi needed to grab any line it could get into the Soviet Amber Room inquiry and ordered Enke to reply.
However, even this lowly offer of a scientific exchange failed to materialize. More than a year later, Seufert wrote that Enke was still waiting for his invitation. All that had been received from Professor Bojarsky (and therefore from the USSR) over the past twelve months was 'noncommittal cards with good wishes on the occasion of certain [public] holidays, without any obligation'.50
But still the Stasi would not give up. Preserved in Generalmajor Neiber's files in the Ministry of Truth is a series of letters that reveal that while the deputy minister was 'rejected' by Moscow, Paul Enke (now retired on medical grounds) kept relations between the GDR and the USSR going by establishing a back-channel with Julian Semyonov. Most of their discussions concerned the ongoing work of George Stein.
April [day blacked out] 1984. My dear Julian, There have been no sensational developments about the Amber Room but I am sure you have seen the article published by Stein in the periodical Die Zeit. It contained a lot of nonsense. Stein seems to be becoming dangerous, due to his unrealistic trains of thought with the resulting self-deception, to which he seems to fall prey. If he continues as he proceeds at the moment he will certainly become a case for treatment.51
A search through Die Zeit's archive shows that in 1984 George Stein had revived his discredited Volpriehausen theory (that the Amber Room had been evacuated to a pit near the West German city of Gottingen).