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By Root 1841 0

Wolfram, master craftsman to the Danish court, was an expert in fashioning ornate miniatures from ivory and was captivated by Schliiter's audacious idea. The workshops in Copenhagen were capable of producing only thirty amber pieces a year and all of them were small icons or jewellery.15 To manufacture an entire chamber would require hundreds of thousands of slivers that would, somehow, have to be laced together like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. New thinking was required. Gottfried Wolfram arrived in Berlin in April 1701 with a reference from King Frederick IV of Denmark.16 He would need to work quickly. Eosander's influence was growing. Sophie Charlotte wrote to her mother about the young architect on 3 May 1702, describing him as 'the oracle as regards all... building affairs'.17

Wolfram painstakingly fashioned palm-sized leaves of amber, gently heating them to a temperature of between 140°C and 200°C, using a new technique developed by Christian Porschin of the Konigsberg Guild, who was experimenting with manufacturing amber sunglasses.18 Any hotter and the amber would catch light and burn. The moulded pieces, dipped into heated water infused with honey, linseed and cognac, to give a subtle tincture to the resin, were set to harden on cooling racks before being polished and slotted into place on a paper scheme. Wolfram joined the pieces with gum refined from the acacia tree, the finished panels resembling stained-glass windows. Backed by feather-thin gold or silver leaves and wooden boards, these amber walls (comprising a dozen large panels twelve feet high, ten panels just over three feet high and twenty-four sections of amber skirting board) would come alive in candlelight.19

Construction went well, but soon the inspiration behind it fell sick. Sophie Charlotte contracted pneumonia during a journey to Hanover for the carnival of January 1705. 'Don't grieve for me, for I am about to satisfy my curiosity about things that even Leibniz was never able to explain - space, the infinite, being and nothingness - and for my husband, the King, I am about to provide a funeral-spectacle that will give him a new opportunity to display his pomposity and splendour!' she wrote, before succumbing to her condition on 1 February, aged thirty-seven.20

In 1707 Schliiter's career also suddenly expired when another piece of ambitious engineering, a 325-foot tower he had designed for the Berlin Mint, collapsed. An investigation concluded that he had mistakenly built the tower on a sandbank. The sixty-three-year-old was exiled from court. He made his way to Russia, where he would assist in the building of the new St Petersburg - on a marsh.21 In Berlin, court favourite Eosander took over the amber chamber project and dismissed master carver Gottfried Wolfram, accusing him of overcharging and lingering unnecessarily. In his place Ernst Schacht and Gottfried Turau, carvers from Danzig (the latter a master trained at the ancient Danzig Guild), were hired.

When Wolfram demanded compensation and refused to hand over the amber pieces, Eosander broke into his workshop and seized the partially completed frames, panels and lozenges. Wolfram hired a lawyer and sued Eosander, who in turn had him jailed.

When Wolfram was finally released he was exiled. His last and most passionate appeal to King Frederick I coincided with the death of the monarch on 25 February 1713. Frederick William I, who succeeded his father, had no time for the budget-draining frivolities of the salon or the prohibitively expensive amber chamber. The Soldier King was more interested in creating a military super-state than a folly that came attached to an irritating legal battle. Eosander was sacked, as were amber masters Schacht and Turau, who had been unable to solve Wolfram's cryptic amber puzzle that still lay in pieces, consigned to the cellars of the Zeughaus.22

Anatoly Kuchumov, the Soviet guardian of the Amber Room, had worked hard to compile this piece of German history. His notes, shown to us by Kedrinsky, reveal that five scholars assisted him through 1940 and 194