The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [17]
Reading these notes, compiled in 1942, it is clear that Kuchumov was attempting to understand the mechanics used by Wolfram in constructing his amber panels. Kuchumov's references identified a cluster of files that recorded how, in 1716, Tsar Peter I set off for France via Germany, where he held an unscheduled meeting with Frederick William I, during which they discussed the Amber Room. Tsar Peter's court diary stated: 'In Habelberg their majesties saw each other and were together from 13 to 17 November, where they assured each other of their friendship and had some discussions for the use of both majesties.'24 Etiquette dictated an exchange of gifts and yet both monarchs were unprepared. Thrifty King Frederick William's first consideration was cost, a fact confirmed by a Russian spy working in his court:
The King has assigned 6,000 talers for the meeting. But the financial ministry has been told that they should use this money so that the King can satisfy the expenditure of travelling from Wesel to Memel [today Klaipeda in Lithuania]. He ordered that the Tsar should be especially well looked after in Berlin but stated that he would not give a pfennig more for this occasion. 'You must tell all the world around I have paid 30-40,000 talers for meeting Peter the Great,' he added.25
King Frederick William decided to present the tsar with two of his father's lavish commissions that were of no interest to him. One was a once-famous yacht Liburnika, and the Russian court diary showed that the tsar was delighted with it, unaware that it was in such a parlous state that his crew would nearly drown when sailing it from Hamburg. The Liburnika eventually limped into Copenhagen, where it was repaired, only to be refitted for a second time when it at last arrived in St Petersburg in 1718. (According to the court records, it was renamed the Corona and did not leave the Neva embankment until it was towed to the naval junkyard in 1741.26 )
The second money-saving idea was the Amber Room. King Frederick William had been told of Tsar Peter's love for amber. In 1696, one year after Peter I had come to the Russian throne, the twenty-four-year-old had embarked on a secret tour of Europe. Assuming the alias of 'Sergeant Petr Mikhailov', he had travelled the Swedish Baltic, Poland and Prussia. In Konigsberg, in East Prussia, 'Sergeant Petr Mikhailov' had been mesmerized by amber, assailed by the city's quacks, who touted it as a cure for everything from rheumatism, lung disease and toothache, to throat infections and the evil eye. 'Sergeant Petr Mikhailov' had even bought a copy of P. J. Hartmann's Succini Prussia, the authoritative amber treatise of the day.
Anatoly Kuchumov also rooted out an article written in 1877 by the head of the Moscow Archive of Foreign Affairs that confirmed how the unfinished amber chamber was dispatched to Peter the Great in 1716. A team of amber masters were hired by King Frederick William I to pack Wolfram's puzzle into eighteen crates that were each covered with flannel.27 They were then wrapped in straw and waxed waterproof cotton before being loaded on to eight carts that were to be maintained by an engineer and guarded by a watchman. The Russians appointed Count Alexander Golovkin, a close friend of the tsar, to oversee the operation.
The amber cargo set off for St Petersburg via Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia. Such was the poor condition of the road that the carts had to be rebuilt. Leather was stitched around the crates as rain had destroyed the waxed cotton. The amber caravan's next destination was Memel. It arrived six weeks later, the convoy having travelled at a snail's pace to ensure that no further damage was caused by potholes. When