The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [174]
Eichwede says: 'Having agreed to the deal, my government got cold feet and blew the arrangement out of the water, saying that Germany could not be seen to reward looting. A ridiculous point of view given that we had betrayed and ransacked the Soviet Union. But our politicians said: "What else do the Russians have? We want everything back and not just the Bremen pictures." I had to go to Moscow and tell them the deal was off.'
Weeks later, more of the missing Bremen Kunsthalle collection surfaced in Moscow, when another Red Army veteran came forward after reading about Viktor Baldin in the Russian papers. The veteran had 101 drawings that he said a friend had found in Karnzow Castle in 1945. He took them in a suitcase to the German Embassy. When the Soviets found out they issued an immediate export ban. Now two parts of the missing Bremen Kunsthalle collection were stranded: one in St Petersburg, the other in Moscow.1
What was the connection between the Bremen drawings and the Amber Room, we ask?
'Be patient,' Eichwede says, 'The negotiations were labyrinthine. Then another missing German treasure emerged in Russia. Gregory Koslov, a curator from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, a man who had helped to negotiate the handing over of the 101 Bremen drawings to the German Embassy, found a pile of documents in his museum that were about to be shredded. In these documents were references to German art works taken to Russia at the end of the war. There were pages of lists naming priceless exhibits we Germans all thought had been destroyed, including the so-called "Trojan Gold". What a discovery!'
The 'Trojan Gold', a hoard of ancient diadems, necklaces and earrings, a highlight of Berlin's pre-war art collections, had been among the things the Allies had accused the Soviets of stealing in 194 5. The Soviets had categorically denied any responsibility, but the documents that Koslov found proved that the gold had arrived in Moscow, had been secretly taken to the Pushkin Museum and was inventoried there on 28 June 1945.
Koslov went public with the story. The German government was furious. So was Irina Antonova, Koslov's boss and the director of the Pushkin Museum. She had begun her career by helping to compile the inventory for the gold, a secret she had kept for almost fifty years.
Antonova called Koslov to her office. He later recalled: I told her I wanted to tell the truth. She retorted, "There are different truths... there are foolish truths and wise truth and your truth is foolish. There is also justice... You are young and inexperienced. You didn't see Peterhof burn down, but I did..."'2 The Soviet deception over the 'Trojan Gold' was entirely excusable, nothing compared to the scale of the Nazi destruction in Leningrad, she argued.
Eichwede rolls his eyes. 'In October 1994 a German delegation arrived in Moscow to see the "Trojan Gold".3 When they left, Irina Antonova said that although the Russians would not give it back they would display it soon. But one year later, she wrote an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, headlined: "We Don't Owe Anybody Anything."'4 Now there were three German treasures revealed as stranded in Russia: 364 Bremen drawings in St Petersburg; 101 more in the German Embassy in Moscow; and the 'Trojan Gold' locked in the Pushkin Museum stores.
Eichwede says: I had to break the impasse. To bring the sides together. I organized a conference in 1994, "The Spoils of War", to get the Germans and the Soviets to talk. I suggested they make a unique kind of exchange that didn't involve giving anything back.'
We look perplexed. He signals us to be patient and says: 'Why not help re-create the Amber Room, I asked the Germans? Prussian King Frederick William I gave the original Amber Room to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great as a diplomatic gift. Why couldn't the Chancellor of the new