The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [179]
On 17 March Valentina Matviyenko, Putin's plenipotentiary in St Petersburg, waded into the row by rounding on German newspapers that had described the theft of the Bremen collection by the Red Army in 1945 as immoral. 'Destroying Peterhof was immoral,' Matviyenko said. 'It was immoral to steal the Amber Room, besiege Leningrad, destroy thousands of Soviet cities and kill millions of Russians... We have every right to make terms on the returns for it is us who paid the highest price for the Great Patriotic War.' Matviyenko concluded by accusing German private collectors of continuing to secrete Russian masterpieces in attics and cellars.10
On 8 April 2003, the eve of a Russian presidential visit to Germany, Putin raised the issue too. When asked about the repayment of Russian debts, run up during GDR times, a subject that was to be discussed in Berlin, Putin replied: 'The debt problem is very painful for Russia and Germany as well, not only because it is often said that Russian culture and arts were seriously damaged during the Second World War. It is also because a part of the art works removed from Russia during the war are now in private collections.'11
On 8 May more than 400 decorated heroes of the Great Patriotic War were invited to examine the reconstructed Amber Room as part of the commemorations for Victory Day, which is still regarded by the majority of Russians as the most important event in the political calendar. We will not forget or forgive, the veterans told Russian reporters, recalling how the original room had been 'ripped from the Motherland' as the 'Hitlerite evil-doers' pulled the siege noose tight around Leningrad in the winter of 1941.12
And then 31 May finally arrived. Although the VIPs had officially come to St Petersburg to attend a Russian-EU summit (whose symbolic backdrop was the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the host city), the first major event on the itinerary was the unveiling of the new Amber Room.
Pravda online monitored the day's events.
15.30 hours. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder ascended the Monighetti staircase, an elaborate Italian marble flight draped with heavy crimson curtains. Above their heads was the recently restored plafond (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'the staircase was ruined during the war and most of its [ceiling] decorations were lost').
Damaged Monighetti staircase, Catherine Palace, 1945
Following them were first ladies Doris Schroder and Lyudmila Putina, and then Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan, Romano Prodi, Atal Bihari Vajapyee, Hu Jintao and thirty more heads of state and government from across the continents, the former Soviet Union and its allies.
Pravda reported: 'Russia's pride: leaders of foreign countries visit an exquisite monument of the Catherine Palace.'
Beside Brodzsky's marble Sleeping Cupid, the procession filed into the Formal White Dining Room and on through the gilded double-doors into the Crimson and Green Pilaster Dining Rooms (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'having been completely damaged during the war the rooms acquired a new life in 1980').
Shepherded past cabinets displaying broken cherubs, crystal teardrops and fragments of Sevres, past black-and-white photographs of Soviet craftsmen in overalls piecing back together the Leningrad palaces, the entourage entered the Portrait Hall (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'the furniture set was re-created in 1970 using samples that were saved by evacuation during the war').
Having walked down corridors lined with evidence of Nazi barbarism, the world leaders and first ladies were finally led across a floor inlaid with rare hard woods, rose and amarantus, into a curtained chamber of light for the climax of the tour.
15.35 hours. Pravda reported: 'Russia's fabled [Amber] Room dazzles again. Twenty years of work by Russian craftsmen has returned what was called the Eighth Wonder of the World to its place