The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [18]
When Kuchumov studied a file called 'Letters of the Russian Tsars', which was compiled in 1861 and lodged in the Hermitage library, he found several from Tsar Peter I to his wife. 'Dear Catherine, friend of my heart, hello to you,' Peter wrote from Habelberg on 17 November 1716. 'Concerning my visit: I want to tell you that it was useful. We will leave from here today and with God's help we will see you soon.' There was a postscript: 'The King gave me a rather big present in Potsdam, a yacht which is well decorated and the Amber Room, which I have dreamed of for a long time.'28
The tsar had nothing to give in return so he presented the Prussian kitchen with thirty-six ducats and gave a sable to the King's commandant. Later, a letter sent to the Prussian King from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, revealed that Peter eventually thought of an appropriate gift:
The man who will give you the document, valet Tolstoy, will have the honour to present Your Majesty [with] fifty-fivegiants, that is how many I could find in my land up till now. I also want to give Your Majesty a barge built in St Petersburg and a lathe. Without doubt Your Majesty will be glad to have these small presents. PS We also send Your Majesty a goblet made by ourselves.'29
Kuchumov found the Soldier King's reply, sent in October 1718. Thanking his 'kindest brother and friend', Frederick William I wrote: I want to say that I have got the giants and also a goblet made by your own hands and also the barge built in St P. and the lathe which Your Majesty gave me as a present. It was a wonderful gift to me.'30
It took a considerable time to locate and dispatch to Prussia enough 'giant' Russian soldiers to adequately reward the Prussians for the gift of the Amber Room. In June 1720 Count Golovkin, now the Russian ambassador at the Prussian court, wrote to his tsar: 'Captain Chernishov came here with ten giant soldiers and passed on your orders, after which these soldiers were given as a present to his Majesty of Prussia.'31 Then, in 1724, yet more giants were sent, twenty-four of them, including one named in the records as Captain Bandemir.
The crates containing the panels of the Amber Room were delivered to Peter's Summer Palace on the Neva in mid-r 717 and received there by Governor General Alexander Menshikov. From the historical references sought by Kuchumov it is clear that he was pursuing a particular line of thought: whether Peter's court achieved what the Prussians could not. Kuchumov was attempting to discover how the Amber Room fitted together, information he was desperate to acquire in the summer of 1941 so that he could dismantle it before the Wehrmacht arrived.
Kuchumov would have been disappointed when he read what Governor General Alexander Menshikov wrote in his diary on 2 July 1717: 'Had a dinner for two hours and after dinner stayed in the rooms for an hour to look through the amber boxes that had arrived from Prussia.'32 However, what the governor found appalled him. He records in his diary that pieces were broken. Many were missing. Others crumbled in his hands. Three days later he wrote to Peter, then in Paris, and put a brave face on the disaster.
I have looked through this Amber Room which was sent for Your Majesty by the King of Prussia and placed it in the same crates in the big hall where the guests gathered and almost all the panels were in good order. Some small pieces fell out but some of them could be repaired with glue and even if some of them could not be, you could insert new pieces. I can honestly say it's the most magnificent thing I have ever seen.33
Did any assembly instructions accompany the room? Kuchumov searched in the Central State Document Archive and found a section called the 'Cabinet of Peter the Great' and within it 'The inventory of the Amber Room presented by His Majesty of Prussia to His Majesty of Russia'. But the document, dated Berlin, 13 January 1717, contained no advice