The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [182]
The story that the Nazis had concealed the Amber Room was given the backing of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, the highest administrative organ of the Soviet Union. Who would be foolish enough to contradict it? The agony of the Soviet people was now enshrined in the missing Amber Room and it was enduring.
The world should remember Stalingrad, the 900 Days, the obliteration of so many Soviet cities, towns and villages, and the sacrifices made by the Red Army during the Second World War. But history is untidy, and as well as being the victim of unbridled German aggression, the Soviet state was a manipulative victor. Having seen their country burned, raped and robbed, Soviet soldiers became vengeful and careless.
There are only a handful of tangible truths in the saga of the Amber Room and they are enshrined in twenty-eight small pieces that fell off the walls, long before the Second World War. Today these broken amber nuggets are locked away in the Catherine Palace stores, having been glued on to a cardboard mount. They are all that is left of a Russian dream.
Last surviving pieces of the Amber Room
Notes
EPIGRAPH
1. Konstantin Akinsha and Gregory Koslov, Stolen Treasure, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1995, p. 233.
INTRODUCTION
1. Susanne Massie has researched an account of the evacuations of the Leningrad palaces. See Susanne Massie, Pavlovsk, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1990.
2. See Theophile Gautier, Voyage en Russie, Paris, 1866.
3. The Catherine Palace had some of its rooms transformed into a museum as early as 1918.
4. Hans Hundsdorfer, who served with the 6th Panzer Division, quoted in Paul Enke, Bernsteinzimmer Report, Die Wirtschaft, East Berlin, 1986, pp. 15-16.
5. See footnotes in Chapter 2 for a list of files to access in the National Archives, Kew, Surrey.
CHAPTER 1
1. Vera Lemus, Pushkin Palaces and Parks, Aurora Art Publishers, Leningrad, 1984.
2. Ibid.
3. Alexei Tolstoy began his The Road to Calvary trilogy in 1922 and an English translation appeared in 1946, published by Alfred Knopf, New York.
4. We later found a report critical of the 1936 evacuation plan written by Communist Party Secretary Stanislav Tronchinsky: see Kuchumov archive, Central State Archive of Literature and Art - Tsentralny Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Literatury i Iskusstva (TGALI) 468, Opus 1, File 108.
5. Anna Podorozhnik Akhmatova, Plantain, Petropolis, Petrograd, 1921. Nikolai Gumilev, Akhmatova's husband, was arrested and shot that year.
6. Geraldine Norman, The Hermitage, Jonathan Cape, London, 1997.
7. Ibid, for the best version of the culling of museum staff.
8. We found an original version of this document in the Kuchumov archive, TGALI 468, Opus 1, File 108.
9. We later found a version of this report written by Communist Party Secretary Stanislav Tronchinsky: see Kuchumov archive, TGALI 468, Opus 1, File 108.
10. Not much is known about Schliiter's family or his early years, but the best account is carried in Heinz Ladendorf, Der Bildhauer und Baumeister Andreas Schliiter, Deutscher Verein fiir Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, 1935.
11. Ibid.
12. Winfried and Use Baer, Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, Fondation Paribas, Paris, 1995. Letter written on 12 November 1701.
13. J. M. de Navarro, 'Prehistoric Routes Between Northern Europe and Italy Defined by the Amber Trade', Geographical Journal, Vol. LXVI, No. 6, London, December 1925.
14. A. M. Kuchumov and M. G. Voronov, The Amber Room, Khudozhnik RSFSR, Leningrad, 1989.
15. Arnolds Spekke, The Ancient Amber Routes and the Geographical Discovery of the Baltic, M. Goppers, Stockholm, 1957.
16. Helen Fraquet, Amber, Butterworth, London, 1987.
17. Baer, Charlottenburg Palace.
18. Fraquet, Amber. Also see George and Roberta Poinar, The Quest for Life in the Amber, Addison & Wesley Publishing, New York, 1994.
19. Kuchumov and Voronov, The Amber Room.
20. Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz, OUP, New York, 1986, pp. 26-7.
21. Heinz Ladendorf, Der Bildhauer und Baumeister