The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [2]
Valera Katsuba explained the subtext to our ongoing correspondence with the St Petersburg authorities, while Yura danced and baked fish. Catherine Phillips, a great Russian scholar, was always at the end of a phone with suggestions (and could sing all the male roles in Eugene Onegin). Dr Ivan Sautov, director of the Catherine Palace, prevented us using his archive but his refusal led to our finding a wealth of new material elsewhere. Stuart M. Gibson was endlessly optimistic and lent us his name on several occasions.
Avenir Ovsianov in Kaliningrad has spent three decades looking for lost treasure and has found many things, although not the Amber Room. He shared many of his files and memories with us. We have not met, but Konstantin Akinsha and Gregory Koslov are informative on the history of the trophy brigades, having opened up the subject. Susanne Massie, likewise, was a pioneer, as one of the first American writers to work inside the Soviet Union. She produced a poignant account of the life of the Leningrad palaces.
In Germany, Professor Wolfgang Eichwede invited us for coffee that became a dinner and eventually ended in breakfast. A great diplomat with a profound love for his field, Eichwede was a sound guide to Russian-German negotiations. Giinter Wermusch was always good company and even though we will never agree with each other it will always be a pleasure to listen to his well-argued theories. A friend in the German Foreign Office probably shouldn't be named but was an adviser and sporadic translator. Gerhard Ehlert works harder than anyone we know and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Stasi.
Rainer Schubert tells his story with passion and provided us with a vivid insight into prison life in the GDR. Friends on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung provided background on the Stasi and party archives. Klaus Goldmann explained the backdrop to the 'Trojan Gold' debacle. Maurice Philip Remy in Munich was great company and has broken much new ground on many projects (including the Amber Room) that remain sensitive areas for most Germans. George Laue in Munich has written some interesting catalogues about amber. Helmut Seling in Munich was the first German to be allowed into the Kremlin's secret stores after the war. Tete Bottger tried very hard to offend but his heart was just not in it. Robert Stein agreed to meet us and then wished he hadn't, but we wish him luck. Baron Eduard von Falz-Fein was wonderful company and exactly what he appears to be, which is a rarity in any age. Stephan Strauss was extremely generous in agreeing to meet, although we may never agree about the role played by his father, Gerhard Strauss.
In Britain we owe thanks to Freddy and Kitty Liebreich. Freddy translated hundreds of pages of Stasi-talk and then translated hundreds more and came out of it no madder than when he began. Kitty tracked down maps and donated them to our research. Pamela Scott-Clark steered us through the history of amber. Dorothy Levy was always prepared to listen. In particular we owe thanks to our publisher, Toby Mundy at Atlantic Books, who believed in the project from the start. His skilful, blunt and energetic readings of all of the drafts of our manuscript have shaped it beyond recognition. Clara Farmer at Atlantic has also helped greatly. In the US, George Gibson, publisher at Walker & Company, has been a calming influence on the project and provided a depth of ideas that has added greatly to the finished manuscript.
Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy,
Chiang Mai, Thailand,
January 2004
Note on Transliteration.
Russian names are spelled in this book according to the standard Library of Congess system of transliteration, but common English spellings of well-known Russian names and placenames (for example, Tolstoy, Tsarskoye Selo) have been retained. To aid pronunciation, some