The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [4]
Our Friend the Professor Pseudonym of a Soviet academic who still lives and works in St Petersburg, without whose contacts we would never have found the Kuchumov archive or met many of the curator's contemporaries.
Avenir Ovsianov Former Red Army colonel who worked for the secret Soviet Kaliningrad Geological-Archaeological Expedition (KGA), which searched for the Amber Room during the 1970s. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union so many treasure hunters applied for permission to dig in Kaliningrad that the province formed the Kaliningrad Centre for Coordinating the Search for Cultural Relics. Ovsianov became its director.
Tsar Peter I Having become mesmerized by the Baltic amber trade while touring incognito in 1696, Peter the Great of Russia waited another twenty years before receiving the Amber Room as a gift. His craftsmen were unable to assemble it in St Petersburg.
(Rudi Ringely The code-name for a top-secret Stasi and KGB informer, 'Rudi Ringel' claimed that his father was an S S Sturmbannfiihrer and evacuated the Amber Room from Konigsberg Castle to a location known only by the call-sign BSCH, on the advice of Gauleiter Erich Koch.
Alfred Rohde Writer, curator, amber specialist and director of the Konigsberg Castle Museum. Rohde took charge of the Amber Room in the winter of 1941 and was responsible for it until it vanished in April 1945. Rohde vanished too, some months later, along with his wife.
Alfred Rosenberg Hitler's ideologue and the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, whose organization, the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, was involved in the transport of the Amber Room to Konigsberg. It was also accused of evacuating the room out of the city in 1945.
Professor Dr Ivan Sautov A major figure in the St Petersburg cultural establishment and director of the Catherine Palace. Sautov oversaw the rebuilding of the Amber Room and presided over its opening on 31 May 2003.
Andreas Schliiter Sculptor to the Prussian court. Schliiter came up with the idea of a room panelled with amber in 1701. He lost his job before the project could be completed in Berlin.
Julian Semyonov Soviet writer whose creation was a spy named Maxim Stirlitz, the Eastern bloc's 'James Bond', who could speak almost every European language 'with the exception of Irish and Albanian'.
Semyonov spent two decades searching for the Amber Room and denying that he had any connections with the KGB.
Hans Seufert Oberst in the Stasi, Seufert was a career agent who supervised Erich Mielke's Amber Room investigation, 'Operation Puschkin'. Seufert was also agent Paul Enke's senior officer.
George Stein Strawberry farmer from the village of Stelle outside Hamburg and Germany's most famous amateur treasure hunter. Of East Prussian descent, he spent a quarter of century hunting for the Amber Room, only to die bloodily, having apparently uncovered evidence that it had been secretly shipped to America.
Jelena Storozhenko Head of the secret Soviet investigation into the fate of the Amber Room in 1970s and 1980s. Storozhenko led a team that worked under the cover of the Kaliningrad Geological-Archaeological Expedition (KGA), sometimes codenamed 'the Choral Society'. Storozhenko retired in 1984, disaffected after her operation was shut down.
Professor Dr Gerhard Strauss Influential art historian and professor at Humboldt University in East Berlin. Strauss was closely connected to the Soviet and East German state investigations into the Amber Room.
Vladimir Telemakov Journalist for a car workers' daily in Leningrad, Telemakov spent decades researching a biography of Anatoly Kuchumov that has yet to find a publisher.
Stanislav Tronchinsky A Pole by birth, Tronchinsaky worked as a senior cultural bureaucrat in Leningrad and also held a high-ranking position within the Leningrad Communist Party. He assisted Anatoly Kuchumov in his