The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [43]
Alfred Rohde
It was only when the professor began to interrogate others who had worked in the castle and to study Rohde's demeanour that his view changed. 'Rohde looks like a very old man with a shaking right hand. His clothes are very shabby,' the professor wrote. 'But he is actually very experienced. An art critic. He has several scientific works published.' It is not clear how Brusov pieced the truth together but he eventually discovered that Dr Alfred Rohde was director of the Nazis' Konigsberg Castle Museum.
When Brusov confronted him, Rohde barely reacted. 'Perhaps he is an alcoholic. Doesn't look like a man I can trust. I think he knows more than he tells us and when he talks he often lies,' the professor scribbled in his diary. 'When you look at him when he's not looking at you, his hand stops shaking. He always tells us that the best collections were evacuated but when we ask where to he says he doesn't know.' Professor Brusov had heard rumours of art works being stored at a castle in a nearby Prussian town and put them to Rohde. I suggested that they [the Germans] had sent things to Rautenburg and Rohde exclaimed: "Oh, have you found them?'" The old man was broken, infuriating and also probably concealing something.
As they laboriously cleared masonry from the Albrecht Gate, Brusov became suspicious. 'Digging started for the Amber Room before I arrived,' the professor confided to his diary. 'They started in the south wing of the castle. I noticed the small hall was already excavated.' He was further concerned to discover that the Nazi Gift Book identifying the arrival of the Amber Room had been found by Colonel Ivanyenko on 25 April, almost three weeks before the news reached Moscow. During this significant interval unofficial investigations to find the Amber Room could have been conducted. But by whom?
No time to think. They dug on. Since there was little left of the south wing, the Brusov team began knocking their way through the Queen Louisa Tower to reach the blocked-off north wing and the Knights' Hall. Pre-war photographs show a large vaulted chamber with a sweeping ribbed roof beneath which the Teutonic Knights conducted their ceremonies, watched over by the sombre portraits of their forefathers.
On the morning of 5 June, Brusov broke through into the Knights' Hall and, stumbling over blocks of stone and wooden beams, he and his team found there had been an inferno. The carved thirteenth-century columns were charred, the ancient banners incinerated, the glass was blown and distorted, the flagstone floor cracked by falling masonry. They crawled through the ash on their hands and knees. In one corner Brusov found some chair springs and old German iron locks. In another, recognizable Russian mouldings and frames. That night Brusov returned to his quarters and wrote: 'Found bronze hangings from the Tsarskoye Selo doors... Cornice pieces that could have been in the Amber Room... Iron strips with bolts with the help of which parts of the Amber Room were boxed into crates... We should give up looking for the Amber Room.'
It was a devastating conclusion. Three days into his mission and Brusov had gathered evidence that strongly suggested that the Amber Room had been stored in the Knights' Hall, where it had been destroyed by a devastating fire. Yet we already know that the search for the Amber Room would continue until the present day. This could not possibly be the end of the story.
No one dared return to Moscow or the powerful SovNarKom empty-handed. No one - least of all Stalin - was in the mood for bad news. These were euphoric times with Soviet radio broadcasting on 5 June the sound of celebrations in Red Square as Stalin awarded the Order of Victory to Montgomery and Eisenhower.13
Brusov returned to the ruins of the castle, surely determined to find more evidence before reporting his terrible finding that the Amber Room had been incinerated. He would have to try to find something else to mitigate the bad news, something of high value with which to sweeten his