The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [53]
Kuchumov underlined in red crayon this paragraph and the next, in which Rohde asked for an urgent message to be relayed to his superior, Dr Ernst Gall, Director of Administration for State Palaces and Gardens in Berlin. 'To Herr Dr Director: there is no damage to the Amber Room at all apart from to the sockel-platten." While the twenty-two large and medium-sized amber panels, the most important parts of the room, had survived the air raid intact, this letter confirmed that six of the twenty-four sections of sockel-platten or skirting board had been destroyed. The larger amber panels had obviously been kept separately, perhaps in the so-called Hofbunker, Kuchumov reasoned in his notes.
The second category of correspondence was letters that Rohde had dashed off immediately after the Allied air raids. Believing that the city was now a target, he tried to find new storage facilities in the East Prussian countryside. He must have sat with a map of provincial castles, Kuchumov speculated in his notes, calculating which ones were furthest from the front as well as the most bomb-resistant.
Rohde's first letter, written on 6 September 1944, was to Prince Alex Dohna-Schlobitten. Prince Alex's castle (Schlobitten is today Slobity, in Poland) was a Teutonic fortress fifty miles south-west of Konigsberg and at the time seemed far from advancing Red Army units. Rohde would have known that the prince was not only 'anti-Bolshevik' but a patriot and a veteran of Stalingrad, where he had served with the German 60th Mechanized Infantry Division. Rohde wrote, 'Art treasures and also the Amber Room should be moved to a less dangerous place, so I am asking you to give two to three rooms of your castle.' This letter confirmed that Rohde was looking to evacuate the Amber Room. Kuchumov underlined the passage in red and put a question mark against one word, 'moved'.
Prince Alex Dohna-Schlobitten
Rohde sent a second letter on 6 September 1944 to Countess von Schwerin, advising her that he had already dispatched a shipment of art works to Wildenhoff, her country house twenty-five miles south-west of Konigsberg. Kuchumov made a note. He needed to clarify what this shipment consisted of. There seemed to be a lot more possible hiding places emerging from the Rohde letters than Brusov had investigated in 1945-With the front advancing by the day and Konigsberg under threat of further raids, Rohde needed assistance quickly. But Prince Alex replied on 11 September: 'The cellar rooms are very wet so they can't be used for placing art treasures. One room that is more or less dry is not very big. I can give you this space but I am afraid that it will not do for the Amber Room.' The panels were unwieldy and required a sizeable hall to store them in. They had not gone to Schlobitten Castle.
Countess von Schwerin's reply was not in the bundle that Brusov gave to Kuchumov, but from a second letter Rohde wrote to her on 17 October 1944 he noted that the unnamed art shipment arrived safely at Wildenhoff and that the German curator planned to inspect it in the last week of October. Maybe the Amber Room had gone there.
But due to the fragmentary nature of the letters saved by Brusov from the fire, Kuchumov and Tronchinsky found Rohde's movements difficult to follow. What did this partial document, sent to 'Very Respectable Herr Lau' on 21 October, mean? I would be deeply grateful if you could give me notice if something changes in our plan and if the packed boxes have to be moved again. I have to tell my superiors. At the moment I don't know if I can go any further than Insterburg.' Kuchumov underlined the section in red. There was no address for Herr Lau and no other reference to him in the bundle. Kuchumov drew a circle around Insterburg, noting that it was fifty miles east of Konigsberg. He also knew that by January 1945, three months after Rohde had written to Herr Lau, the town fell