The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [76]
Gerhard Strauss
Our Friend the Professor writes that the literature archive has completed its audit of the Anatoly Kuchumov files and that she has obtained a reader's ticket on our behalf and found more material concerning our East German doctor.
Dr Gerhard Strauss. What did he know? Leningrad curator Anatoly Kuchumov was certain that Alfred Rohde, the Konigsberg Castle Museum director, lied in 1945 and the Amber Room had not burned in the Knights' Hall. But with Rohde dead, Soldier Kazakhov had found another source whom he called 'the Doctor', a man who claimed to have important information about the location of the Amber Room. We now know that 'the Doctor' was Dr Gerhard Strauss and that in December 1949 he was sent to Kaliningrad to meet Anatoly Kuchumov.
In our latest Russian package is an MGB briefing paper dated 8 August 1949 that explains how the Kaliningrad mission came about. It begins with a letter from Dr Gerhard Strauss in which he reveals a different version of events than that remembered by his son. Gerhard Strauss wrote that he invited Soviet agents to his home in Heinrich-Mann-Platz (a decision that he had obviously not shared with his wife, who believed he was being arrested, according to Stephan Strauss's recollections). Gerhard Strauss was ready to assist the new Soviet administration, offering 'information on your missing Amber Room'.5
The letter was addressed to Major Kunyn, a liaison officer for the MGB in the Department of Soviet Military Officials, Berlin-Lichtenberg. Strauss must have been sure of himself and of what he had to barter to have dared contact an organization feared by the majority of Germans. I figured out from my chief of department, Mr Volkmann, that you are searching for the Amber Room,' he wrote breezily. 'Since the war ended I have met many people who came from Konigsberg and they know only about the death of Dr Rohde and the destruction of the castle. But I know more.'
Strauss was exact and unburdened by guilt or modesty. His letter revealed that this was not the first time he had made contact and he expressed frustration that the Soviets had not reacted to three previous attempts to volunteer his services concerning the Amber Room.
One was made during his 'unfortunate' internment in May 1945, where I told everything'. His second statement was given in 1946 to a 'Major Poltavsev, Dept of Information, SV/V Germany'. Strauss approached the Russians a third time, in 1947, when he was questioned by Comrade Xenia Agarfornova, from the State Hermitage, the curator whom Kuchumov had met in Berlin in 1947 while cataloguing the looted Soviet art works stored in the Derutra warehouse.
I told everything to the art historian from Leningrad, Mrs Agarfornova,' Strauss complained to Major Kunyn. 'Since nobody followed it up and I had no possibility to get in touch with you by phone, I decided to write.'
There must have been a serious breakdown in communication between the Soviet authorities in Berlin, Moscow and Leningrad concerned with the recovery of looted art works. While SovNarKom had ordered a mission to recover the Amber Room just weeks after the German capitulation, it had taken Dr Gerhard Strauss four years and four attempts to get anyone's attention.
Maybe Comrade Agarfornova had not taken Strauss seriously enough to inform her Leningrad comrade Anatoly Kuchumov of his statement in 1947. Maybe Comrade Agarfornova had not known Kuchumov was looking for clues about the Amber Room in the Derutra warehouse. We will never know, but it was only through Strauss's determination to be heard that he and Kuchumov ever met.
In the file sent to us from Our Friend the Professor in St Petersburg,