The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [88]
Strauss had proved that in November 1944 two senior figures in the cultural apparatus of the Third Reich, acting on the orders of two Nazi Gauleiters, had begun to discuss the evacuation of the Amber Room in the certain knowledge that Konigsberg was no longer safe.
According to Arthur Grafe, storage depots in Saxony were in short supply and there were just six locations that Friesen could view: castles Sachsenburg, Kriebstein, Wechselburg, Albrechtsburg, Augustusburg and Grossgrabe Manor. On 24 November, Mutschmann approved the use of these six castles as stores for East Prussian art and Friesen returned to Konigsberg.
On 1 December 1944 Arthur Grafe was advised to expect a second official from East Prussia who would oversee the transfer of treasures from that region. Strauss found a telegram from Konigsberg to Grafe naming him as Dr Alfred Rohde. Strauss's research in Germany dovetailed with the documents found by Brusov in the bonfire set by Rohde in Konigsberg Castle in June 1945: a report of Rohde's trip to Saxony and his travel permits.
However, by the time Rohde arrived in Dresden on 4 December 1944, Sachsenburg Castle, west of Chemnitz, was being used as a test centre for biological weapons. Albrechtsburg, near Meissen, had been filled with the Dresden Gallery collection, including Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Hitler's shadow, had requisitioned Augustusburg, also near Chemnitz, as a storage facility for the Reich Chancellery and it now contained personal items belonging to Hitler, including portraits of him, several grand pianos and Otto von Bismarck's furniture. Grossgrabe Manor, near Kamenz, was full of museum treasures from Dresden. This left Alfred Rohde with only two choices: the castles of Wechselburg and Kriebstein.
We know from Rohde's report on his Saxony mission, analysed by Kuchumov in 1946, that on 4 December 1944 Rohde and Grafe drove fifty miles west of Dresden into the heart of the Zwickauer Mulde valley. Before the war this sleepy region had been popular with German tourists, who were captivated by its turreted castles and craggy forts. Now it served to remind the Nazi High Command of the indomitable nature of the Allies. Here was Camp Colditz, a maximum-security holding centre for Allied officers, from which 130 POWs had managed to escape to date, scaling the seven-foot-high walls and abseiling down the 250-foot crag.
In a later interview, Grafe recalled that it was snowing when they arrived at Wechselburg, a Baroque castle built next to an 800-year-old basilica, twelve miles south of Colditz.8 Monks were preparing the church for Christmas and Grafe and Rohde were shown around by one of them.
Rohde asked permission to use 'unoccupied rooms in the palace's church and [in the palace itself], the large hall on the first level, as well as about five or six other rooms'. Even though this would displace hundreds of refugee families, Grafe ordered the district capital of Rochlitz to requisition the space 'in favour of the municipal art collections of Konigsberg'. Strauss wrote in his dossier for Paul Wandel that Rohde and Grafe left Wechselburg as dusk fell and travelled to Kriebstein, a Gothic fortress twelve miles to the east. In December 1944 this journey would probably have taken more than an hour. Tensions were high and Rohde and Grafe would have been overtaken by dozens of military convoys heading towards the Eastern front. Small huddles of German soldiers manned checkpoints along the road. One can imagine the scene, their car flagged down in the snow, shivering sentries waiting impatiently at the driver's window to inspect papers by torchlight.
Rohde and Grafe arrived at Kriebstein around 8 p.m. The 600-year-old castle, perched upon an icy spur above the River Zschopau, must have been an impressive