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By Root 1914 0

he spent six months on political study leave at the Soviet Central Training School in Kursant. Here, according to Schmalfuss, Enke 'worked as a lathe operator, fitter, blacksmith and bricklayer'. We are becoming a little concerned. The Paul Enke we are reading about was not promising material for a high-velocity secret inquiry in pursuance of the Amber Room Major Schmalfuss did have something positive to say about Enke's days at the Soviet Central Training School, Kursant: 'He had his first contacts with anti-fascists, becoming a member of the Anti-Fascist Committee in Leningrad, and was employed as Brigade and Company Propagandist after short training courses. Comrade Enke's theoretical knowledge of Marxism-Leninism is good.'3

Enke may not have been bright, but he clearly was cunning. He understood that he would have to change to fit in with the new world that had sprung up around him. Major Schmalfuss wrote: 'Comrade Enke arrived at the realization that the ideological view of life that he held hitherto had been incorrect. This realization and the world view he is holding nowadays are separating him from his parental home but Comrade Enke places the political necessities in the foreground.' Enke had returned from the war a different man, willing to denounce his parents - and his religion. 'Against his parents' wishes [Enke] resigned from the Protestant Church,' wrote Major Schmalfuss. His file is beginning to illustrate a man edging towards the state apparatus.

But what would Enke do with the rest of his life? 'Joins GDR Volkspolizei (25 January 1950), Magdeburg.' This must have been when the first photograph of Enke was taken, in his uniform. Oberrat Bahr, the Volkspolizei school director, wrote a glowing report on 23 October 1950: 'Comrade Enke's class-consciousness is well developed. Through his continuous self-studies he will eventually succeed in becoming a good propagandist... Nothing disadvantageous or detrimental is known about his social life.'4 By 1952 Enke had been promoted to the rank of Oberrat (senior councillor) and a superior wrote: 'Enke possesses a healthy ambition and makes efforts to fulfil his tasks, sacrificing his free time... Enke's fighting spirit becomes apparent during discussions about deeper problems.'5 We can almost feel Enke maturing, greedy for success and knowledge.

Five years later, on i April 1957, he was seconded to the Ministry of the Interior at Potsdam, employed to 'deal with the administration of the cadre and teacher seminaries'. He won a law diploma, grade 'Good', from the Walter Ulbricht Training Academy at Potsdam-Babelsberg. Enke's diploma certificate was embossed with the recently adopted Soviet-sponsored emblem for the state, a hammer and a compass ringed by a crescent of rye, symbolizing the GDR's new social divisions: the worker, the intelligentsia and the farmer. He had come a long way since leaving school at thirteen.

A handwritten report appended to the file noted that Enke began to use his position in Potsdam to access the wartime archives, conducting on his weekends 'private research into a hobby'. We feel a charge of excitement as we read that Enke's chosen subject was 'the fascist robbery of the Amber Room'. The note recorded that he had made 'significant finds' and located important new archive documentation.6

The Ministry of Truth's functionary in pearls announces that she has recently come into possession of 12,000 pages of Stasi material relating to the Amber Room. Are we interested? Of course, we say. The files have been missing since 1991 and have never been properly analysed, she tells us. Lost and found? We look incredulous. 'The papers were in the Bundesarchiv facility at Koblenz. They had been sent to the wrong archive after die Wende,' she explains, unflustered. I always thought they had been destroyed. But they were just sitting in the dark somewhere, until I got them back. Archives are very territorial places.' The functionary beams. 'You are very lucky.'

The Stasi files

An assistant comes in and drops a bulging binder on to the white