Bernsteinzimmer (Amber Room) Discovered!

[Sanzotta]

The same wikipedia article that is cited above references the state of the amber room and I think that is where I saw the reference to the crumbling. I read a lot of articles on the subject when I read about it since I am an information hound. Is it right or wrong? I don't know. Was the crumbling that was referenced in that article due more to the state of the amber or due to the haste that would have been needed to remove it quickly?????

What was interesting to me about this story in particular is that one of the 2 major players in this dig was mad at the other when he made the statement to the media that they had "found" the amber room. The data that supposedly supported that statement was from an above ground scan that showed a significant amount of "gold or silver." From what I have read, there was not a considerable amount of either gold or silver in the amber room (other then gold leaf which is very thin) so to extrapolate the findings of a signficant amount of precious metal into "We have found the Amber Room!" seems a bit of a leap. It certainly was made to generate a media buzz which it did. I admit it caught my eye. The headline "Treasure hunters have possibly found precious metal buried in the ground!" certainly is not as exciting.

I certainly hope the Amber Room is found, it would be a great thing for Russia.

[Lapa]

Originally Posted by Sanzotta

The same wikipedia article ...

Sanzotta,

As I constantly remind my graduate students, Wikipedia is but one source of information, and an unreliable one due to its nature. In no way can it be considered to be a reliable reference.

Marc

[Sanzotta]

Granted. I obviously don't know what happened and never will and it may well be a wrong statement taken alone.

However, I will say that since the Amber Room was a known treasure, I imagine the authorities would have done whatever they could to remove it intact so it was not destroyed or pilfered by the invading Germans. There must have been some extenuating circumstances that prevented this (be it time pressure, lack of knowledge, crumbling edges, etc.) that would prevent this since other works of art were removed. I would like to hope that a fresh coat of wallpaper wasn't the best idea someone could come up with for protecting the wall.

If you are interested, here is a snippet from the web site amber.com.pl that talks about a deterioration although it does not specifically mention what was affected. If you go to that site, there is a lot of supplemental information as well:

"The condition of the Amber Room’s decor deteriorated over the 19th and early 20th century. The amber moveables were moved to other rooms in the Palace (which in 1910 was named after Catherine I), and the decor of the walls was to be sent to Gdańsk for thorough conservation at the Moritz Stumpf & Sohn company in 1912. The outbreak of World War I thwarted this plan.

There was no thorough conservation after the Revolution in 1917, with only the elements falling off the plates being glued back on from time to time with various binders. The already empty interior, with the equestrian monument of Frederick II, king of Prussia, in the middle of the Room was left unchanged after the Revolution."

[Alfred]

They stopped drilling for two weeks in Deutschneudorf and will do new research and they will take new measurements ........

Some new theories about the destination of the Bernsteinzimmer turned up in the last years / months.

The Bernsteinzimmer was not the only collection which was shown in the Königsberg castle. There was also a collection of antique things of the PRUSSIA tribes. An old tribe which lived in the middle age in the East Prussia region. They did a lot of trade with the Vikings. Nearly nothing is known today about the Prussia tribe. It was a rare collection with a great archaeological value.

They found antique things of the prussia tribe collection of the Königsberg castle near a soviet munition depot in the old fortified areas of Königsberg. German soldiers burried these collection hastily in the sand near an old casemate of a fortress.

There was no time to evacuate the prussia collection, so it was hastily burried in the sand. So, some archaeologist and historian belief that also the Bernsteinzimmer is still in Königsberg, because the time to evacuate the collection was to short. The Prussia collection was also shown in the Königsberg castle and it was not avacuate to the west.

regards
Andreas

[Nota Bene]

I've done some reading on the Amber Room today - Sanzotta is correct. However, it weren't the amber mosaics that were crambling, but rather the walls they were attached to. They planned a major restoration for 1941. I didn't know that, thanks, Sanzotta!

Alexei

[desantnik]

I finished reading a fascinating book, The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure by Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy, published 2004. The almost 400-page book is a great Cold War detective story worthy of anyone's time interested in the WWII/GPW, DDR Stasi, Soviet NKVD/KGB, and late Soviet/early Russian history.

Fascinating reading and I won't spoil the ending. The authors' assertions seem to have held true, though published in 2004, four years BEFORE this thread started (and the room still hasn't been discovered).

[Ralph Pickard]

desantnik - thanks for the heads up and your review of the book. I will keep an eye out for the book to read the intelligence connections you mention.

Thanks