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."
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."
