The Amber Room

by Adrian Levy

  'Ja, of course,' the man answers in broken English, loosening the neck of his jumper, gasping a little, as if the air is now rarer. 'Gerhard Strauss was my Vater. Warum?

  'Oh, Stephan,' the woman interrupts. 'How funny you sound.' She turns to us. I teach English and Russian at the university. I will translate. Darling, your languages are really terrible.'

  We hand over one of Valeria Bilanina's envelopes.

  'Stephan, look. How strange!' the woman exclaims, her eyes scanning the handwriting. I remember Vati writing some of these.' She turns to us. 'Stephan and I were just married, in 1972, and Gerhard, my father-in-law, asked me to translate some letters into Russian. He was trying to find a curator in Leningrad, right? The one who was looking for the Bernsteinzimmer} You found these in Russia? Vati was so disappointed, you know. I don't know if he ever received replies.'

  Kuchumov, we say, is unfortunately dead. And Dr Gerhard Strauss?

  Stephan has had time to gather his thoughts and now his arms are wrapped tightly around his ribcage and his legs are crossed. Suddenly all of his anxieties tumble out: 'What do you know about my father's work? Who are you? Why do you want to know about him? Why are you here?'

  The woman lays her hand on his lap. 'Stephan, let the people talk.'

  He relaxes a little. 'It is difficult to speak of these things,' he says. 'You may know facts now that even I, we - ' he squeezes his wife's hand - 'do not know about my father. There were things he had to do in the war to survive. We have come through difficult times.' He glances at his wife for reassurance. 'I'm not sure what you will do with any information I will give you. And anyhow I was a child, you must realize.' He pauses. 'But I do recall my father travelling to Kaliningrad sometime after the war.' He fixes his gaze on the Christmas tree. 'Russians came to the house. They were not wearing uniforms. At the time I was disappointed. Now I think they must have been KGB. There were whispered discussions. Papers were passed around the room. This room. But why should I tell you about these things?' He is losing his cool again, frowning deeply. 'You are strangers in my house.'

  It is a beautiful house, we say, slowing everything down. And it is true that only a cup of coffee back we walked through that front door.

  'They gave my father this place after the Nazis were cleared out. My father was a Genosse, you understand?'

  Yes, we say. He was a comrade.

  'He told us many stories about his secret KPD activities before the war. How he had to go underground. He had to join the Nazi Party but he hated them.' He pauses and sends his wife upstairs. She returns with a large photograph in a white wooden frame. It shows an elderly man wearing a black beret, a proud man in a park on a winter's day. You can see his breath forming as it hits the cold air.

  'Gerhard passed away in 1984,' she says. 'He would have been delighted to have more visitors from Russia!'

  So the doctor is dead.

  'It was snowing the day he left in 1949, like today.' Stephan rocks the photo of his father gently on his knees. 'My mother was so worried. She said he would never come back. You have to understand, we were a little afraid of the Russians.' Stephan smiles at us. 'Perhaps the word is unsure. Unfamiliar.' He tries to encapsulate the feelings of the time. 'Well, the Red Army had taken away so many people. After six weeks my mother was frantic. She picked up courage and went to Karlshorst. Don't worry, they said. The weather was bad on the Baltic Coast. Father's plane was delayed. She was told to go home and wait.

  'My father came home in the middle of January. He wouldn't talk much about what had happened. He mentioned that he had tried to find his parents' house in Mohrungen but had been prevented. And that he had helped in the search for the Amber Room. He felt it was his personal responsibility to find it and return it to Leningrad. Later, he became obsessed. It was a constant topic of conversation at the dinner table. On the phone. It was not good. It made him ill. Odd people kept calling. Russians, Poles, even West Germans. One called George Stein invited himself over for dinner, yes, George Stein. Have you heard of him?' Stephan sees us writing down the name and dries up again.

  Why does he think his father was of such interest to the Soviets, we ask?

  'During the last two years of the war my father was assigned to the airraid protection forces in Konigsberg. I suppose he must have been responsible for the safety of the Amber Room, that's why the Russians were so interested in him. His boss was called Andrei. No, not Andrei but . . .'

  His wife interrupts: 'Alfred, darling, Alfred Rohde.'

  The director of Konigsberg Castle Museum.

  Stephan studies us with his iced water eyes and volunteers that he has an attic full of material belonging to his father, diaries and semi-official documents. He is a polite man who wants to be helpful. Can we see them, we ask?

  He sees the excitement in our eyes and pauses. I have looked at them before. But not properly. I should study his papers first. Maybe if you come back. In a few weeks.' For as suddenly as he has blurted out about his father's private archive he wishes that he hadn't. He appears panicked. We can see his train of thought. Brown Shirt, card-carrying Nazi or loyal Genosse acting on the Communist Party's orders? And even if only a Genosse, what had Gerhard Strauss done for the regime?After so much time only the papers remain and Dr Gerhard Strauss's real motivations might be blurred.

  We sense that Stephan is grappling with the conundrum faced by everyone reunited after a conflict. How should a family deal with the multiple histories that coexist in one life: by exposing them all or by concealing the unpalatable ones? Should one carry on oblivious, loving the person one ate with and slept with or strolled to the park with? Post-war Europe was a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured truths.

  I have my own life to live. Our own lives to live. One cannot live one's father's life although I love my father. Can I drop you somewhere?' Stephan asks, standing up. He has to leave for a meeting in town. He is a landscape architect employed by the municipal authorities to help rebuild Berlin. He leads us out to his Volvo and we sit in silence as the engine warms.

  The Volvo settles and Stephan drives through wisps of freezing fog into a darkening Berlin, past Daniel Liebeskind's Jewish Museum with its Holocaust Tower. And we notice out of the corner of an eye an Arab boy on a mountain bike frantically pedalling to reach the queue for the museum before it disappears behind the armed security perimeter. Then, as he nears, he pulls a gun from his tracksuit. He has a pistol in his hand and before we can shout out he has pulled the trigger, again and again, waving the firearm wildly. But no one seems to see, apart from us trapped in the traffic behind fogged windows, boxed in on the other side of the street. However, no one is falling, crying or bleeding. The weapon must be a replica, although his hatred is real enough. We may have been the only people this day to have seen his drive-by fantasy.

  Stephan pulls over at Alexanderplatz and leans across to open the passenger door. 'There are things I don't want to read and I hope you will not write them. Do you understand?' If we do come back, there will be documents in the attic that Stephan Strauss will not want us to print.

  We cannot promise to censor our research to leave his father's reputation intact. With Alfred Rohde dead, finding Dr Gerhard Strauss, one of his assistants, must have been a critical moment for Anatoly Kuchumov. And it is for us too.

  We'll call, we say, before diving into the hushed darkness of the westbound U2, while Stephan Strauss drives off to his meeting in the east. Even though our paths have crossed, we have not really met at all. We have been prevented from understanding each other, our true characters and emotions blacked out, obscured (on our part) by self-interest and on his by a fear of history.

  We have felt a clammy-handed excitement as the mystery of the Amber Room unravels but so far all of it has been from a distance - the story told through reports, diaries, letters and memories. Today the Amber Room has lifted off the page and into the lives of those around us, casting doubt and fear.

  Two weeks later, we return to our Berlin hotel to fi
nd another couriered package from St Petersburg waiting for us. We rip open the envelope and a photo of Gerhard Strauss falls out. This Strauss is a young man, elegant and relaxed in a white shirt, his head of thick dark hair slicked back in a confident, cosmopolitan manner. While there are many similarities between the younger and older Gerhard Strauss, the older man did not have this younger man's confident stare.

  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, Strauss reassured Major Kunyn that he was never a Nazi. Neither was Alfred Rohde. The real fascist was the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, a man Strauss described as 'a military criminal'. Strauss wrote about the Amber Room: 'It would really be a big loss if this piece of art were to become a victim of the Nazi war. No question, I am ready to help in this matter.' Major Kunyn marked this passage with three exclamation marks.

  Strauss contradicted Alfred Rohde's testimony by saying that the Amber Room had survived the fall of Konigsberg. 'But it cannot be in the Soviet Zone [of Germany] since despite my requests it wasn't moved in time,' he wrote. Major Kunyn marked the passage with a question mark. What was Strauss's exact role in wartime Konigsberg? He seemed to be suggesting here that he was directly responsible for the safe-keeping of the Amber Room.

  Strauss's letter continued: 'No amber objects have appeared on the Berlin art market but in March 1945 I did overhear that the evacuation of the Amber Room was assigned to one place, east of Gorlitz [an area that was part of Saxony until 1949, when it became part of Poland].' Again Major Kunyn drew three bold exclamation marks. Strauss signed off 'Chief of Applied Arts Museums, Monuments and Education, GDR, Berlin'. He had been rehabilitated into the new East German regime remarkably quickly and had risen to an influential post. But drawing attention to himself in this way was a risky endeavour.

  The next document is a poor carbon copy of a long interview conducted on 12 December 1949. As we slowly trace the sentences we realize that this is the transcript of Gerhard Strauss's interrogation. The man asking the questions was Anatoly Kuchumov.6

  The two men talked at the Hotel Moscow in Kaliningrad. Pre-war photographs show it to have been a historic red-brick building. As one of the few Konigsberg-era edifices still standing in April 1945, the NKVD had commandeered it as their headquarters before the MGB occupied it. In order for Strauss to have reached Hotel Moscow, he would have been driven past the ruins of the castle, past the statues of Bismarck and Prince Albrecht with missing limbs and their heads shot off, and along what he knew as Steindamm Strasse. It had been renamed Leninsky Prospekt and led into Prospekt Mira, where the Hotel Moscow stood. We wonder if seeing the levelled city of his youth shocked Dr Gerhard Strauss.

  There is no scene setting in the file but we can imagine the likely circumstances, Kuchumov wrapped in his heavy tweed overcoat, wearing his pork-pie hat and black suit. No doubt the battered leather attache case lay open by his ankles. Kuchumov's granddaughter still has it, although his former colleague Valeria Bilanina has probably obtained its contents. Opposite him, cool and confident, 'the doctor': Gerhard Strauss, his dark hair slicked so that not even one strand would become unruly.

  At the outset these two men should have had much in common: a love of art history, a background in conservation, an overwhelming desire, albeit for different reasons, to find the Amber Room. But while they were now on the same side, recent events had created a gulf between the haughty Prussian and the shabby Russian.

  Session One: '12 December 1949. What I know about the Amber Room, (translated by Captain Shukin)'.

  Translated. Kuchumov had no language apart from Russian. We know from Strauss's daughter-in-law that the doctor could only speak German. And so all the nuances, the tucks and nips of language that help friendships settle, were lost as they sat down in the (no doubt freezing) Hotel Moscow during a Kaliningrad winter for a formal discussion, encumbered by an intermediary, the translator Captain Shukin.

  Kuchumov began by asking about Alfred Rohde. What could Strauss say about the castle curator? Strauss was fluent on his former chief: Rohde had been born in Hamburg and served as an officer during the First World War, during which he had been gassed. Kuchumov noted that this might have accounted for the Parkinson's-like shakes observed by Professor Brusov in 1945. After demobilization in 19E8, Rohde moved to Munich where he studied art history at Marburg University, then continued his education in Paris, before eventually taking up appointments in museums in Hamburg, Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland) and lastly Konigsberg.

  Next question: what were Rohde's politics? Kuchumov suspected him of being a Nazi but Strauss informed him that Rohde wa
s never a member of a political party. The only organization Rohde ever joined was the Union of Artists, for whom he arranged annual exhibitions of contemporary works.

  Did Rohde know the Nazi elite? This was one of those probing questions, a proving ground, that Kuchumov also used with Brusov. After all, Kuchumov had read the castle curator's personal correspondence and already knew that Rohde was acquainted with Gauleiter Erich Koch and General von Kuchler, head of Army Group North. Strauss performed well. He confirmed that Rohde had been acquainted with Erich Koch since 1928, the year that the curator arrived to become director of the city's art collections and Koch became Gauleiter of East Prussia. When Koch was later elected to the East Prussian Reichstag and took responsibility for the culture of the region, he and Rohde were brought into more regular contact. 'But they were never friends,' Strauss added. 'Rohde was a very modest and reserved person, respected by all of his colleagues. Politically, he certainly belonged to the middle and I even thought the left. Most people he associated with were of that persuasion. His closest friends were Hans Hopp and my teacher R. Worringer.' Kuchumov noted the names Hopp and Worringer. They mean nothing to us.

  But Kuchumov pressed Strauss. Rohde must have been a Nazi sympathizer to have done so well. I remember how much he disliked the Nazis,' Strauss countered. 'Rohde told me so when he showed me pictures from Kiev. But professionally he was nice to them. The fact he didn't leave Konigsberg only demonstrates that Rohde recognized his professional responsibility to his exhibits.' Strauss wrapped up the topic symmetrically. 'Alfred Rohde was not scared of the Soviet Union either. He had no bad intentions. That's all I can tell you about him.' Kuchumov has placed a small exclamation mark in the margin.

  Kuchumov asked Strauss about the Amber Room. Strauss said: 'In 1941 I, together with Dr Rohde, was anxious that the Amber Room was going to be destroyed. Rohde contacted an old friend, General von Kuchler, and asked him to save the room by sending it to Konigsberg.' Kuchumov drew an asterisk here - thinking, no doubt, of the letter from General von Kuchler, addressed to 'my good friend' Alfred Rohde, that he had found in the ruins of the castle in 1946. Strauss seemed to be telling the truth.