The Amber Room

by Adrian Levy

  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 plastic table, just one of thirty volumes. 'Finish this one. Then request another.' She leaves us alone with the paper mountain. We have been warned that there are now only days left before all these files are closed so that they can be recensored under the Kohl judgment. We need to work quickly.

  Straight away we find references to Enke's private research in Potsdam. But it is not clear whether he gave his material voluntarily or if the Stasi requisitioned it.

  Written in a forward-slanting, purposeful hand is a report by Enke himself. It began in hyperbolic fashion with Enke describing 'the German fascist's robbery of Europe's cultural heritage' as far worse than those carried out by 'the Persians at Babylon, the Romans at Athens or the Crusaders at Constantinople'. The theft of the Amber Room was, according to Enke, 'the most painful loss of all'.7

  Enke substantiated his claim. He set out to prove that the pillage of Europe and the theft of the Amber Room were premeditated. The Nazis had been preparing to cherry-pick Eastern Europe as far back as 1933, he reported. They had gathered information about Eastern European museum collections via a cover organization called the German Academic Exchange Service. Free excursions, conferences and training workshops were offered to museum staff from the USSR, while Germans of Baltic origin were dispatched to spy on their collections. Even while Molotov and Ribbentrop were negotiating the non-aggression pact in E939, and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were being constituted as Soviet republics, this team of art spies was drawing up lists of collectables for Hitler.8

  On 15 November 1940 team leader Dr Nils von Hoist, an Eastern art expert and head of the Berlin State Museums' external affairs department, issued a secret circular to museum directors across the Reich, asking them

  Dr von Hoist was still writing up his Soviet findings when Operation Barbarossa was launched on 22 June 1941. Two days later he presented his report on 'the most important collections of cultural possessions in the Baltic countries' to Dr Hans Posse, then director of the Dresden Gallery and, more significantly, a key art adviser to Hitler.9 Enke found a dispatch order dated 8 July 1941 forwarding the list of collectables on to the 18th Army headquarters, from where it was disseminated to the commanders of German units advancing on Leningrad.

  On 1 September 1941 Dr von Hoist was sent back to the Soviet Union, initially to Smolensk, recently captured by the Wehrmacht s Army Group Centre, with instructions to help establish the eastern headquarters for Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, the art-looting organization headed by Hitler's ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. By 26 September, Dr von Hoist was at the front, camped at the Catherine Palace with Army Group North, charged with safeguarding 'the art treasures of [the tsars' palaces at] Krasnoye Selo, Peterhof and Oranienbaum and later also Petersburg [sic] according to a letter from the Fiihrer's aide-de-camp, dated 26 September.10 Although initially sceptical we are now gripped by how closely Enke was able to follow a Nazi art expert all the way into the Catherine Palace.

  Next Enke reported that he had found a copy of Dr von Hoist's list, attached to Hitler's order from July 1941, reserving the first pick of art works plundered from the East. But here was a set-back. The Amber Room was not on it.

  Enke was undeterred. He dug on until he discovered a second list, compiled for propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels by Otto Kiimmel, the seventy-year-old director of the Berlin State Museums and Dr von Hoist's boss.11 This one consisted of all German art works that had gone abroad since 1500 and were to be repatriated. Prominently placed on it was the Amber Room. If Enke's research was reliable, he had proved that the theft of the Amber Room was premeditated. And whoever had planned its theft would possibly have also worked out how to conceal it in 1945.

  Enke wrote that all items on the Kummel list were to be returned to their German towns of origin or set aside for Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Operation Linz), a Fuhrermuseum and Aryan culture park that Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, had been asked to construct on the banks of the Danube, outside Linz, the town where the Fiihrer had spent his childhood.

  Enke found a war diary for the 18th Army and in it an entry for 29 September 1941 that, he argued, proved the dismantling of the Amber Room had been overseen by the Nazi High Command: '16.oohrs: Cavalry Captain Count Solms, from the Supreme Army Command, who has been commissioned to record the works of art in the tsarist palaces, asks for protection for the tsarist palace in Pushkin... It is now in the immediate vicinity of the front line and is endangered by the thoughtless behaviour of our troops.'12

  Dr Ernst-Otto Count zu Solms Laubach

  Enke tracked down Captain Solms's unit, the 50th Corps, and in its journal he found this entry: '14 October 1941. Krasnogwardeisk. Removal of the works of art salvaged by Cavalry Captain Dr Count Solms and Captain Dr Ponsgen in Gatchina and Pushkin, including the wall panels of the amber hall from the Pushkin Palace to Konigsberg.'

  From military archives held in the GDR, Enke learned that the cavalry captain's full name was Dr Ernst-Otto Count zu Solms Laubach and that he was an aristocrat from Frankfurt-am-Main and a museum curator in civilian life. One week before the Count had arrived in Pushkin, he had been in the Leningrad palace of Peterhof, supervising the looting of the Neptune Fountain, an art work that was also on the list prepared by Otto Kiimmel for Goebbels. Hitler had personally requested that the Neptune Fountain be returned to Nuremberg, where it had been cast in the mid-seventeenth century.13 If the Count had been acting in Peterhof for Hitler, then it was, Enke argued, likely that he was acting for Hitler in the Catherine Palace too.

  But having established that the Nazi High Command had ordered the Amber Room thef
t, who had taken specific responsibility for it in Konigsberg and after? Enke reported that 'General [sic] Marshal Goering, Reichsfiihrer SS Himmler, Reichsleiters Lammers and Bormann, Rosenberg and foreign minister Ribbentrop' had all used their positions to amass large art collections and were possible contenders.14

  However, it was Alfred Rosenberg that Enke focused on and he discovered some interesting connections.15 Although Rosenberg was of German descent, he had been born in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, on the Baltic coast. The son of a cobbler, he had been sent to college in Petrograd (Leningrad), where, Enke reasoned, it was likely that he would have learned of the legendary Amber Room. When Rosenberg fled Petrograd in 1917, finding common cause with 600,000 White Russian refugees who converged on Germany, he joined the Freikorps, roving counter-revolutionary units that held back the Bolshevik advance. When disbanded, these Freikorps veterans remained closely linked through the Baltic Brotherhood, an organization for ex-servicemen whose ceremonies were steeped in Norse and Teutonic myths of heroism and self-sacrifice. Many, including Rosenberg, converged on Munich, forming a pseudo-intellectual circle around Hitler and joining the secretive Thule Society, which conjured the existence of a mythical island, the source of amber, a land locked into the ice flows of the far north whose pagan inhabitants adopted a creed of strength and loyalty.

  Through his tenacity and hard work, the weekends spent researching in Potsdam, Enke had identified a senior member of the Nazi High Command who not only was responsible for looting art but also had clear links with the Baltic culture surrounding the Amber Room and the coast from where it originated.

  On 18 November 1941 Alfred Rosenberg won another portfolio as head of Hitler's Reichsministerium fiir die besetzen Ostgebiete, the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, The Times of London commenting: 'Rosenberg is Hitler's Eastern expert... Rosenberg, who hates everything Russian, will certainly conduct his office with ruthless brutality.' The only part of the USSR that was to be maintained intact was the Baltic states, Rosenberg promised, a region that he described as having been captured '700 years ago by German knights'.16

  Enke traced the growth of ERR-Ost, Rosenberg's Eastern art-looting organization, as it spread its tentacles into every city and town. In Lithuania, ERR-Ost was operating out of the capital, Kaunus. In Latvia it was based in Riga. In Estonia it had offices at Tallinn and Tartu. It was based in the Belarus capital at Minsk and in the Ukraine, where the wealthy republic kept busy four offices at Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Kherson. There were ERR-Ost operations in the Caucasus, the Crimea and in Russia proper, where units fanned out in an arc west of Moscow, 'at Pskov, Smolensk, Voroschilovgrad [sic] and Voronezh'. Rosenberg's staff were everywhere.

  But it was all of academic interest until Enke found an ERR-Ost report about the Amber Room itself. On 28 April 1944 Dr Nerling at the ERR-Ost depot in Riga advised Rosenberg's ministry in Berlin about 'the works of art salvaged from the operational area Army Group North [in October 1941]'.17

  Dr Nerling wrote: '[Captain Solms] sent five coaches with art treasures to Konigsberg... via stations Siverskaya, Luga, Pskov and Riga... Among the treasures sent were the Amber Room and various precious paintings and furniture...'18 If Alfred Rosenberg's ERR-Ost had supervised the removal of the Amber Room to Konigsberg in 194E, had it retained responsibility for transporting it again in 1945, as Konigsberg fell, Enke asked?

  But our file is finished.

  We return to Enke's personal papers. Judging by what we have just read, Enke clearly devoted all of his energies to his research, so it is surprising to read that he found time to marry (Gerda, 1950) and to have a daughter (Sonia, 1952). It is not known if he mourned the deaths of his estranged parents (Klara, 1958, and Paul, 1959).

  In 1962, one year after the Berlin Wall was erected, at a time when a second reinforcing wall was being raised parallel to it, Enke faced a serious set-back that threatened to terminate his Amber Room hobby and his career. A reorganization within the Ministry of the Interior left him out of favour and his post as the deputy director of Department Administration Training was axed. On 17 September 1962, one month after GDR teenager Peter Fechter was shot, falling into the death-strip between the Berlin walls, where he was photographed bleeding to death in full view of the GDR border guard, Enke came up with a survival plan.

  The next document reveals that he was spying on his colleagues and students at the Ministry of the Interior. Stasi Oberstleutnant Hut wrote that Enke informed on his co-workers 'without hesitation' and appeared to be objective. 'In this context, it should be mentioned that good contacts had always existed between Comrade Enke and the [Ministry for State Security]...'19 We had wondered how a lowly bureaucrat in the Ministry of the Interior was allowed unfettered access to what were obviously sensitive wartime documents. Now it is clear that he had done so by forging a relationship with the Stasi.

  Oberstleutnant Hut continued: 'Towards the conclusion of [our discussions] Comrade Enke was asked whether he was prepared to cooperate with the Ministerium fiir Staatssicherheit [MfS] even more closely than before. He declared his agreement.' Enke was asked to submit a list of relatives who were to be investigated before he could be put on the Stasi pay roll. He signed a pledge not to reveal anything that had been discussed at the meeting. A pattern of behaviour was emerging, a man willing to sacrifice friends and family to ensure his betterment.

  As security around the Berlin Wall was bolstered with minefields and trip-wires, Enke ascended through the ranks of betrayal, from casual work-a-day sneak to a dedicated informer. He was attached to Directorate XX, the Stasi department responsible for recruiting and maintaining informants: cameras mounted in tree trunks, concealed in traffic lights and car doors, microphones in matchboxes left on a bedside table. Most informers were coerced into working for the Stasi, but at a time when East German salaries were paltry, the lure of cash payment was enough to persuade some, like Paul Enke, to volunteer.

  All informers were marshalled into ranks: the Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter (IM), the lowly tell-tales who lived next door; the high-ranking Hauptamtlicher Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter (HIM), senior snitches who had direct contact with the person under surveillance - your best friend or your wife; the Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter zur politisch-operativen Durchdringung und Sicherung des Verantwortungsbereich (IMS), the verbose rank of boss or a secretary responsible for reviewing the political pedigree of his coworkers. But despite all of this stratification, the Stasi handlers referred to their charges by the derogatory term spitzel, which translates roughly as 'nark'.

  By December 1962 Enke's remaining family members had been security-cleared and Hauptmann Schliep, an officer attached to the Stasi's Department of Agitation visited him at home.20 Schliep wrote: 'Enke placed the question on the table, what sort of income he expected to realize... He declared that he could not hope to equal his current income of L,8OO Ostmarks net. The undersigned [Hauptmann Schliep] pointed out that Comrade Enke could count on a net income of approximately L,2OO Ostmarks if he was employed by us.' Paul Enke became a Stasi IM on New Year's Day 1963.21

  In the next document we read that on 5 October 1964 Enke joined the Stasi itself as a full-time operative, with the duty grade Oberstleutnant and the duty rank of Referatsleiter (departmental manager) in the Observation and Investigation Directorate (HA VIII, Section 8). So here was proof that several years after beginning his private research, the author of Bernsteinzimer Report had become a Stasi agent.

  'Worker OLL-747 Enke' recited the Minister for State Security's personal oath to 'protect our workers and farmers', promising 'eternal loyalty to our fatherland, the GDR', to give his life 'in defence of every enemy' and be forever 'unquestioningly obedient to the military authorities'. He pledged to protect the republic and its Ministry for State Security

  'for ever and everywhere in the world'.22 We flick back to the photograph of the purposeful bureaucrat in a tight black suit, wearing heavy-framed glasses. This was the authorized image of a man who wou
ld later become faceless.

  In 1968, Enke completed his Stasi training and his Service Qualification read: 'Dr Paul Enke, Historian.' In 1970, he became an Offizier im besonderen Einsatz, a Stasi special operations officer.23 He was given a new cover, assuming the name Dr P. Kohler, a senior researcher at the Documentation Centre for the State Archives Administration of the Ministry of the Interior, Potsdam. 'At the same time he continues his usual social activities (participation at all party and other important events connected with his service).' Enke was back in the archives in a much more senior position than before.24

  His arc was complete: lathe worker, radar operator, informant, historian, spy. Enke's only concern now was how to make an impression in an organization so vast.

  Another binder from the Amber Room study group lands on the white plastic table. It begins with a selection of wartime newspaper cuttings collated by Stasi Oberstleutnant Paul Enke a.k.a. Dr P. Kohler of the Documentation Centre for the State Archives Administration of the Ministry of the Interior, Potsdam.

  On 12 April 1942 the chief editor of the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger reported on the Amber Room's unveiling ceremony at Konigsberg Castle.

  It was presided over by Captain Helmut von Wedelstadt, the deputy Gauleiter of East Prussia. There was no mention in this story of Hitler, the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, or Alfred Rosenberg sending their congratulations.25

  Enke found the article in Pantheon magazine, an illustrated German art digest, dated October 1942.26 It was written by Castle Museum director Alfred Rohde, but it provided no clues about who was in overall charge of the Amber Room while it was in Konigsberg. It painted Rohde in a completely different light from that presented by Dr Gerhard Strauss.