by Adrian Levy
Eichwede says: 'It was the break that Russia needed. All eyes were on the Amber Room and memories were jogged about Soviet loss. Germany was now on the defensive.'
The German Foreign Office appealed for calm, while further inquiries into the provenance of the stone mosaic were carried out. And then a wealthy housewife from West Berlin came forward, saying that she owned a chest of drawers that had come from the Amber Room, too.
The housewife had seen an article about Hans Achterman's stone mosaic that was illustrated with a picture of the original Amber Room. Among the furnishings she had spotted a delicate, intricately inlaid eighteenth-century chest that was now in her living room, filled with tablecloths and napkins.
Then newspapers picked up on a sale at Christie's in London. Two years earlier the auction house had sold for 15,000 dollars a palm-sized centurion's head carved from amber. Eichwede says: 'It was an old piece. Mature. Honeyed. Christie's speculated that it was connected to the Amber Room.'
However, what the Russians made no mention of in the ensuing publicity was that the stone mosaic, the centurion's head and the chest of drawers proved nothing about the fate of the Amber Room itself, since all of these pieces had become separated before the Amber Room reached Konigsberg in December 1941, and therefore could not have been transported to the supposed secret Nazi hiding place in which the Amber Room was allegedly stashed.
We traced the centurion's head to Munich, where an art dealer acting for the collector who bought it (a German with a passion for old amber) revealed that there was an auction label stuck to the back of the head that dated from the 1920S. It probably left Russia after the Revolution.
The chest of drawers. There was no mention of it in the Konigsberg Castle Gift Book, which carefully listed each item that Alfred Rohde received in December 1941. The chest must have been stolen from the Catherine Palace before the Amber Room was transferred to Konigsberg.
And finally the stone mosaic. Hans Achterman maintained up until his death that his father had taken the mosaic as a souvenir when he and five other soldiers had dismantled the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace in 1941. If what he claimed was true then he was a member of the squad that packed up in just thirty-six hours that which Anotoly Kuchumov failed to save. The fact that the fourth stone mosaic also never reached Konigsberg is confirmed by studying the photographs taken to illustrate the Pantheon article written by Alfred Rohde in 1942. In one photograph of the room reassembled in Konigsberg Castle, the reflection in a mirror revealed an empty space in the opposite wall where the fourth mosaic would have hung.
Rather than proving that German thieves were still concealing the Amber Room, the discovery of the fourth mosaic undermined the central plank of the Soviet case that the Amber Room had survived the fall of Konigsberg. In Anatoly Kuchumov's private papers he argued that the absence of the fourth mosaic from the pile of ash he found in the Knights' Hall was proof that the fourth mosaic was concealed elsewhere, together with the amber panels. But of course the mosaic did not reappear until after Kuchumov's death and so he would not live to see his theory undermined.
These details did not matter in Russia, where former Culture Minister Nikolai Gubenko, now a deputy in the Duma, claimed that his nation's greatest missing treasure was buried in Germany. The Amber Room was being hawked bit by bit by German thieves, Gubenko and Russian newspapers speculated. The fate of the Amber Room was once again manipulated, this time to justify Russia's decision never to return to Berlin anything taken by the Red Army during the war. In April 1998 the Russian constitutional court ordered an unwilling President Yeltsin to authorize the law nationalizing wartime loot.
In Germany some would benefit from the renewed interest in the Amber Room too. Ruhrgas AG, a German energy provider with considerable assets in Russia, agreed to sponsor the building of a new Amber Room in St Petersburg, taking up Eichwede's idea.
Dr Ivan Sautov (left), director of the Catherine Palace, signing the deal with German energy provider Ruhrgas AG executives to sponsor the reconstruction of the Amber Room
The Russians had already begun this huge project but had run out of money. On 6 September 1999, Ruhrgas AG representatives met Dr Ivan Sautov, director of the Catherine Palace, and the Russian Minister of Culture to sign with amber fountain pens a sponsorship deal worth 3.5 million dollars. The German government was peeved, sending its ambassador from Moscow to witness the occasion rather than its Minister of Culture from Berlin.
Eichwede smiles. 'Ruhrgas wanted a high-profile cultural project to buy into. Their first and only interest was a commercial one. The Amber Room was worth a fortune for Russian politicians and German businessmen.'
He stifles a yawn. 'It was exhausting. And then things got really complicated. Achterman and his stone mosaic reappeared. He wanted to reconsider the deal we had worked out on the back of the beer mat and eventually agreed to sell me the stone mosaic at 210,000 DMs. It was all incredibly secret. No one could know until the mosaic was back in Russia. The money was to come from Bremen businessmen. The German government could not be seen to pay.'
Eichwede called the Russian Deputy Minister of Culture in Moscow. '"I've got your missing mosaic," I told P. V Khoroshilov. He was shocked and said, "Maybe we can come to terms."' Khoroshilov secretly flew into Bremen and struck a deal: Hans Achterman's stone mosaic would be returned to St Petersburg and the 101 Bremen pictures stranded in the German Embassy in Moscow would be released to travel to Berlin. 'We said, "We get the drawings first and then you get the stone mosaic." Khoroshilov signed the deal.'
All Eichwede needed was Berlin's approval. He flings his arms into the air. 'They said no.' Having promised to return the stone mosaic to Russia, the German government now advised that it too had changed laws governing art and reparations. The Amber Room's stone mosaic had been put on a list of items banned from export. Eichwede says: I was on the verge of giving up when the Mayor of Bremen rang me and said, "Look, this is ridiculous. I'm flying tomorrow to Moscow anyway, with the mosaic."' Fearing a scandal, the German government capitulated, and on 30 April 2000 the Mayor of Bremen, the president of the city's Chamber of Commerce and the German Minister of Culture presented the mosaic to President Putin and brought home 101 Bremen drawings. (However, Viktor Baldin's collection of 364 Bremen drawings would remain in the St Petersburg Hermitage and the 'Trojan Gold' would stay locked in the Moscow's Pushkin Museum stores.)
Once the story of the Amber Room had popped out of its box again, it was impossible to force it back in. Treasure hunters returned to the Erzgebirge nature park in western Saxony with metal detectors and picks. Der Spiegel magazine announced it was funding digs in Kaliningrad, beneath the 'Monster' and on the junction of Steindamm Strasse and Lange Reihe. Baron von Falz-Fein began writing to all his old friends, asking them to renew their efforts to find the room. A Second World War veteran in Weimar claimed to have found evidence that the Amber Room was concealed in the tunnels that ran beneath the city. And a book dealer in Gottingen announced that he had discovered files that proved the Amber Room was buried in the Volpriehausen mine (where hobby-Historiker George Stein had tried to make the German story work, armed with documents suppied by the Stasi).
In St Petersburg, Dr Ivan Sautov announced that the new Amber Room would be opened on 31 May 2003 to mark the three-hundredth anniversary of the founding of that city.
Wolfgang Eichwede's telephone rings. He talks rapidly into the handset for ten minutes and then, after finishing the call, turns to us: 'The dealing is still going on. That was our Minister of Culture. He's been in St Petersburg recently to receive back the missing stained-glass windows from St Mary's in Frankfurt an der Oder. The windows vanished in the war, but now that Germany has offered to restore the organ of the Leningrad Philharmonic and the churches of Novgorod, the windows have reappeared. He took them to St Petersburg airport in the back of a taxi.' Eichwede beams.
What of the endlessly recycled Amber Room story? Does Eichwede believe that it will ever be buried?
The professor sighs, slinging his green-and-black tartan jacket over his shoulder like a hunting cape and looks us directly in the eyes. 'What can I say? Some people have princesses and fairies. Others have the Amber Room.'
In January 2003 the presses in St Petersburg were working double time. Before the new Amber Room could be unveiled to an international audience of VIPs, hundreds of copies of a special catalogue had to be printed.
Each guest arriving in St Petersburg on 31 May 2003 for the three-hundredth anniversary celebrations of the city would be able to read the Summary Catalogue of the Cultural Valuables Stolen and Lost During the Second World War. Volume 1. The Tsarkoye Selo State Museum Zone. The Catherine Palace. Book L.8 Out of a possible 100,000 lost items, the Russian government chose to illustrate the catalogue cover with a large hand-tinted photograph of the Amber Room.
In a foreword, the Deputy Minister of Culture P. V. Khoroshilov declared:
The West and especially Germany prefers to keep silent about Russia's cultural losses. Nevertheless everybody is interested in finding out how many German paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures and objects of decorative art, archaeological finds and collections of books, still remain in Russia and what museums house them.
The Amber Room was once again listed as officially missing, the lead item in a 300-page inventory of works stolen by the Nazis from the Catherine Palace.
The Deputy Minister of Culture concluded with praise for only one West German: 'Of great help was the archive of the German scholar George Stein, who dedicated many years of his life to the search for the Amber Room... Unfortunately the work was interrupted by this scholar's tragic death.' We are sure that Stein would have been delighted to know he had made the final edit of the Soviet's Amber Room story.
Dr Sautov, director of the Catherine Palace, wrote an introduction. The Amber Room was a 'symbol of Russian cultural and art losses' and he and his staff 'are convinced that it has not perished and will be found as a result of properly organized searches'.
Director Sautov continued: 'The aim of this [catalogue] is . . . a concrete wish of real men to [publicize] which unique pieces of art were lost during the occupation, the Amber Room among them.' No mention here of the fire set by the Red Army that destroyed everything in the Knights' Hall of Konigsberg Castle.
There followed a ten-page summary of the Amber Room story written by Larissa Bardovskaya, the head curator of the Catherine Palace, who freely lifted material from Paul Enke's book and from the untrustworthy George Stein. She concluded poignantly: 'The artistic valuables of the Catherine Palace museum are still waiting for the return to their home. The problem concerning the cultural trophies of the Great Patriotic War demands the most thorough attention from the representatives of the international community.' And these representatives were set to arrive in St Petersburg on 31 May 2003, to celebrate the city's tercentenary.
But in February 2003 another row had threatened to overshadow the unveiling ceremony. Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi announced that Russia was at last to return to the Bremen Kunsthalle the 364 works taken by Red Army veteran Viktor Baldin. However, Nikolai Gubenko, now head of the Dumas Culture and Tourism Committee, appealed directly to President Putin to prevent the collection from leaving. First Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov summoned Shvydkoi to his office and warned that if he went ahead with the return he would face criminal charges.9
On 17 March Valentina Matviyenko, Putin's plenipotentiary in St Petersburg, waded into the row by rounding on German newspapers that had described the theft of the Bremen collection by the Red Army in 1945 as immoral. 'Destroying Peterhof was immoral,' Matviyenko said. 'It was immoral to steal the Amber Room, besiege Leningrad, destroy thousands of Soviet cities and kill millions of Russians... We have every right to make terms on the returns for it is us who paid the highest price for the Great Patriotic War.' Matviyenko concluded by accusing German private collectors of continuing to secrete Russian masterpieces in attics and cellars.10
On 8 April 2003, the eve of a Russian presidential visit to Germany, Putin raised the issue too. When asked about the repayment of Russian debts, run up during GDR times, a subject that was to be discussed in Berlin, Putin replied: 'The debt problem is very painful for Russia and Germany as well, not only because it is often said that Russian culture and arts were seriously damaged during the Second World War. It is also because a part of the art works removed from Russia during the war are now in private collections.'11
On 8 May more than 400 decorated heroes of the Great Patriotic War were invited to examine the reconstructed Amber Room as part of the commemorations for Victory Day, which is still regarded by the majority of Russians as the most important event in the political calendar. We will not forget or forgive, the veterans told Russian reporters, recalling how the original room had been 'ripped from the Motherland' as the 'Hitlerite evil-doers' pulled the siege noose tight around Leningrad in the winter of 1941.12
And then 31 May finally arrived. Although the VIPs had officially come to St Petersburg to attend a Russian-EU summit (whose symbolic backdrop was the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the host city), the first major event on the itinerary was the unveiling of the new Amber Room.
Pravda online monitored the day's events.
15.30 hours. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder ascended the Monighetti staircase, an elaborate Italian marble flight draped with heavy crimson curtains. Above their heads was the recently restored plafond (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'the staircase was ruined during the war and most of its [ceiling] decorations were lost').
Damaged Monighetti staircase, Catherine Palace, 1945
Following them were first ladies Doris Schroder and Lyudmila Putina, and then Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, Jacques Chirac, Kofi Annan, Romano Prodi, Atal Bihari Vajapyee, Hu Jintao and thirty more heads of state and government from across the continents, the former Soviet Union and its allies.
Pravda reported: 'Russia's pride: leaders of foreign countries visit an exquisite monument of the Catherine Palace.'
Beside Brodzsky's marble Sleeping Cupid, the procession filed into the Formal White Dining Room and on through the gilded double-doors into the Crimson and Green Pilaster Dining Rooms (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'having been completely damaged during the war the rooms acquired a new life in 1980').
Shepherded past cabinets displaying broken cherubs, crystal teardrops and fragments of Sevres, past black-and-white photographs of Soviet craftsmen in overalls piecing back together the Leningrad palaces, the entourage entered the Portrait Hall (Tercentenary Media Pack, Russian Federation Summary Catalogue: 'the furniture set was re-created in 1970 using samples that were saved by evacuation during the war').
Having walked down corridors lined with evidence of Nazi barbarism, the world leaders and first ladies were finally led across a floor inlaid with rare hard woods, rose and amarantus, into a curtained chamber of light for the climax of the tour.
15.35 hours. Pravda reported: 'Russia's fabled [Amber] Room dazzles again. Twenty years of work by Russian craftsmen has returned what was called the Eighth Wonder of the World to its place in the Catherine Palace. The fate of the original is not known to this day and the long search for it proved futile.'
On an easel was displayed a delicate eighteenth-century stone mosaic ('Touch and Smell', the one that Wolfgang Eichwede had bought from Hans Achterman in a deal struck on a beer mat). Against a wall stood a chest of drawers that had once belonged to a housewife from West Berlin.
15.40 hours: Pooled footage from the VGTRK Rossiya (All-Russia State Television and Radio Company) showed a large man in a glossy Italian suit with a plump salt-and-pepper moustache glad-handing the guests. Tatiana Kosobokova, reporting for Pravda, wrote: 'Ivan Sautov, the head of the museum, assumed responsibilities as private tour guide to Vladimir Putin.'
A day that had begun with
performances by Luciano Pavarotti, Demis Roussos and 'the famous German hard-rock group Scorpions' (who sang 'Anthem to a Great City') ended with an evening of candlelight, fountains and music. All of St Petersburg, from the acquisitive former palace deputy director Valeria Bilanina in Pushkin to the thrifty journalist Vladimir Telemakov in Ozerki, and from furniture expert Malinki Albina in Pavlovsk to Our Friend the Professor in the northern suburbs, sat back with thimbles of Pertsovka vodka and slivers of herring to watch great volleys of fireworks cascade over Putin's 'Window on the West' (restored at a cost of L.5 billion dollars).
Nothing had been allowed to get in the way of this Great Day. The smarting Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi, the vengeful Duma deputy Nikolai Gubenko and the patriotic plenipotentiary Valentina Matviyenko were all present and smiling (as was Professor Wolfgang Eichwede of Bremen University). And the sun too had been made to shine. Russian air force jets, armed with freezing agents, had been mobilized on missions to 'influence the rain clouds', banishing them from the skies above St Petersburg (at a cost of twenty-nine million roubles).13
As for the story of the Amber Room, it had been sealed forever, like an insect trapped in resin, a facsimile of the original room now served as a constant reminder of Russia's greatest loss to anyone who walked through it.
Epilogue
In the summer of 2003, we were sent more extracts of a report from the Hamburg-Eppendorf Psychiatric Hospital to the Ingolstadt coroner. Dated 25 August 1987, it stated that there was 'mutual hatred within George Stein's family'. It revealed that Elisabeth, Stein's wife, was not murdered in 1983 but committed suicide, in fear of her husband.
The report noted: 'Exactly fifteen years ago on Good Friday [1972], [George Stein] had encouraged his wife to make sacrificial cuts in his abdominal wall, using a dissecting scalpel. On Good Friday in 1982 he asked her to do it again.' On both occasions George Stein had called the police, claiming to have been attacked by knife-wielding masked raiders who warned him off the Amber Room mystery. But he had invented the stories, after forcing his wife to perform sadomasochistic acts.