The Amber Room

by Adrian Levy

  Strauss had proved that in November 1944 two senior figures in the cultural apparatus of the Third Reich, acting on the orders of two Nazi Gauleiters, had begun to discuss the evacuation of the Amber Room in the certain knowledge that Konigsberg was no longer safe.

  According to Arthur Grafe, storage depots in Saxony were in short supply and there were just six locations that Friesen could view: castles Sachsenburg, Kriebstein, Wechselburg, Albrechtsburg, Augustusburg and Grossgrabe Manor. On 24 November, Mutschmann approved the use of these six castles as stores for East Prussian art and Friesen returned to Konigsberg.

  On 1 December 1944 Arthur Grafe was advised to expect a second official from East Prussia who would oversee the transfer of treasures from that region. Strauss found a telegram from Konigsberg to Grafe naming him as Dr Alfred Rohde. Strauss's research in Germany dovetailed with the documents found by Brusov in the bonfire set by Rohde in Konigsberg Castle in June 1945: a report of Rohde's trip to Saxony and his travel permits.

  However, by the time Rohde arrived in Dresden on 4 December 1944, Sachsenburg Castle, west of Chemnitz, was being used as a test centre for biological weapons. Albrechtsburg, near Meissen, had been filled with the Dresden Gallery collection, including Raphael's Sistine Madonna. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Hitler's shadow, had requisitioned Augustusburg, also near Chemnitz, as a storage facility for the Reich Chancellery and it now contained personal items belonging to Hitler, including portraits of him, several grand pianos and Otto von Bismarck's furniture. Grossgrabe Manor, near Kamenz, was full of museum treasures from Dresden. This left Alfred Rohde with only two choices: the castles of Wechselburg and Kriebstein.

  We know from Rohde's report on his Saxony mission, analysed by Kuchumov in 1946, that on 4 December 1944 Rohde and Grafe drove fifty miles west of Dresden into the heart of the Zwickauer Mulde valley. Before the war this sleepy region had been popular with German tourists, who were captivated by its turreted castles and craggy forts. Now it served to remind the Nazi High Command of the indomitable nature of the Allies. Here was Camp Colditz, a maximum-security holding centre for Allied officers, from which 130 POWs had managed to escape to date, scaling the seven-foot-high walls and abseiling down the 250-foot crag.

  In a later interview, Grafe recalled that it was snowing when they arrived at Wechselburg, a Baroque castle built next to an 800-year-old basilica, twelve miles south of Colditz.8 Monks were preparing the church for Christmas and Grafe and Rohde were shown around by one of them.

  Rohde asked permission to use 'unoccupied rooms in the palace's church and [in the palace itself], the large hall on the first level, as well as about five or six other rooms'. Even though this would displace hundreds of refugee families, Grafe ordered the district capital of Rochlitz to requisition the space 'in favour of the municipal art collections of Konigsberg'. Strauss wrote in his dossier for Paul Wandel that Rohde and Grafe left Wechselburg as dusk fell and travelled to Kriebstein, a Gothic fortress twelve miles to the east. In December 1944 this journey would probably have taken more than an hour. Tensions were high and Rohde and Grafe would have been overtaken by dozens of military convoys heading towards the Eastern front. Small huddles of German soldiers manned checkpoints along the road. One can imagine the scene, their car flagged down in the snow, shivering sentries waiting impatiently at the driver's window to inspect papers by torchlight.

  Rohde and Grafe arrived at Kriebstein around 8 p.m. The 600-year-old castle, perched upon an icy spur above the River Zschopau, must have been an impressive sight in the moonlight. From photographs we know that, inside, its dark vaulted corridors were hung with antlers, while long crimson banners bearing swastikas fell from the ceiling of a banqueting hall. Several rooms were already filled with museum exhibits from Dresden. However, space was still available for things of 'irreplaceable value'. In a report submitted by Grafe to his superiors (and found by Strauss), he wrote: 'Four heated rooms in the gatehouse of Kriebstein Castle to be placed at the disposal of the municipal art collections of Konigsberg. In addition Herr Rohde would be very pleased if he could obtain the banqueting hall for the storage of larger-scale goods from the Konigsberg collections.'9 Larger-scale goods could also mean the Amber Room, Strauss advised Paul Wandel, adding that Rohde had chosen the location well. Beside Kriebstein Castle was a small factory that manufactured aeroplane parts. It had its own railway siding connected directly to the Reichsbahn.

  Having proved the Nazis' intention to evacuate the Amber Room to one of two castles in Saxony, Strauss now attempted to confirm that the transportation happened. However, he advised Wandel that he could locate in Berlin only one letter concerning either castle. It was from a Reichsbahn official to the manager of Kriebstein Castle and was dated 19 December 194 5. It mentioned that two specially chartered train carriages were on their way from the East Prussian capital. Here Strauss stumbled. The carriages could not have contained the Amber Room since the date and location contained in the Reichsbahn letter conflicted with one written by Alfred Rohde on 12 January 1945. Three weeks after the two specially chartered train carriages had left for Kriebstein, Rohde advised his superiors that the Amber Room was still being packed in Konigsberg in preparation for its evacuation to Wechselburg Castle.

  Strauss's research was interrupted by his journey to Kaliningrad where he seems to have withheld almost everything he had gleaned from the Soviet files from curator Kuchumov. As an East Prussian who had been based in Konigsberg, maybe Strauss felt possessive, that this mystery was his to solve, and he alone hoped to win the glory and rewards. Or maybe Kuchumov's files have been cleansed.

  What we do know from the Ministry of Truth files before us is that when Strauss returned from the failed Kaliningrad mission he was rewarded by his own government. A letter signed by Wandel, dated June E950, praised Strauss for having 'on his own initiative' diligently searched the Soviet zone for missing art treasures, including the Amber Room. Strauss now received an official commission from the GDR government to head a new investigation into the fate of the Amber Room.10 A race was on, two parallel inquiries were under way. One was headed by a senior palace curator from Leningrad and the other by a senior cultural bureaucrat from the GDR.

  According to this file in the Ministry of Truth, Strauss began his new investigation by writing to every jeweller in the GDR, asking them to report any noticeable increase in the number of carved amber pieces coming on to the market since 1945. He was looking for evidence that the Amber Room had been brought to Germany and broken down.

  Strauss also ordered that every one of the new republic's 921 castles be searched and that all resettlers living in them be interrogated.

  Strauss received permission to personally head investigations in Saxony, a place Kuchumov had been unable to visit in 1947 as his time in Germany had been monopolized by cataloguing Soviet art works in the Derutra warehouse in Berlin.

  A report written by Strauss for Wandel in June 1950 confirmed that his first stop was Kriebstein Castle, one of the two castles that Rohde had selected in December 1944. Strauss did what Kuchumov could have only dreamed of - he located an eyewitness. He found museum curator Walfried Kunz, who described how, in April 1945, Kriebstein Castle, packed with art from all over the Reich (including Konigsberg), had been stormed by the Red Army. Kunz told Strauss that the Soviet commander, based at the nearest town of Waldheim, immediately commandeered the art crammed into the banqueting hall, gatehouse and other rooms. Kunz had been ordered to help open and sort through the crates. But the Amber Room was not among this haul.

  That was not all. Kunz informed Strauss that a special Red Army brigade arrived at Kriebstein in July 1945 had carried out another search. They seemed to know about art and, Kunz claimed, he overheard them talking about Konigsberg and missing treasures from there. But, as far as Kunz knewr, the Soviets found no more. Strauss turned his attentions to Wechselburg Castle, dismissing Kriebstein as a possible location for the Amber Room.

  At Wechselburg, he found an old Catholic f
ather, Gottfried Fussy, who had been caretaker of the basilica for more than thirty years. Fussy confirmed to him that in December 1944 he had shown Dr Alfred Rohde and a museum administrator from Dresden (Arthur Grafe) around but had heard nothing more until Grafe returned shortly before Germany's surrender. Strauss wrote: '[Fussy] was then told [by Grafe] that the transports from Konigsberg had not got through. The railway lines were cut by the Soviet army near Elbing.' According to Father Fussy, the next visitors to Wechselburg were American soldiers in mid-April. Strauss reported to Wandel: 'They found a few crates which they took away.'

  There was only one conclusion that Strauss felt able to convey to his superiors. High-level plans had been made for the evacuation of the Amber Room to Saxony that were thwarted by Allied troop movements and the interruption of transportation routes out of East Prussia. However, given the status of these plans, the high-ranking Nazi officials involved in them and the cachet attached to the Amber Room as an 'irreplaceable treasure', Strauss wrote that it was 'inconceivable' that the Amber Room would have been abandoned in the unsecured Knights' Hall, in a wrecked castle at the epicentre of a besieged city whose future was getting bleaker by the hour. It had survived the war, concealed somewhere in Konigsberg.

  There is only one more document in this Ministry of Truth binder, a June 1959 edition of Freie Welt, an illustrated magazine published by the German-Soviet Friendship Society that contains an 'exclusive' two-part series entitled 'Where is the Famous Amber Room?'

  The article began: 'For the first time all citizens of the GDR will learn the true and fascinating story of the Amber Room, thanks to the generosity of our guest editor, Professor Dr Gerhard Strauss, director of the Faculty of Art History, Humboldt University, Berlin.'

  We are surprised to see Strauss revealing to his fellow citizens something that had up until then been a state secret: 'a covert investigation conducted into the fate of the Soviet Union's greatest treasure'. Strauss informed readers that contrary to the earlier conclusions reached by Professor Alexander Brusov of the State Historical Museum, Moscow, the Amber Room was not destroyed in the defeat of Konigsberg. It was still missing and readers were encouraged to write in to Freie Welt with any information that might help their Soviet comrades find this national treasure.

  It is unthinkable that such a revelation would have appeared without the blessing of the Stasi and the KGB. And that raises the possibility that the recently promoted Professor Dr Gerhard Strauss was a Soviet agent of influence or a Stasi informer. The strands of Cold War intrigue are becoming increasingly difficult to disentangle.

  We revert to the Russian files. In an attempt to understand the precise nature of the relationship between Anatoly Kuchumov and Professor Dr Gerhard Strauss, we have requested all material from the Leningrad curator's papers relating to the 1950S. A slim package has arrived from St Petersburg. Our Friend the Professor says she is busy and has not been able to visit the archive as frequently as she had hoped. Also, she tells us that the archive director intends to limit our research - we can only have six further days. We cannot return to Russia just yet so will have to rely on the professor.

  What we have been sent is a photocopied scrapbook on which is written in large unsteady letters the words YANTARNY KOMNATA, the Amber Room.11

  It contains pages of newspaper articles, and must have been one of those volumes seen by Vladimir Telemakov when the journalist for the car workers' daily visited Kuchumov at his Pavlovsk apartment.

  We flick through wartime reports until we reach three long cuttings from Kaliningradskaya Pravda, a densely written Soviet broadsheet. The use of pictures is spartan as nothing must be allowed to interrupt the columns of minuscule dogma that run page after page like machine code. However, when we notice halfway through the first piece a smudged shot of war-torn Konigsberg and the words 'Yantarny Komnata" we decide to translate them.

  Written by Vladimir Dmetriev, the first article, dated 6 July 1958, was headlined: 'The Search Continues for the Missing Amber Room'.12 Dmetriev revealed to his readers that this was the start of an exclusive three-part series in which 'for the first time all citizens of the USSR will learn the true and fascinating story of the Amber Room'. We have just read a similar phrase - in German.

  Surrender of Konigsberg, April 1945

  Dmetriev wrote of what had, up until then, been a state secret: the covert investigation into the fate of the Soviet Union's greatest treasure, the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace. He informed his readers that contrary to the earlier conclusions of Professor Alexander Brusov of the State Historical Museum in Moscow, the Amber Room had not been destroyed in the fall of Konigsberg and was still missing. Strauss would make exactly the same claims a year later in Freie Welt.

  Reporter Dmetriev claimed that, in December 1949, he was a member of the 'top-secret mission to search for the Amber Room in Kaliningrad', an investigation ordered by ObKom (the oblast or provincial committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and authorized by SovNarKom in Moscow. I was really involved and excited. I had never done anything so interesting before. We reported every day to ObKom our measurements of the castle and during the evening analysed results, as if it was a difficult crossword.' We are certain that Dmetriev was referring to the same expedition as the one led by Kuchumov, to which Gerhard Strauss was called. It was supposed to be covert.

  However, Dmetriev continued: 'This was vital work. Soldiers were assigned, sappers, engineers, officers, drainage experts with water pumps, generators to light up the rubble, tunnels and bunkers. I looked through fortresses and estates, wondering where the Amber Room could be hidden.' We are puzzled that Kuchumov made no mention of a valued team member called Vladimir Dmetriev and realize that our view of the 1949 mission has until now been restricted to the interrogation room in the Hotel Moscow, where Kuchumov faced down Gerhard Strauss.

  The Kaliningradskaya Pravda report revealed that a crack team of specialists and Communist Party cadre were on the trail of those surviving Nazis who knew the coordinates of the Amber Room's secret location. 'Write in,' Dmetriev urged his readers. 'Write to us with all your information.' Dmetriev was particularly keen to have help in finding Helmut Will, Helmut Friesen, Gerhard Zimmerman, Ernst Gall and Friedrich Henkensiefken. Surely it was not a coincidence that these names were also on Kuchumov's list of missing Germans and that one of them, Friedrich Henkensiefken, was the Schlossoberinspektor of Konigsberg Castle referred to on the cryptic doodle sent to the great curator from Berlin.

  The second article from Kaliningradskaya Pravda was published three days later, on 9 July E958. In this piece, Dmetriev revealed that the first Soviet investigation into the fate of the Amber Room, in May 1945, mounted by Professor Alexander Brusov, was a debacle. Using a series of transparent pseudonyms, Dmetriev launched a stinging attack on 'Viktor Barsov' (Alexander Brusov) and team member 'Comrade Beliaev' (Tatyana Beliaeva), accusing them of being slipshod and failing to follow even the most obvious clues. 'Barsov' was 'muddle-headed' and omitted to question the key witness in the inquiry, Dr Alfred Rohde, director of the Konigsberg Castle Museum, about the Amber Room, partly because 'Barsov did not know that [the Amber Room] was taken from the Catherine Palace'.

  These claims wildly conflict with Professor Brusov's own diary in which we read that his primary objective was to travel to Konigsberg to bring home the Amber Room and that Rohde was his key source. Dmetriev was lying.

  He then claimed that 'Barsov' came into contact with Rohde and his wife only by chance, when he hired them to help search the castle for other missing treasures, giving them the same pay and food rations as those received by Soviet helpers. 'Rohde and his wife had a wonderful, comfortable life and work,' Dmetriev wrote, 'until they disappeared.'

  From 'a high-level military source' Dmetriev learned the true fate of Rohde and his wife, who did not die of sickness, malnutrition or suicide. 'Both had been poisoned,' Dmetriev revealed, 'murdered to stop them giving away the secret location of the Amber Room.' Dmetriev w
rote that two death certificates found by 'Barsov', stating that Rohde and his wife had contracted dysentery, were fakes and that the doctor who allegedly signed them after carrying out post-mortems had vanished. When the Soviet authorities opened the graves to re-examine the bodies, there was nothing inside them. 'Even today, we have not found [Rohde's] real tomb,' wrote Dmetriev. Yet Brusov had written in his diary that Rohde was still alive when he left the city in July 1945.

  The second Dmetriev article concluded with a confession from 'Barsov' that we read in astonishment. I am a historian,' he told the newspaper. I am naive about the character of people. I am not able to see their mood. I cannot understand if a person is joyful or sad. This became a problem after I got orders to search for treasures with the Soviet Army.'

  It is hard to reconcile this voice with the one in the diary we have read. Either 'Barsov'/Brusov must have been compelled to make this humiliating public statement for reasons that we do not yet understand or the entire article was a fabrication.

  The third and final piece for Kaliningradskaya Pravda, published on 12 July 1958, was far shorter but equally explosive, as it touched on the issue of treason. Reporter Dmetriev wrote that military sources had revealed to him that a number of Soviet museum curators were traitors who collaborated with the Nazis: 'Our German friends and their little Soviet helpers know the secret of the Amber Room. It did not burn. It is still not found. The search continues. Dear comrades, send your notes and proposals to Kaliningradskaya Pravda. '