The Amber Room

by Adrian Levy

Enke continued:

  The result of ten years' research is now to hand in the form of an art-historical-criminological study... in which I am furnishing proof that the Amber Room was brought on 9 February 1945 to Thuringia and was then conveyed in the beginning of April 1945 to Saxony. I am contradicting all other versions (East Prussia, Konigsberg, the Baltic, Bavaria, Lower Saxony)... Dear Comrade Beater, please do find a possibility for me and ascertain how I could report directly to you... I remain, with the best regards of an old Fighter [sic], yours Paul Enke.

  The situation must have been critical for Enke to go over the heads of his immediate superiors and make contact with Beater, one of the most powerful men in the GDR; with the Stasi from the start, a member of the notorious kidnapping gangs sent out by Mielke in the 19 50s to bring back defectors.

  Six days later, Enke wrote again:

  5 February 1978, 118 Berlin-Griinau, Dear Comrade Beater! Initially please accept my most sincere wishes for the rudest of rude health and I hope that you will continue to be successful at your work! The enclosed work might perhaps be suitable to clarify somewhat the extent of the problem BZ [Amber Room]... The difference between my manuscripts and all other publications consists to a large extent in the... constant and general use of facts and proofs indicating the exact sources and renouncing all speculative pseudo-facts.

  There was a justificatory tone creeping into this letter, as if some authority had questioned Enke's research.

  In case Beater still needed to be convinced of Enke's discernment and experience, there was a postscript:

  Within the framework of my Service Qualification as 'historian', I presently read the newest book by David Irving (England): Hitler and His Generals. Eight years ago Irving had been in contact with us... and together we searched near Perleberg for items from the legacies of Nazi leaders. In the above mentioned book [Irving writes] about this matter... 'It took weeks to search a forest in East Germany with the aide of a Proton Magnetometer... but the jam jar, supposedly containing the last Goebbels diaries, [was not there] although according to the map we stood above it.'25

  There is no suggestion that David Irving was ever in the pay of the Stasi and we do not know if Beater replied. But one month later, on 15 February 1978, Enke submitted another plan of action: he wanted permission to interrogate Koch (who was still in Poland) and to contact the Soviet authorities.26

  On 21 August 1978 action was taken. The Stasi rejected Enke's appeals and instead called a moratorium on all investigations based on evidence given by GDR citizen 'Rudi Ringel'. The order went out: '"Rudi Ringel" to be reinterrogated'. The Stasi agent, brought in for the task, was Uwe Geissler, the man we had met at 'Goat's Throat Village'.27 He had not mentioned this.

  GEISSLER: There has never been an SS Sturmbannfiihrer or an SS man of a similar rank with the name ['Ringel']. What is your explanation?

  'RUDI RINGEL': My father was very brown [a militant Nazi]. He joined the Nazi party on 1 May 1937. Everyone knew that it was him who had burned down Konigsberg's synagogue. He wore many uniforms, brown, grey and black, but he had certainly had the double silver lighting-strike runes [of the SS] pinned to his epaulettes. The family used other names. Perhaps my father was enlisted into the SS using one of those.

  GEISSLER: Why did your father keep documents after 1945 that could have sentenced him to capital punishment?

  'RUDI RINGEL': My father was a Prussian wooden-head. I now think that my own behaviour can be connected to that family trait.

  GEISSLER: How did you find the letters?

  'RUDI RINGEL': It was while I was clearing the basement. I found a hinged pouch with the name of my father on it. It was locked and nearly rotten. But inside there were sheets that did refer to the Amber Room. On one my father was addressed as Sturmbannfiihrer. I remember seeing the Nazi eagle and that it came from the RSHA [Reich Security Main Office]. At the time I burned the documents because I was of the opinion that it was better if they didn't exist.

  GEISSLER: Under what circumstances have you been in contact with the Soviet state authorities?

  'RUDI RINGEL': In the illustrated Freie Welt there was a request for people to come forward. I wrote to Berlin and said I could make a statement. The editors of Freie Welt [names blacked out] visited me. Then I flew to Moscow and Kaliningrad.

  GEISSLER: The Soviet authorities state that you indicated to them that the Amber Room was stored at Ponarth [a south-western suburb of Konigsberg] Church, a building that the SS blew up. There was only one church in Ponarth and it was not blown up in 1945. What do you say now?

  'RUDI RINGEL': It must be a translation fault. I have never made such a statement. I only talked about a path from the castle [Konigsberg] to Steindamm Church.

  GEISSLER: In the statements you have made on the Amber Room to date has your imagination taken over?

  'RUDI RINGEL': Today I could have made it very easy for myself and told you that everything was fantasy. But this is what I remember. I am prepared to think about it once again and if I remember anything further I will contact the Stasi. I have read the protocol and this statement to you is true.

  The document was signed by 'Bernd' and 'Rudi Ringel'.

  Poor 'Rudi Ringel' (described in this interrogation report as a lathe operator). He must have been enthralled by the revelations in Freie Welt and come forward of his own volition, probably hoping to win kudos with the local party, possibly a glass of schwarzbier or a holiday in the spa town of Friedrichroda. Instead, he was whisked off to Moscow and then Kaliningrad, forced to become a party to state secrets, interrogated by Kuchumov, then Enke and now 'Bernd'. But the one thing he could never do, after writing that fateful letter to Freie Welt, not if he wanted to stay alive, was back down.

  On 9 November 1979 'Bernd', a.k.a. Uwe Geissler, reported back to the Stasi Secretariat. He had at last found trace of 'Rudi Ringel's' father and what he revealed was not what he told us in the concrete chalet in 'Goat's Throat Village'.

  'Rudi Ringel's' father was a member of the NSDAP but from 1940 was attached to a post office protection unit. 'Bernd' wrote: 'After an injury [name blacked out] suffered while serving in occupied Poland he was disabled out of the service. According to his daughter, since then he had made a living by manufacturing bags from scrap fabric' It was highly unlikely that an invalided post office security guard would have been entrusted with the Amber Room by Erich Koch.

  At the back of 'Rudi Ringel's' Stasi file is this conclusion:

  The statement made by ['Rudi Ringel'] is wrong. He either deliberately or indirectly made difficulties for the Amber Room investigation and misdirected the search, causing it great harm. It is suggested that judicial responsibility should be examined according to paragraph 228, concerning false accusations, and paragraph 233, aiding and abetting.

  'Rudi Ringel' also stood accused of 'providing false information to Soviet organs'. All of the Soviet excavations in Kaliningrad based on 'Rudi Ringel's' evidence had been a waste of time.

  We call Geissler at his apartment in East Berlin, near Allee der Kosmonauten, and ask him what happened to Enke and his digs to find BSCH, the secret hiding place for the Amber Room? Was it these digs that led to the outing of 'Rudi Ringel' as the son of a lame post office guard?

  All we can hear on the line is the wheezing of Geissler's emphysemic lungs. 'We dug,' says Geissler. 'We dug and dug. Pulled in experts from Switzerland. Heavy machinery hired from abroad. Paid for it all in hard currency. Spent 6 million or thereabouts [500,000 dollars] on excavating just one of the mines. And eventually we did get into the tunnels of Schwalbe V, near Gera. It had been a Nazi underground factory where scientists were trying to synthesize petrol from coal. Enke had told the bosses, "We are the first to get in." But when we lit up our torches... ' The line goes silent. A crackle as Geissler inhales. 'We found nothing but small, charred, rolled-up pieces of Pravda dating from July 1945. The Red Army had been there, decades before us, and left behind their cigarette butts. We even knew the date. Back in
1945 supplies of everything were low, including cigarette papers, and the Soviet troops used pages from Pravda instead. Enke had been wasting our time.'

  As we ponder how everything came to a grinding halt in an empty mine already searched by the Soviets (with 'Rudi Ringel' in the dock), the functionary in pearls enters the room. 'Time, please,' she says, tapping her wristwatch.

  1O

  In the last week of May 1980 Generalmajor Karli Coburger and Generalmajor Jochen Biichner, two of the Stasi's most senior directorate heads, met to discuss Paul Enke's career.1

  According to Enke's personal file, KSII404/82, he had 'exposed LOO possible locations for the Amber Room' over twenty-five years of service. Using the pseudonym Dr Paul Kohler and the cover 'functionary at the State Archives Administration', Enke had 'got in touch with West German citizens and with FRG journalists' in connection with the issue of restitution of stolen Soviet art.2 But his career was not without blemish.

  The generalmajors also had before them this reference from 15 April 1952, written when Enke was a young police recruit: 'Character Appraisal. The calm manner revealed by Enke in most of his dealings is quite obviously only an apparent show, hiding a vivacious and impulsive character.'3

  Generalmajors Coburger and Biichner also read this from 5 October 1964, one week after Enke had been sworn in as a Stasi agent. While the new officer was prepared to 'carry out tasks that may exceed normal working hours... Enke tends to deal exclusively with the theory and distance himself from practical activities... Sometimes, he also tends to adopt a certain stubbornness of manner whereby he is often not open-minded enough to confront criticism of his person or decisions.'4

  Given these doubts, we are suprised that Enke was entrusted for so many years with such a sensitive, secret and costly operation as the search for the Amber Room.

  On 30 May 1980 Enke was called to Stasi headquarters at Normannenstrasse in Berlin-Lichtenberg. A report of that meeting noted: 'Comrade Biichner opened the discussion with the statement that it was necessary to raise the research work on the art robberies in the Soviet Union to a national level and thereby the results of the researches carried out by Comrade Enke should be consolidated in one official dossier.' It was concluded that the Amber Room inquiry should 'take on a more political operative character' and Enke was 'obliged to place all material relevant to the case for operative evaluation'.5 Enke was told: 'All the above named material, accompanied by advice and annotations, must be delivered by L.30 p.m. on 4 June E980.' He had four and a half days to pack up his career.

  Biichner called the meeting to a close. Taking into consideration increasing bouts of poor health, Enke was now 'granted sick-leave and will later be retired with a pension'. As he was shown the door, Biichner wished him 'much success in carrying out his new brief'.6 The official retirement date was set for 1 January 1981 but in the meantime there was much for Enke to do.

  Enke was being edged out and the Ministry of Truth files before us confirm that the order for a new 'systematic approach' to the Amber Room investigation came from the highest level - Erich Mielke. The files do not explain why the Minister for State Security ordered a completely new inquiry, but it must have been connected with the humiliating discovery that the Stasi had squandered millions without even having had a passable shot at the prize.

  Enke's Amber Room investigation was to be renamed 'Operation Puschkin' and would receive higher levels of funding and staffing, in the form of a 'Special Task Force' that would report directly to Generalmajor Neiber, Mielke's first deputy. Enke's former boss Oberst Seufert was the only man from the old team who would remain, assisted by his new aide Oberstleutant Bauer and liaison officers Hauptmann Rudolph and Oberleutnant Kiihn.7

  While Enke's career was being deboned, he was sent home to his apartment in Berlin-Griinau. He was to remain on call, with a safe installed in his house, although the Secretariat envisaged an outflow of confidential material from the apartment rather than a continuation of the old days during which Paul Enke was left alone to stockpile documents for which there was only one index, in his head.

  Enke was required to sign a form that stated 'today even more than hitherto our activities and results must be kept strictly secret and conspiratorial in order to avoid supplying arguments to our enemies that may lead to politically-hostile [sic] actions against the GDR and the Soviet Union'. We wonder if he had been indiscreet before as well as prone to bouts of fantasy.

  In future, only Oberst Seufert and Oberst Stolze, head of the Nazi archives, would have access to the Amber Room files. Further, 'the previous permission of Seufert must be obtained if it becomes necessary to contact citizens of other countries'.8

  Another significant player in the old Amber Room investigation was also terminated. A handwritten note by Hauptmann Rudolph recorded: 'Professor Dr Gerhard Strauss should be deleted from any further utilization in the procedure "Operation Puschkin".' An attached note (that also confirmed what we have suspected all along, that Strauss was a Stasi collaborator) stated: 'Professor Strauss has been removed from the whole process of the Amber Room after the intervention of the Comrade Minister.'9 (After reunification Strauss's place of work, Humboldt University, would be exposed in the German press as a Stasi hothouse, with one in six professors and one in ten employees having had links to Mielke's ministry).

  For Enke, there was to be some recompense. Seufert suggested that the Secretariat award him the Battle Decoration in gold (Kampforden) and a one-off bonus of L,500 Ostmarks - one month's salary.10 But surely nothing could console Enke, having been forced out of that which he created.

  Once Enke had turned over his paperwork, he was ordered to complete his long-overdue book, an exercise that the Ministry of Truth files stated was 'critical to the success of the new "Operation Puschkin"'. The Secretariat had ditched Enke's dogmatic title in favour of something more pithy: Bernsteinzimmer Report. Enke was given just months in which to polish his manuscript and, to hurry him along, two Stasi-approved Lektors (editors) were hired: Wolfgang Ney, Humboldt University professor of criminology and Dr Manfred Kirmse, director of the Documentation Centre at the State Archives Administration.11 No mention yet of Giinter Wermusch or Die Wirtschaft, the eventual publishers.

  According to Ministry of Truth files, the latter chapters of Bernsteinzimmer Report would provide a 'description of the finding of the new tracks of the Amber Room in Thuringia', proving that 'arriving from Konigsberg, the unique art collection of Erich Koch, including the Amber Room, had been stored in the State Museum of Weimar and that on 9 or 10 April [1945] these collections had been taken to a place of safety away from the approaching US Army. The man in charge of the double relocation of the collections was Albert Popp.' The book would 'succeed in proving that a man living in the GDR and serving as an informant to the Soviet government (a.k.a. 'Rudi Ringel') told how his father was supposed to have concealed the Amber Room and that as a result of the author's research... new tracks [of 'Rudi Ringel's' story] point to western Saxony, a version supported by information emanating from the Soviet Union which was passed under conditions of confidentiality to the author'.12

  Given the internal investigation into 'Rudi Ringel's' evidence, the failed digs in Saxony and the pensioning off of Paul Enke, Bernsteinzimmer Report, still today the most famous book on the Amber Room mystery, was shaping up to be a classic exercise in disinformation. In a report to Generalmajor Neiber, Oberst Seufert confirmed this, writing: 'The book is to be published to lend new impulses to the search.'13

  While Enke sweated over his manuscript, Seufert picked through his subordinate's files and began to discover significant gaps. Enke had never seen Professor Brusov's assessment of Konigsberg Castle Museum director Alfred Rohde, written in 1945, or Anatoly Kuchumov's dismantling of it in 1946. Enke had never been shown any of Kuchumov's 1946 interrogations. Or a transcript of Kuchumov's interview with of Dr Gerhard Strauss in the Hotel Moscow in Kaliningrad in 1949. In fact, Enke had mislaid the Stasi's entire file on Gerhard Strauss,
an incident that now led to a high-level inquiry, with one Stasi directorate head writing to another: 'This file could be of great importance to our investigations but for operative reasons it cannot be located. We have already been looking for it in the State Archives Administration and the Central State Archive in Potsdam with no result. Do you have it?'14

  Although Enke's main investigations to date hinged on the theory that the former Gauleiter Erich Koch had ordered the evacuation of the Amber Room and that it had been shipped from East Prussia alongside Koch's private art collection, Seufert reported that Enke had never seen Strauss's cross-examination in Warsaw of Erich Koch from June 1959 (in which Koch stated that it would have been impossible to evacuate the Amber Room to Germany). Instead Enke had derived his intelligence on the former Gauleiter almost exclusively from Polish and Soviet newspapers.

  The Gauleiter of Saxony, Martin Mutschmann, had signed off all art transports into his state and yet Enke had found no documents connecting Mutschmann with the Amber Room. Although it was an open secret that the Red Army had probably found Mutschmann in the Erzgebirge in May 1945 and taken him back to Moscow, Enke had made no formal request to the KGB for intelligence. There was no evidence (aside from that given by an aged Weimar art dealer) that Albert Popp, the man who had evacuated Hitler's half-sister, had also been the driver of the Red Cross van bearing Koch's art collection to the Erzgebirge. There were no witnesses or corroborative facts that supported the claim that the man in the passenger seat was 'Rudi Ringel's' father. Not only had Enke based his investigations on one source alone ('Rudi Ringel'), he had also tailored the source's statement to fit his own theory. While we had read in Kuchumov's original debriefing of 'Rudi Ringel' that BSCH (the supposed codename for the secret Amber Room storage facility) was described as in Konigsberg, Paul Enke placed it in East Germany.