The Amber Room

by Adrian Levy

  'Files of the Criminal Investigation Department, Ingolstadt.' Extract from a report by Professor Gotze, senior physician, Hamburg-Eppendorf Psychiatric Hospital, May 1987:

  The patient always reacted in an identical manner, when challenged directly about mysterious or occult facts; emphasizing the importance of his own person, hinting at his function as a confidant of secrets, as a researcher of complicated areas and a connoisseur of international political entanglements - and of the dangers arising for him out of such matters.

  Professor Gotze was suspicious of his conspiracy theories.

  'Villa Askania Nova, Schloss Strasse, Vaduz.' A letter from the Baron:

  1 June 1987, Dear Mr Stein! Enclosed please find a letter from Mr Popov, Deputy Director of the Soviet Television Corporation and a telegram from Julian Semyonov. You can see that you have not been forgotten. I have naturally replied that it is impossible that you and [Robert Stein] accept the invitation to the Soviet Union for 3 June, especially as no financial proposals for the flight have been mentioned. I am enclosing a 100-DM note for your expenses. With all my heart I wish you an early convalescence. Eduard von Falz-Fein.

  George Stein and his son had obviously been planning to take the controversial American theory to Moscow, where it would be broadcast to maximum effect. The Baron seemed to be keeping his distance.

  'Files of the Criminal Investigation Department, Ingolstadt.' Extract from Professor Gotze's case notes, E6 June 1987:

  Mr George Stein has been treated in our ward between 23 April and 16 June 1987 after being treated in the Chirurgical Dept. 5 for an abdominal cut... during the operation we carried out a partial resection of the colon, which was followed by intensive medical care. We succeeded in stabilizing the patient's post-operative condition in such a way that after a few days we were able to recommend his transfer to a ward... Mr Stein left our ward on 15 June, with the intention of travelling to Switzerland.

  When Stein was hospitalized, one week after his Amber Room documentary was broadcast, he had suffered a serious abdominal injury. But there was no explanation of the circumstances in which Stein was stabbed and we cannot understand why Stein made no mention of it in the letter to the Baron. Maybe the men who drugged and tortured him in 19 8 2 had returned to finish the job. Stein's fears might have been genuine after all.

  'Files of the Criminal Investigation Department, Ingolstadt.' Extract from a report by Dr Benno Splieth, Clinical Assistant, District Hospital, Starnberg, Bavaria. Another medical report, this one originating from southern Germany, was written twelve days after Stein was discharged from a hospital in northern Germany.

  29 June 1987... We report about the patient who was found yesterday in Starnberg woods with abdominal trauma and brought to our clinic by the emergency doctor. The exploratory laparotomy revealed a 5-10 cm long diagonal gaping wound in the middle of the upper abdomen with an opening into the peritoneum, which was contaminated with grass... two damaged veins in the vicinity of the transverse colonic-mesenterium were noted, from which the patient had lost an estimated two litres of blood.

  Only two months after the unexplained stabbing incident in Hamburg, George Stein was seriously injured again. Stein appeared to have been pursued across Germany. We calculate that this second incident must have happened shortly after Stein visited the Baron in Vaduz. The Baron had told us that he had put Stein on a train to Munich when he turned him out of villa, Askania Nova, at the end of June 1987. But why had the Baron not mentioned to us that Stein had been stabbed, once before arriving in Liechtenstein and again, shortly after he left?

  'Krieskrankenhaus Starnberg am See, Bavaria.' A letter from George Stein. '7 July 1987, Dear Baron, I have now been here one week. Berlin had to be cancelled. Dr Enke could not get a visa for me. I will be here for another six days. Where am I going to then?... Couldn't cash the cheque. Regards, G. Stein.' We cannot understand why none of Stein's correspondence mentions the fact that he was stabbed twice and nearly died. Instead, he was preoccupied with his failure to get a visa from Paul Enke, whose real identity he had learned at last.

  'Krieskrankenhaus Starnberg am See, Bavaria.' Another letter from George Stein, whose hospital stay was much longer than he had predicted:

  13 August 1987, Dear and honoured Baron! After six weeks here at the clinic I will move at the weekend; my surgeon has a weekend house, so for a start I can shelter there temporarily. I cannot go home because my children have sold everything... I am left without a penny to my name. The next three weeks are going to be difficult for me... I must manage to get through with only 120 DM... I suppose one can also live from dry rolls... What is going to happen later, I still don't know. But the Amber Room research goes on!!! And this is the only thing that matters!! Please send me something I can smoke. When are you going to Russia? With the kindest regards, George Stein. Forwarding Address: George Stein c/o 8079 Altdorf, Post: Titting, Bavaria. No Telephone Connection.

  Although weak, Stein was still obsessed with the Amber Room. Once again he put pressure on the Baron.

  'Files of the Criminal Investigation Department, Ingolstadt.' Extract from an outpatient referral from Starnberg to Hamburg. As far as hospitals staff were concerned, Stein was heading back home.

  15 August 1987. Dear [Dr Arlt, Ward Registrar, Hamburg-Eppendorf Psychiatric Hospital], enclosed please find some additional information about George Stein, who will attend your clinic on 25 August 1987... Stein is an intelligent, subtly sophisticated personality in full possession of his mental faculties.. . Stein's strategic guideline for his life [is to] look for much honour even at the price of large numbers of unwanted enemies... Many kind regards, Dr Benno Splieth, Clinical Assistant.

  George Stein's Bavarian doctor was upbeat about his patient's recovery prospects but concerned about the forces pitted against him. We still do not know if his enemies really existed or if they were in his head.

  '8079 Altdorf, Post: Titting, Bavaria.' A postcard from George Stein who was recuperating from his recent traumas in the countryside.

  18 August 1987, Dear Dr Splieth! I am well, I am walking a lot, write and make new plans! Your parents have been here yesterday, we hung up the laundry, which had become quite stiff in the sun. I intend to walk now to Eichstadt to post the mail. In the enclosure you can see how the publication of one of my books is being planned. Kind regards, yours George Stein.

  The enclosure is missing, so we can only presume that the book was about the Amber Room and Stein's American theory. It is remarkable that Stein had lost none of his bravura and even intended to set out on a round trek to the post office that we calculate would be forty miles.

  According to a report in Bild, a farmer claimed to have seen George Stein emerging from a hotel, Pension Schneider, in the small Bavarian hamlet of Altdorf in the early hours of 20 August 1987, shortly after sending his postcard to Dr Splieth. The owner of Pension Schneider told the police that Stein had arrived days before in a highly agitated state and during his stay ate very little, spending most days out walking.

  We drive across the belly of Germany, following the line of the Austrian Alps, then turn north, through Bavaria. We skirt Munich and head along the A9 autobahn, past the medieval city of Ingolstadt (the setting for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), where George Stein's criminal file originated. A side road plunges between hop poles and low-slung whitewashed farm buildings. Twelve miles down the road lies Altdorf, a hamlet of less than half a dozen houses, fringed by Titting Wald.

  We read in Bild how, on the afternoon of 20 August 1987, Aloise Dirch, a resident of Altdorf, found a body lying in the ruins of the fourteenth-century castle that stands on a hill above the village. Kriminalhauptkommissar Wermuth from Ingolstadt wrote in his report that the victim has been stabbed in the abdomen several times.3 The pathologist from Ingolstadt hospital, who examined the body, wrote that most of the wounds were made 'using a dissecting scalpel'. He also found disturbing evidence of other recent 'sacrificial cuts to the [victim's] abdominal wall'.


  Two police photographs exist of the body as it was discovered, lying beneath fallen beech leaves, a relatively tidy scene for such a violent death. In the first picture there are few signs of struggle, only smears of dried blood on the victim's fingers and caked beneath his nails. The face, with its slightly perplexed expression, as if he had consumed too much red wine and fallen off his chair, is instantly recognizable. The thick-rimmed glasses slightly askew, shirt buttons undone. And in the second crime shot, an unseen hand has brushed aside the leaves and raised the victim's shirt to reveal a series of deep gashes across the upper abdomen. Beside the body lie two pairs of scissors and a scalpel. Next to them is a half-empty packet of Marlboros and a glass flask, its contents either drunk or spilt, as if a stake-out or perhaps a night-time rendezvous had been envisaged.

  Police photograph of the body of George Stein, 20 August 1987

  When we arrive in Altdorf it is drizzling. We cannot find Pension Schneider or anyone who knows Dr Benno Splieth's parents, who supposedly had a weekend house here. In fact, although we try many doors, everybody is determined to be out. We spot a small sign, pointing to a footpath up the hill in the direction of 'Ruine Brunneck, L.5km', and see a castle on top of the hill. We follow the track beside a barn filled with lowing cows and pass a young woman gardening who runs off as we near. We press on into a copse of beeches. Dry leaves crunch beneath our feet. The canopy is thick. The wood gloomy. And then we hear a slow, deep drumming. Quietly at first and then more percussive, it nears. Finally, there are gusts of breath and snapping branches. We jump back as a deer skitters across the path.

  Climbing a muddy bank up through the trees, we spot a castle turret and a gateway. Inside the ruin is an amphitheatre of old trees. A recent fire pit. Some charred branches. Old graffiti scored in Gothic script on to the trunks: 'SCH L', '1964/66', 'LOEH 76/77'. The letters 'B', 'Z', and 'CH'. The word 'Goppingen'. All of it is familiar, but not quite right. In the distance we hear a chainsaw scream.

  We imagine George Stein here at dawn, having climbed up from Pension Schneider in the dark, looking out across the vale of Altdorf, watching the green tractor below churning the rust-red soil. And by the time the sun had risen high in the sky, he had bled to death.

  The discovery of George Stein's disembowelled corpse was front-page news across Germany and the Soviet Union. Many of the reports lingered over the ritualistic nature of his death and his proclivity for embarrassing the West German government with revelations about wartime loot. Reporters converged on the torpid hamlet of Altdorf and besieged the bankrupt fruit farm in Stelle. Rumours spread that the West German hobby-Historiker had been murdered to stop him revealing the hiding place of the Amber Room. Izvestiya reported:

  Historian George Stein for twenty years searched for the Amber Room and other works of art. He achieved much and was able to help several former owners retrieve their property - including the Soviet Union... Unknown assassins have already tried to murder Stein on several occasions... The circumstances and motives of his death have not yet been satisfactorily cleared up.4

  The official Stasi reports concerning Stein's death were also conspiratorial. One to Deputy Minister Neiber, stated:

  The starting point for many of our contacts concerning the Amber Room was George Stein, who has died under mysterious circumstances... During the period of collaboration Stein passed us more than 150 files and diligently followed any clues received... George Stein cooperated regularly and was an important person for our investigations in West Germany.

  But there was no time for mourning: 'Now that [Stein's] dead it is advisable to try to create active connections with... Baron Falz-Fein.'5

  Regardless of whether Stein's death was murder or suicide, it played into the hands of someone with whom he had continually competed with for suzerainty over the Amber Room investigation. The previous summer, on 30 June 19S6, a meagre paperback volume with a cheap, pliable cover had appeared in East German bookshops promising to unravel the thrilling mystery of the 'missing Eighth Wonder of the World', proving that, 'contrary to other claims and suspicions, the Amber Room was not destroyed'. Bernsteinzimmer Report, Paul Enke's magnum opus, had been published, at last, by Die Wirtshaft and edited by Giinter Wermusch. Those who asked for biographical information were advised that Enke was a functionary in the GDR Ministry of the Interior. Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of the Stasi.

  With George Stein dead (and a strong suspicion he had been murdered for spreading Amber Room secrets), Bernsteinzimmer Report became a bestseller. Vlad Lapsky, Berlin correspondent for Izvestiya, wrote: 'A short time ago the book's second edition appeared in a relatively high run only six months after 20,000 copies of the first edition had been sold. It practically never reached the tables of the bookshops.'6

  Public imagination, pricked in 1958 by Kaliningradskaya Pravda and in 19 59 by Freie Welt, now fed off the chilling drama surrounding Stein's death and the authoritative details contained in Bernsteinzimmer Report: interviews with real eyewitnesses, original Nazi documents saved from the fire, explosive allegations linking the West German, British and American governments to a vast conspiracy to steal the world's most valuable treasure.

  The climax of Bernsteinzimmer Report was set in the spring of 194 5: a Red Cross van driven by Albert Popp and probably SS Sturmbannfiihrer 'Ringel', loaded down with the art collection of the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch, and the Amber Room. Skirting Allied bombers, Popp and 'Ringel' raced through Nazi Weimar to a disused mine in the western Erzgebirge in Saxony. Page 227 concluded: '[Gauleiter of Saxony] Mutschmann, Albert Popp and SS Sturmbannfiihrer 'Ringel' have taken the secret with them to the grave of where some of the most valuable goods of world culture were hidden for the filthy fascist plans of the future.'

  For once the Stasi was delighted with the out-of-favour Enke and, in assessing the impact of Bernsteinzimmer Report, Oberst Seufert revealed that its sole aim was 'to reawaken awareness of the FRG's public' in the hope they would write in, leading 'to new hints'. Seufert reassured the Secretariat that Enke's book 'is not a diary of the search' and there were no secrets in it 'as the documents and facts used are... practically accessible to everyone'.7

  One of the key facts, the Erich Koch connection with the Amber Room, would be revealed as a bogus story just months after the book came out. In an interview conducted with the elderly ex-Gauleiter in his Polish prison shortly before his death on 15 November 1986 (thirty-seven years after he was diagnosed as suffering from a terminal illness), Koch told journalist Mieczyslaw Pozhinsky that he had never known what had happened to the Amber Room. 'Do you think that in the spring of 194 5, with the Red Army attacking in all directions, I had time to worry about those boxes?' he asked.8

  However, the readers of Bernsteinzimmer Report were not listening. Thousands wrote in to GDR publishers Die Wirtschaft with new angles on old scenarios. 'After careful perusal of your book about the disappeared Amber Room, I suddenly recalled everything,' wrote Herbert from ZeLilenroda, a town twenty miles north-east of the Erzgebirge.9 In 1953 Herbert had trained as a fireman at a castle near Weimar, where he had discovered 'in the half-open drawer of a cupboard and also on the floor in a shallow dish were lying small honey-yellow stones of amber'.

  Other correspondents were more imaginative. Gerhard from Uder, a village twelve miles south-east of Gottingen in West Germany, wrote: 'My life has been tragically involved with these events. I have lived to see some quite incredible things.' Most incredible was Gerhard's claim that, on 22 January 1945, he had seen a Special Gauleiter Train packed with the Amber Room panels, commanded by SS Sturmbannfiihrer 'Ringel'. Gerhard claimed even to have heard 'Ringel' talking on the telephone to Erich Koch and then Hermann Goring.10 Since the Stasi inquiry was still underway, Enke was called on to weed out the fantasists.

  Then, on 7 December 1987, Paul Enke was found dead, at the age of sixty-three. Another death connected with the Amber Room. But this one barely raised a murmur in the press, as Paul Enke had hardly e
xisted. Very few people were invited to attend his funeral at an East Berlin cemetery, his casket lowered into the grave in the rain, watched by a gaggle of sodden and disparate associates including his Lektor, Giinter Wermusch. And afterwards Oberst Seufert licked and stuck shut the composite file on a life. Enke, Paul, file number KSII404/82, was deactivated, filed away with the cold cases on one of the seven reinforced floors of the Stasi's central archive.

  However, the hunt for the Amber Room would carry on. Despite the orders from Moscow of 1986 to desist from searching, the death of the agent closest to the inquiry and his main source in the West, the Stasi would not give up on 'Operation Puschkin'. We are amazed to see a report fired off to Deputy Minister Neiber: 'What can be done now that Enke is dead? How can we utilize Enke's contacts and extend them for further measures in searching for the Amber Room?' The Stasi was obsessed with finding the Russian treasure, even though they had discovered nothing new and had had all their old Erzgebirge theories seriously undermined. There was no good operational reason for the Stasi to persist (alone without their Soviet comrades), so the impetus must have come from on high, possibly a 'minister's must'. Maybe Erich Mielke was unable to let go of his fantasy of winning plaudits in Moscow by presenting them with the ultimate prize, the Amber Room.