After reading the novel The Amber Room by Steve Berry, I’ve attempted to find some more information on this work of art. I realize his book is fiction, so I’m sure that at least some of his historical facts may be innacurate.
For those that have never heard of it, the Amber room was the largest work of art ever made out of amber, commissioned by Frederick William of Persia, later given to Peter the Great, and then stolen back by the Nazis. Its been estimated to be worth around $250,000,000 if it were to still exist.
Anyway, the little information that I have found has come from websites that are a few years old. So my question is, what is the current thought on where the Amber Room is located?
Steve Berry seems to pretty much discount the idea that the Amber Room was destroyed by the Allied bombing of Konigsburg, and most of the sites that I found seem to agree with him on that.
But every website has a different idea as to where the amber panels are located…is there a general consensus these days on where it might (roughly) be located?
Also, is there any truth behind the “curse” of the Amber Room? Steve Berry mentions that several people have died under strange circumstances while searching for the treasure, and other sites have mentioned this as well without giving any specifics on who has died (or been murdered).
Sorry, I meant to type Prussia but my fingers typed out Persia for some reason. I think that is an acceptable Americanization of his name, though.
Interesting link – however, that’s just a recreation of the Amber Room. Supposedly the original panels of the Amber Room that Hitler stole still exist somewhere.
From what I can determine, there is no “general consensus” of where it may be. It is thought that the crates containing the disassembled room were still in Königsberg when Russians stormed the city near the end of WW2. What is unclear is whether the Russians had (perhaps inadvertently) destroyed the crates during or after the siege.
And for 30 more years, the Soviets, now occupying the city and renaming it Kalinigrad, continued to search for evidence of the room. During this time various rumors were formed of its fate, including destruction by British troops, theft by Americans, and – of course, most tantalizing – that it still existed in an underground bunker.
Anatoly Kuchumov was the room’s curator when the Germans took it away in 1941, and as you can see above, was largely responsible for the mystery. However:
Source: Grigory Kozlov, “Rising from the Ashes,” ARTnews, May 2003, pp. 64-66.
As you suspect, the newly-recreated room probably won’t end the search for the original one, though the author rather tartly relates that “[t]he mystery surrounding its fate is to the Russians what stories about UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle are in th West.”
Oh, I forgot – there’s an older ARTnews article (available online) that gives a bit more detail about the 1997 mosaic mentioned on the BBC site:
Now, everything I’ve referenced comes from one source, and this is pure speculation on my part, but it’s possible that some pieces were looted while the majority was destroyed. Alternatively, it may be that the room was not destroyed by fire, but was carved up by individuals, and now the pieces are scattered about the world and, perhaps, lost.
As to the “curse” and people dying under strange circumstances – well, with the Soviet secret police involved, who knows what could’ve happened.
Thanks for the info, Earthling, I hadn’t read about Kuchomov before.
One thing that I have read to discount the idea that the amber was destroyed by fire is the fact the town would have smelled strongly of amber for days. I’ve never smelled amber vapors before, but I understand it can have a very strong odor, something that was never mentioned in any of the records.
It seems, the more I read on the subject, that its probably likely that whatever did survive would have been broken up and sold as pieces, since amber can be remolded sort of like gold. Apparently, the amber would have been worth more sold as individual pieces rather than as the whole room.
I did come across a few articles discussing a group that claimed they discovered the Amber Room in the Czech Republic. The last article I found on that was dated 2000…so I guess that expedition didn’t work out too well.