Friday Fables: Russia’s Amber Room

Among the many instances of artwork being looted by the Nazis and lost to history is the Amber Room, a prized symbol of peace in Russia that has often been considered the eighth wonder of the world.

In 1701, Friedrich I, the first king of Prussia, commissioned the construction of an amber room, designed by German sculptor Andreas Schluter and made by Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. The walls were made of floor-to-ceiling mosaic panels, each crafted with carved amber and precious gemstones set into gold leaf. The Amber Room was installed at Charlottenburg Palace after its completion in 1709. It was then gifted to Peter the Great in 1716 after he admired it on a visit. This cemented a Prussian-Russian alliance against Sweden.

Once the Amber Room panels arrived in Russia, they were installed in the Winter House in St. Petersburg. The room remained part of an art collection until Czarina Elizabeth ordered it to be moved to the Catherine Palace in Pushkin in 1755. Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli was hired to redesign the room to fit into the new space, which was a bit bigger. Fresh amber was shipped in from Berlin to create additional panels. Once the redesign was complete, the room took up about 180 square feet and weighed over six tons. It’s estimated that the room was worth at least $142 million in today’s dollars.

The Amber Room symbolized peace and beauty, serving as a meditation space for Czarina Elizabeth, a gathering room for Catherine the Great, and a trophy room for Alexander II (who was an amber connoisseur). However, the solace found within the lavish panels was short-lived. In 1941, German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union and looted thousands of pieces of artwork, including the Amber Room. The staff of the Catherine Palace tried to hide the Amber room by covering it with wallpaper, but the Germans found it and packed it into crates which were then shipped to Konigsberg, Germany (known as Kaliningrad today).

Once there, it was installed in a museum on the Baltic Coast. Alfred Rohde, the museum’s director and an amber expert, studied and cared for the delicate panels over the next two years. When the war was reaching an end, Rohde was told to dismantle and store the Amber Room panels. That was the last documented place that the Amber Room was seen, and the treasured piece of art has since been lost for decades.

In 1944, a bombing destroyed the city and the museum where the Amber Room had been packed into storage. There are many theories about what happened to the Amber Room, the simplest of which was that the panels were destroyed by the bombs. Some historians, treasure hunters, and hobbyists think the amber panels were loaded onto a ship that sunk somewhere in the Baltic Sea. Others think the panels were packed onto a train that has never been found. There are numerous ideas as to where the Amber Room may have disappeared to, but the one known truth is that it seems as though no one knows the answer.

In 1997, a piece of the Amber Room was put up for auction. German art detectives visited the office of the seller’s lawyer and discovered that the seller was the son of a deceased soldier and was not familiar with the panel’s origin. It’s believed that a Nazi soldier stole the panel before the treasure disappeared.

Eventually, a replica of the Amber Room was commissioned based on old photos of the original. Construction began in 1979 and concluded 25 years later, costing a grand total of $11 million which was donated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Several artists came together to resurrect the largely forgotten art form of amber craftsmanship. The new Amber Room remains on display to the public at the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Reserve near St. Petersburg.

While many people have been able to enjoy the new Amber Room, the mystery of the original mosaic panels lives on and continues to stir the imaginations of treasure hunters around the world.