> The famous "Amber Room" was in Czarina Catherine's palace, which I
> believe was outside St. Petersburg (was Leningrad).  I visited it
> several years ago.  The Germans gutted the place during World War II and
> didn't seem to leave much outside the bare walls, without roof. The
> Russians have been for decades reconstrcuting all the many intricate
> decorations within the rooms.  It looks magnificant, although still far
> from finished.  They are planning to redo the Amber room, although they
> have very little pictorial evidence of the original.  This is palace is
> well worth a visit.  There was an article about the room in
> _Smithsonian_ about a year or two ago.

More info about the Amber Room at http://museum-security.org/
(follow the link to reports about cultural property incidents):



 Amber Room Piece May Have Surfaced

By PAUL GEITNER
Associated Press Writer

POTSDAM, Germany (AP) It was early in World War II and the legendary
Amber Room, looted from a Russian palace, was being shipped back to
German territory. When the convoy came under fire, a German soldier
took advantage of the confusion to purloin a piece for himself. Now
the gold-framed mosaic of marble and semi-precious stones may be the
only part of the 18th century treasure to have survived. German
officials this week confiscated the mosaic, depicting two couples
lounging in a garden with their dogs, from a Bremen lawyer who said he
was selling it on behalf of the soldier's son. Police said at a news
conference Thursday they believe the mosaic is the real thing,
although additional tests are still being conducted. But because it
apparently was swiped by the soldier in 1941, its recovery brought
police no closer to solving the mystery of the Amber Room's
disappearance in early 1945 from the German city of Koenigsberg, now
the Russian port of Kaliningrad. German officials were reluctant to
comment on whether the 22-by-28-inch artwork would be returned to
Russia. "That depends on a lot of things," was all Chief Prosecutor
Ruediger Schmidt would say when asked at a news conference. A German
Foreign Ministry spokesman said no decision would be made until after
the final tests determine its authenticity. The issue of trophy art
has been a sore point in German-Russian relations since the end of
World War II. Both sides looted museums, libraries, castles and
churches as their troops advanced, and the Amber Room is high on
Russia's list of 40,000 art objects it wants back from Germany. The
ornate, 1,300-square-foot hall was a gift of Prussian King Friedrich
Wilhelm I to Russia's Peter the Great. The wall panels were made from
golden brown amber, with four mosaics representing the human senses.
The room was installed in a palace Peter built for his wife, Catherine
I, outside of St. Petersburg. Nazi troops dismantled it when they
captured the village and shipped it to Koenigsberg, where it was
installed in a castle. But it disappeared in 1945 as the Red Army
moved west, and years of searching have turned up no trace. German
officials learned the mosaic was being offered for $2.5 million this
year while investigating the theft of a painting. At a meeting in a
Berlin restaurant in January, undercover police were offered the
stolen painting, a Hitler self-portrait and the Amber Room mosaic,
said Potsdam police chief Peter Schultheiss. With the help of a
middle-man and money put up by a German newsmagazine, Schultheiss,
using his own name but posing as a representative of a big company,
let his interest be known. He was given a videotape of the mosaic and
later samples of the wooden frame and resin used to hold the tiles,
all of which were examined by experts who concluded it could be
authentic. Last Sunday, the offer came to examine the mosaic in
person. The meeting was held above a shop in Bremen, with police
stationed outside. Lawyer Manhard Kaiser told police the soldier, a
Wehrmacht truck driver, took the mosaic in 1941 when the transport
came under fire. It hung for years over the sofa in his apartment,
then after his death in 1978, the man's son stored it in the basement
because he didn't like it. Only after seeing a TV report a few years
ago on the Amber Room did the son realize what he had and decide to
sell it, according to Kaiser, who refused to identify his client. (15
May 1997 15:01 EDT)


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