Episode 36: The Amber Room

This episodes is a deep-dive into the mysterious (and, as of 1945, missing) Amber Room. Come for the in-depth research into the Amber Room's 300-year existence, stay in spite of the unhinged reference to the lickability of its peanut-brittle-esque panels.

Transcript

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Wait, am I recording? You are listening to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. All right, let's mango.

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Hello and welcome to Stuff About Things, an art history podcast. My name is Lindsay, hello, and I have my PhD in art history, which is how this whole thing got started. And now here we are, five years later at episode 36. Wild. Thank you for joining me for episode 36. This episode started as one topic, I got bored of that, and then I threw myself into something I knew would keep my attention. That's important because I work on the podcast in the evenings and on the weekends, so I have to have a topic that will lure me away from the pull of the TV and a couple glasses of wine. It's also one of the reasons the episode is delayed. But who cares about me? Hopefully somebody, because my mom listens to this. This episode is also accompanied by a mini sode that explores the wonderful material that is amber. So at some point you should probably give that one a listen too. But you are here now at episode 36, at the part where I tell you stuff about the so-called eighth wonder of the world, how it went missing, and the clone it inspired. The Amber Room. Lost but not forgotten. On June 22nd, 1941, Comrade Anatoly Kuchumov was handed an envelope. The front of the envelope featured 11 words: Acts and instructions, only to be opened if war is proclaimed. Unfortunately for Anatoly Kuchumov, war had been proclaimed. The German army were quickly closing in on St. Petersburg and its surrounding areas, and so Kuchimov, then the curator of the Catherine Palace, was ordered to do something seemingly impossible: evacuate the palace, arts and all. Comrade Kuchimov and his team spent the next eight days working around the clock to carry out the mission, which they did with limited resources. In the journal he kept over the course of the week-long period, Kuchimov writes that soldiers and colleagues were working around the clock to pack everything up. Some of them were even getting nosebleeds from the endless hours of bending over to pack crates. While I'm sure that the supply of nosebleeds remained plentiful, the team quickly ran out of both crates and packing materials. Eventually, their desperation reached a peak, and they had to use the dress trunks and dresses of the women from the ill-fated Imperial Romanov family, which still remained at the Catherine Palace decades after the murder of their former owners. For anyone who knows the history, that feels like quite the metaphor. But there was one treasure above all that Kuchumov dreaded moving, even as he knew he must. The Amber Room. Kuchumov lamented in his journal, quote, What should we do with the Amber Room? What can we do? Whatever he tried didn't work. As he later writes, quote, a trial moving of one of the panels has resulted in disaster. The amber facing has come off the mount and shattered completely. We cannot move the amber room. We dare not move it. What are we to do? End quote. In the end, they decided to try to hide it by covering the centuries-old amber panels with wallpaper and gauze in an attempt to convince the invading German army that the walls had indeed been taken. Unfortunately, the deception didn't work, and the famed room, the pride of Russia for centuries, fell into the hands of the Nazis. Within four years, the room would disappear not just from the Catherine Palace, but the face of the earth, never to be seen again. But before talking about endings, we need to go back to the beginning. Let's start with the basics. Despite its name, the amber room is not technically a room. Instead, the term refers to a collection of super fancy, highly intricate amber panels that were custom-made to be installed on the walls of a particular room, creating the illusion that said room was quote unquote made of amber. As we will see throughout the episode, these panels adorned several different rooms throughout their existence. So while the physical space was certainly important, it's the amber panels that make or break this situation. Speaking of breaking, we will also talk about breakages. As for what the room looked like when it was assembled, think luxury, think ostentation, think a monochromatic rainbow of glowy, warm, goldeny colors that surround you like a human-sized jewelry box of the highest quality. Then imagine detail, detail upon detail upon detail, from amber accents to gilded moulding to super fancy mirrors. In addition to being an artistic marvel, the amber room was also a highly politically charged object. If we can call it an object, which I'm going to do for lack of a better word. Both its artistic and political value are rooted in the room's history. And while that history might not be the most thrilling thing, it's essential to understand why it meant so much to the Germans that they had to go and steal it, and later why it meant so much to the Russians that they remade it. Yeah, we'll talk about that too. The story of the Amber Room starts in 1701, when a dude named Frederick becomes king in Prussia. Yes, I said Prussia with a P. Now Prussia hasn't been a thing since 1918, but for centuries before that, Prussia was a kingdom that covered a good chunk of present-day northern Germany and Poland, including the city of Berlin, which was the capital. This area would eventually become a cornerstone of the German Empire slash state. But the important thing to know for now is that at the turn of the 18th century, Frederick I was king in Prussia. Note that I did not say king of Prussia. That's because Prussia was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Emperor was a little touchy about people calling themselves king, because you know, what might they do next? Ergo, therefore, he allowed our boy Freddy to call himself a king, but not the king of somewhere. He was instead the king in somewhere. Isn't language and its ability to humble ambitious men so much fun? I think it's fun. While the difference between of and in might seem like a random historical tidbit, and I suppose it is, ultimately Frederick's political standing and his feelings about it were a big contributor to the Amber Room being made in the first place. Because art patronage, commissioning art, is a very effective vehicle for displaying one's power and status and taste. Now that he had this brand spagging new fancy title, Frederick really doubled down on portraying himself as a major player on the European political scene. In fact, there are rumors that he actively encouraged comparisons between himself and Louis XIV, the so-called Sun King of France who transformed Versailles from a hunting shack, but like a royal one, into the monument that we know today, with its hall of mirrors and crazy opulence. The amber room has a very similar vibe to Versailles, albeit on a smaller scale. And, you know, made of amber. At Frederick's coronation ceremony in 1701, his wife Sophia Charlotte was absolutely decked out in amber jewelry, which declared amber the unofficial jewel of the Prussian crown. And that made sense because in this region, amber was a big deal. It was even referred to as the gold of the north, and at various points in history was exponentially more costly than gold. For more on that, you can see Mini Sode 5. Sophia Charlotte was all about the Hobby Dabi-Doo. She was big into music and art and making the Prussian capital of Berlin an awesome place to live and party and like be rich. She was also into building and decorating palaces, and there were a bunch of artists who wanted to work on these projects. One of those artists was an architect by the name of Andreas Schluter, who was working for Sophia Charlotte on the designs for a palace she was building in the years leading up to Frederick becoming king. The relationship between Schluter and Sophia Charlotte soured greatly when Sophia Charlotte's preferred architect returned from a long business trip and snickety-snatched the project from under Schluter's nose, two years into the project. Embarrassed and probably pissed by this professional insult, Schluter set his sights on doing something crazy, something that would get everyone's attention. He just wasn't sure what that would be yet. That brings me to an important point. No one seems to really know for certain who thought up the idea for the Amber Room. Some people credit the idea to Schluter, some to Sophia Charlotte, and others to Frederick I. From my readings, I don't think it's as simple as one person having the idea. I think it's more likely that the room's conception developed over the course of years with the input of various people. You've got Frederick, who fancies himself a Prussian version of King Louis XIV. You've got Sophia Charlotte, who is actively engaged with the planning and design of the Charlottenburg Palace, where the room would eventually be installed, and of course you've got Schluter, who was always looking for a bigger, better project through which to prove himself. Quite the trifecta. That said, there is one story that I do like. I don't know if I believe it, but I like it. I only found this story published in one book, which is Kathy Scott Clark and Adrian Levy's 2004 publication, which I will link on the website. In that book, the authors claim that the amber room was allegedly Schluter's idea, though not one that just came to him. Rather, he came to it when he was scoping out the cellar of the Royal Palace in Berlin, allegedly looking for materials of some kind, though let's be real, he was probably looking for some wine. No judgment, I'd be doing the same. While Schluter was down in the cellar, he came across dozens of chests packed to the brim with Baltic amber. A material that was highly regulated and mostly reserved for super wealthy people, like the royals, who apparently just had buckets of it hanging out in their basement. This alleged stumble-stumble across a horde of amber happens a couple of years before Frederick's coronation in 1701. But it was there at the coronation that Schluter saw Sophia Charlotte iced out an amber jewelry, which again allegedly gave him some inspiration as to what to do with all of that amber just chilling in the basement. He decided he was going to design an entire room made from the substance. That's a good story. I'm just not sure where the authors got it from because there's no citations in that section of the book. But, but. At the time that this story would have been taking place, in the final years of the 1690s, there were large stores of raw, uncut amber hanging out in amber centers like Danzig, where Schluter was kind of a big deal. He was the director of royal construction in the town, though he did spend a lot of his time in Berlin. Now I'm not saying he didn't stumble across a cache of amber in the cellars of the Royal Palace and have this Eureka awhile moment. But if he was any good at his job in Danzig, he would have already been very aware that massive stores of amber were available to him. No matter who thought it up, this idea for an entire room made of amber was straight up nuts. It was absolutely absurd. No one had ever done something like this before, which was precisely the point. Sophia Charlotte and Frederick I hire Schluter to design the project, after which he needs to find someone to actually make it because Schluter is not an amber craftsman. That was a highly skilled art that you needed years of training to do. Schluter eventually finds someone who's up to the task, a man by the name of Gottfried Wolfrum, who moved from Copenhagen to Berlin to join forces with Schluter to work on this cuckoo for Coco Puffs insanely intricate and expensive project. While Schluter gets most of the credit for the Amber Room, the real heroes of the story are the Amber craftspeople who turned Schluter's crazy design into a reality, starting with Wolfram. I say starting with because the creation of the room and much of its early history is an absolute quagmire of chaos. Yeah, I used the keyword, quagmire. That's how precarious this situation was. So precarious, in fact, that no one was immune to being fired from the project. Starting with drumroll please, brrrrr. Schluter. As is becoming something of a pattern, he gets booted off the project a couple of years into things, and his whole career takes a left turn, uh, for various reasons, some not related to the Amber Room, but we won't go there. Schluter is booted off the project and replaced with another guy. In fact, he's replaced by his rival, the same man who replaced him on his palace project for Sophia Charlotte, which is quite the burn. This guy's name is Johann Osander. Eosander? Osonder? E-O-S-A-N-D-E-R. However you pronounce that. Anywho. Volfram is also eventually fired and or quits around 1707, allegedly over money issues, and stuff just absolutely goes off the rails at this point. And when I say goes off the rails, I mean it. This whole thing ends with Wolfram being thrown in jail and exiled from the kingdom because he refused to give up the materials he still had when he quit andor was fired from the project. That's what I call drama. Eventually things settle down, and the new architect brings on two Amber Masters to complete the project. Those Amber Masters were Gottfried Tur and Ernest Schacht. They were the ones responsible for something like three-fourths of the room, even though Volfram had been working on it for way longer. Then again, I suppose with two people it's gonna go a little bit faster. Also, this duo was allegedly cheaper than just the one Volfram, so guess it worked out. Not for Volfram, of course, he was in jail and or exiled, but you know, for everyone else, it worked out pretty well. Regardless of who made what, the amber room was an absolute masterclass of amber craftsmanship. I talk about that more in Mini Sode 5, but let's recap. As I said earlier in the episode, the amber room is really a series of massive panels. And while these panels have multiple layers of amber stuff on them, the base of each one comprises hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of amber joined together in a mosaic-esque situation. It's kind of like stained glass but without the lead outlines. The amber pieces are fit flush together. This might be art historical heresy, yet another reason for academics to burn me at the stake, but I would describe this mosaic base as the most beautiful peanut brittle you've ever seen. As someone who loves candy, I just constantly think about how absolutely lickable these panels look. I'm sure they taste awful, perhaps of pine, but they look like they be the best toffee, butterscotchy flavor in the world. When these panels were installed, it made it look like the walls of a room were made of amber. Obviously, that's the point. But in reality, the amber portion of the wall was only about a half centimeter thick. I say only because that's still a ton of amber, but it's ultimately a veneer, one that sits on top of these thick oak panels covered in bronze foil. While the oak panels provided much-needed support, that bronze foil served as both a buffer between the amber and the oak, which being different materials contract and expand at different rates, but it also served to reflect light, so that when light shone on the panels it would reflect off that inner bronze foil and make the amber glow all the brighter. To make the mosaic base that sat on top of that oak and bronze foil, artisans had to hand carve every single one of those pieces. They started by sawing hunks of raw amber into slices about a half centimeter thick or five millimeters, which they then carved into their desired shape. Now obviously the size of each piece would have been dictated by how big the chunk of raw amber was, but most of them looked like they could have comfortably fit in the palm of your hand. Once those pieces were cut and shaped, they were then clarified, which involved dunking them into a heated mixture containing honey, linseed oil, and cognac. Interesting and fancy. This process increased the translucency of the amber, at which point it was time to polish and place the pieces. As for how these pieces fitted together, it was a combination of adhesives made from beeswax and tree resin, whereas the panels slotted together using traditional techniques featured in woodworking and carpentry that let you sort of slot these pieces together. The use of these particular adhesives was important because beeswax and tree resin had a lower melting temperature, which made it a lot easier to pop off pieces and replace them when needs must. This will come up again later. Once the base panel was done, it was tricked out with all kinds of decoration, including inlays that were incorporated into the base mosaic. There's an especially cool royal eagle crest that is pretty dope. One of my favorite of the details in the room are the massive amber frames mounted onto the panels. These frames actually predate the room itself. According to Amber scholar Wiesla Drlowski, King Frederick I commissioned these frames when he was still not King Frederick III, which is to say in the 1680s and 1690s. The frames were then subsumed into the design of the Amber Room some 20 years later, and became an essential part of the visual drama of the room. If the dimensions I found are correct, they're about 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide. They're huge, and chock a block full of detail. Those details include low-relief carvings of fruit cornucopias and cameo-esque scenes, random flowery bits, and then my favorite detail are the pieces of amber that have landscapes engraved on the back of the pieces, including a country landscape with a windmill and a seascape with a ship. The replacement frames that were made in the reconstruction process we'll talk about at the end of the episode also feature amber beads that contain prehistoric insect specimens. It's wild. I am assuming that the originals also had something like this, but it's not like you can perfectly replicate a million-year-old insect stuck in resin. In that situation, all you can really do is your best. The level of detail featured on these frames extends to the rest of the room. Along the base of the room, there are more amber inlays, while at the top there are wreaths and garlands and sculpted crests and flowers. I mean, it is absolutely Absolutely insane. And of course, it's all in amber. There are also non-amber additions that look like they're solid gold, even though they're gilded wood. It's the kind of space that even if you spent a lifetime looking at it, there would always be something new to discover. As you can probably imagine, it took a long time to complete, about eight years in total, which, I guess given how insanely intricate and innovative it was, is pretty impressive. I have found different accounts of what happened to the room at this point in 1709. While some articles will tell you that it was never installed in Berlin and perhaps wasn't even finished, my research shows that the panels were installed, though not at Charlottenburg Palace, which is where they were designed to go. They were instead installed in a corner room on the third floor of the Berlin City Palace. We know this because there are people who saw it. It's usually a pretty good indication that something was in fact installed. One of those visitors described the room as quote, when the sun shone through the windows, it was like standing in an open jewelry box. End quote. While Frederick I did live to see the room unveiled, his wife, Sophia Charlotte, unfortunately died a few years earlier, when only a few of the room's panels were completed. Frederick, however, didn't have much time to appreciate his human-sized amber jewelry box, because the amber room didn't stay put for long. Unfortunately, it started to fall apart, which obviously caused damage to some of the panels. As a result of that, snafu, the panels were deinstalled, crated up, and put into storage, where they would stay for years. I'm glad to know that the guy who paid for the whole thing, Frederick, did get to see the room in action, because he died just a few years later in 1713, leaving his warrior wet blanket of a son, Frederick Wilhelm, in charge. Frederick Wilhelm was a lot less interested in the whole art patronage thing. He was a fairly practical military king type for whom all of this other stuff was just a big old distraction. However, some people make it sound like Frederick Wilhelm wanted to like smack the amber room with a hammer. They really make it seem like he was absolutely disgusted by it. Though I have found several references to him reinstalling the room at some point, though he did eventually banish it into storage at the Berlin Armory, where it chills out for a few more years. You'll notice throughout this history that this becomes something of a pattern for the Amber Room. It's always being relegated to storage. Poor thing. Ironically, Frederick Wilhelm has a lot to do with the room becoming famous, despite the fact that he had very little time for its ostentation, because it was Frederick Wilhelm who gave the Amber Room to the Russian Tsar Peter I. At the turn of the 18th century, while Frederick I and Sophia Charlotte were still alive and wild and out in Prussia, Peter the Great was on his own mission over in neighboring Russia. Peter was all about modernizing Russia, which to him meant westernizing Russia, so emulating the styles and ways and even the languages of European courts. He was so serious about this ploy that he made French the official language of his court, which is wild to me. This whole make Russia European plot made a lot of people very unhappy, because he was essentially erasing hundreds of years of Russian identity and history. But did Peter give a fig? No. He was too busy scheming for ways to make Russia bigger, better, and more European. Part of that ambition was to make Russia a maritime power. So Peter wanted lots of ships, doing lots of stuff, specifically in the Baltic Sea, which were waters that the Swedish Empire had been dominating for decades. So when Peter is like, knock knock knock, hey Sweden, can I like scooch over here and take over the Baltics? Sweden was not having it. That leads to a war that lasts about 20 years. During that war, Peter relocates the capital of his Tsardom to St. Petersburg in 1703, on land that he captured during this war. Peter even builds a mini-city for his wife Catherine, about 15 miles outside of the city limits. That little town is known as Sarskoia Selo, which literally translates to the Tsar's village, which today is perhaps better known as Pushkin. So Peter gets St. Petersburg and Catherine gets Sarskoia-Selo. I'm about 65% confident in my pronunciation of that city. You might be thinking, Lindsay, this is so boring. Yeah, I kind of agree, but this history is important. It's important because Frederick, the king in Prussia, and Peter, the Tsar of Russia, were something of kindred spirits who wanted a lot of the same stuff. The relationship was very much, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. When Frederick Wilhelm came to the throne in 1713, he wanted to keep this party going. That is exactly what went down in 1716, when Frederick Wilhelm and Peter meet up to forge an alliance against the King of Sweden, an alliance that would eventually lead to Russia winning this war. During that alliance meeting, Frederick Wilhelm somehow learns that Peter loves Amber. I have no idea how this might have come up in conversation, but whatever, it turns out Peter is a fiend for the stuff. This presented Frederick Wilhelm with a two-birds, one-stone situation. That stone was the Amber Room, which Frederick Wilhelm gifts to Peter I. In giving the Amber Room to Peter, Frederick Wilhelm was not only solidifying his alliance with the Russian Tsar, but also getting rid of what to him seemed like a gaudy money pit that he had absolutely no use for. And now for the cost of shipping and handling, he could be rid of it. Huzzah huzzah. That shipping was probably pretty expensive, because it took 18 carriages to move 18 crates full of delicate, one-of-a-kind amber wonders. Yes, that is one crate per carriage. Those crates travel over land in the winter to St. Petersburg, and at one point slaves have to get involved because it snows. It's a big ol' thing. Once the amber room gets to St. Petersburg, nothing happens. That is because no one knows how to put the room together. Apparently, it didn't come with instructions. And so these crates go into storage yet again, not to be retrieved for another 18 years. In those intervening 18 years, Peter wins his war against Sweden, only to die a few years later in 1725, leaving his daughter, the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, in charge. So she is now the new Zarina of Russia. I am just going to refer to her as Elizabeth, because it's easier on both me and probably your ears. After she's had a good decade to settle into her new role, Elizabeth is the one who's like, hmm, maybe it's time to do something with those 18 crates of amber we got chillin' in the basement. You think? She specifically orders these panels to be installed at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. But still, 18 years later, no one knows how to do this. And so Elizabeth hires an Italian guy named Alessandro Bartelli to figure it out. And he does. But it turns out that the room she wanted it installed in is way bigger than the one for which the amber room was initially designed. In order to fix this quite serious problem, Elizabeth hires court architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastelli to redesign and expand the room. This guy comes up with a genuinely good plan, which is to incorporate a bunch of mirrors, specifically mirrored pilasters or engaged columns, into the room's design, thus creating the illusion that the room is entirely made of amber. However, there was no one in Russia who can make mirrors this big, so Rostrelli has to hire a French guy. He also commissions some paintings from a Dutch guy to go in those frames I mentioned earlier. I know it sounds complicated, but it was probably about 50 million times more complicated than it sounds here. There were also multiple other comedies of errors that go into this whole process. But after three years of work, the room is finally completed in 1745. Despite taking years to install, Elizabeth has Rostrelli reinstall the room several different times over the course of the next 10 years, before finally deciding in 1755 that she now wants to move it to a completely different palace, the Catherine Palace in Sarskoya Salo. As if Rostrelli hasn't already had it up to here with this project, this room at the Catherine Palace is again way bigger than the previous room, once again requiring an expansion pack of more mirrors as well as faux amber panels that were actually painted wood. This was probably a combination of Elizabeth being a little bit cheap and this region not having the resources needed to create additional amber panels. It's also at this point that Rostrelli decides to do away with those Dutch paintings that he commissioned for the previous expansion pack. Get those out of here. He swaps those out for Florentine mosaics by a guy named Giuseppe Zocchi. Clearly, he's repping the home country, Forza Italia, and all that. These mosaics by Zocchi were super cool and that they looked like paintings from afar, but when you got up close, you could see the individual tesserae or squares of colored stone comprising the larger image. Each of the mosaics was an allegory or figural representation of one or more of the five senses. Remember the mosaics as they will make a reappearance later. In his various expansions of the room, Rostrelli really added additional layers of international collaboration to this work. It was originally designed by a German, Prussian, carried out by a Dane, installed and updated by two Italians, and contributed to by French, Dutch, and Italian craftspeople. International collaboration galore. The reinstallation at the Catherine Palace was also important for another reason. To support the process, Elizabeth hires a master amber craftsman from Koenigsberg, which was the Baltic amber capital of the world over in Prussia. She hires him to serve as a kind of curator slash amber master for the palace. That guy, whose first name is Friedrich and whose last name I cannot pronounce, brings a bunch of other amber craftspeople with him, establishes an on-site workshop, and starts to train people in the nearby villages how to do amber stuff. In addition to creating new things for the room, like amber furniture, this workshop was also responsible for the upkeep of the room, which was extremely high maintenance. After Elizabeth dies in 1762, Catherine the Great takes over as the room's primary patron. This was fitting as Catherine herself was from Prussia. And it's during Catherine's reign that the amber room came to look like it would for the next 170 years. It is this version of the amber room that we can see in the black and white photographs that were taken of the room before the events of World War II. That room, the finished room, if you will, comprised the following: 12 amber panels that were 12 feet tall and 2 feet wide, 10 narrower panels that were 12 feet tall but narrower because they went in like the corners and stuff, plus 24 sections of skirting board. When put together, these panels covered over 500 square feet of wall space and were interspersed by a bunch of mirrors, making it look like there was even more amber involved. I've seen all kinds of estimates for the amount of amber ultimately used to make the room, but those numbers vary quite widely. The most common weight I've seen given is six tons, which is 12,000 pounds. My guess though is that that includes the oak that serves as backing for the amber. I say that because later calculations would estimate that there was probably more like 4,000 pounds of amber used, which is still a hefty, hefty amount. As for what this space was used for, it had a couple of different purposes throughout its history at the Catherine Palace. It was used as a meditation space, a reception hall, and even as a display room where Tsar Alexander II displayed, what else, but items from his famed amber collection. That's what you call committed to the shtick. It turns out though that a room made of amber is very, very, very high maintenance, especially in a place like Sarskoya Selo, where the winters are super duper cold. So cold, in fact, that the imperial family would vacate the palace for the entire season, leaving it unheated, and causing the wax holding the amber in place to contract, resulting in lots of breakages and pieces falling off. This situation was not helped by the fact that when the room was in use, when the imperial family was like bopping around, there were always a ton of candles lit inside of it. And I'm not talking a few dozen candles. I'm talking 500 plus of them. While that probably looked flammazing, pun intended, lighting 500 plus candles in a room tends to give off quite a bit of heat, not only causing the glue to soften, but other stuff to expand. You know what else gives off heat? Central heating, one of the great inventions of the modern era, which was installed at the palace at some point. So now the room isn't only warm, it's also dry, making the amber panels brittle and prone to breaks and cracks. Clearly, the amber room was not a set-it and forget-it type deal, but that's okay, because she's literally a one-of-a-kind work of artistry and engineering. In the 20th century, things in Russia and a lot of the world, especially Europe, get politically dodgy, to put it politely. In 1917 specifically, everything goes to hell in a handbag when the Russian Revolution breaks out, leading one year later to the execution of the Imperial family, ending not just their lives but a royal lineage dating back hundreds of years. If you want to get super bummed out, you can Google the murder of the Romanovs. It is at once fascinating and very depressing. A few years later, in the early 20s, the Soviet Union is created, the USSR, which is first run by a guy named Vladimir Lenin, who is succeeded in power a couple of years later by Joseph Stalin. Joseph Stalin? I'm realizing right now that I've never learned how to say Stalin's first name. Oh well, he deserves it. During this same period, a bunch of stuff is happening back in former Prussia, which is now part of the German Empire. As of 1918, the German Empire has entered the Weimar era, during which the seeds of the Third Reich were planted, and it all comes to fruition in 1933 when a sad, angry little man by the name of Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. I think we all know where this story's going. Despite being one of the greatest villains in history, Stalin took a different approach to cultural preservation than Hitler, who destroyed everything he didn't like, art or otherwise. But in the USSR in Russia, Stalin was not about to destroy places and things that he could use as propaganda. Instead of destroying imperial arts and palaces, he confiscated them, turning those spaces and that art into state museums, thereby democratizing access to these once very closed-off and exclusive imperial spaces and objects. The idea is that he like gave them back to the people. The Amber Room in particular proved extremely popular as a tourist destination within the USSR. It was one of the most, if not the most, popular destination in the entire St. Petersburg area. And then World War II happens and everything is terrible for a long time. For the sake of time, we are going to jump to 1941, which after being a major aggressor, an absolute trash bag during the early parts of the war, the Soviet Union started to lose the war that it helped start. I say all of that because I'm about to talk about how the USSR became a victim of the Germans. But I don't want to make it sound like I feel all that bad for them. Because I don't. 1941 is the year that Hitler orders Operation Barbarossa, which is the German invasion of Russia despite having an alliance with Stalin. As part of that invasion, the Germans wanted to steal as much art as they possibly could. That was a classic Nazi scheme that I think we're all aware of. One thing that Hitler really, really wanted was the Amber Room, which in his eyes was an absolute feat of German artistry and engineering. It was designed by a German for a room in a German castle, paid for by a German king, out of materials taken from German land. Yeah, technically that was Prussia, but Berlin is now the capital of the German Empire, so German it is. We, of course, know that the Amber Room was the result of international collaboration. But to Hitler, that didn't matter worth a fig. The Amber Room was German and it needed to be repatriated or brought home. As soon as Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union, there was a mad scramble to evacuate art from palaces and museums that were on the German war path, because the Soviets knew exactly what the Germans intended to do when they arrived. That was to loot things andor burn entire cities to the ground. Because the Soviets had also done that stuff. And he is given just eight days to do so. You heard how that went at the top of the episode. Soldiers worked around the clock to crate up what they could of the palace's treasures. At one point, people were getting nosebleeds, they ran out of packing materials, had to use imperial trunks and dresses to cushion stuff. It was a mess. Despite being the greatest of all of the treasures in that palace, the Soviets left behind the amber room. According to Kuchimov's journal entries, they tried to deinstall the room, but decided to abort their efforts after part of it shattered. It was determined that the room was simply too fragile to move, and instead they attempted to make it look like it had been taken by wallpapering over it. When the Germans arrived in the following weeks, this charade stumped them for about no seconds. And it turns out that they had no issues deinstalling the room and did so in approximately 36 hours. Why were they able to do what Kuchumov couldn't? I don't know. Maybe they just cared less about shattering it than the Russians did. Then again, Hitler really, really wanted it, and I would not want to bring that news back to the Fuhrer. The Germans packed up the room into 24 crates, which were transported to Koenigsberg via train. A man by the name of Alfred Rudda was waiting. Rudda was the director of the Koenigsberg Castle Museum, which is where the Germans displayed all of the art that they stole from the Soviets. Roda also happened to be a longtime Amber aficionado, and he was absolutely beside himself with glee to be in possession of the Amber Room. This was something he had dreamt of since he was a little boy. Which, you know, bit of a weird dream, but whatever. At one point, Rhoda and a very important Nazi general by the name of Eric Koch were ordered by one of Hitler's right-hand men to send the amber room to Berlin. Hitler planned to use it for its healing properties, for his arthritis or something, as if any amount of amber could heal that dude. But Roda and Koch say no. We are not sending it to you, it is staying here. How that flew, I don't know, but it shows just how coveted the amber room was. It was also fitting that it was in Koenigsberg, which in the 18th and 19th centuries was the epicenter of Baltic amber work in the world. Between 1942 and 1945, the paper trail on what's going on with the amber room gets really confusing. We know that at least part of it was on display at the Koenigsberg Castle Museum. But by 1944, when the Germans started to realize that this whole war thing might not be going their way, Rhoda was given the express orders to deinstall the room and pack it into cases. This was all done to protect it from air raids as well as potential looting by the Americans, the British, andor the Soviets, should any of those people come to town. The last known sighting of the Amber Room was in the winter slash spring of 1945, when Rhoda finally got around to crating up the room and had plans to evacuate it from the city. That, however, seems like it was too little, too late, because at this point, Koenigsburg had already been the target of major air raids, including one that allegedly damaged at least a part of the room. But Rhoda claims that he did crate up the room and intended to evacuate it from the premises. To this day, we don't know if he was successful. What we do know is that the Koenigsberg Castle got the beans bombed out of it in 1945, and in April of that year, part of the castle burnt down. That part may or may not have contained the crates holding the amber room. In the weeks, months, and years following the war, the Soviets were particularly concerned with finding out what happened to the room. Soviet investigators even interrogated Alfred Ruda and others about the room's whereabouts, but they could never manage to get a straight answer out of anyone, including Ruda, whose story was constantly changing. To make matters worse, Roda eventually died or went missing under highly questionable circumstances. So no one could question him anymore. To this day, the fate of the Amber Room remains unknown, and art historians and treasure seekers, I mean, what's the difference, have been searching for it ever since. The theories of what happened to the room range from hopeful to hopeless, including stories of shipwrecks, silver mines, beer sellers, and so many more. While those theories are fun to read about, none of them have ever proven credible. There was a hot second in 1997 when everyone got super excited that the room may not have been destroyed, because it was in that year that one of the four mosaics by Giuseppe Zocchi surfaced. It turns out, though, that the mosaic had been stolen by one of the German soldiers who had overseen the transfer of the room in 1941. Unfortunately, someone who went through the ruins of the Koenigsberg Castle in 1945 did report finding physical evidence that Zucchi's three other mosaics had perished in the fire. That supports the rather depressing theory that most art historians and historians believe happened, which is what brings me to the bubble-bursting parts of the episode. In all likelihood, the Amber Room was probably destroyed in the air raids that hit Koenigsberg in the winter and spring of 1945. That's simply the most logical answer. Though there has not been definitive evidence that this happened. It is, after all, very difficult to prove something doesn't exist. While there is evidence of the mosaics being destroyed in the fire, that doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the room was as well. They could have been packed into different crates, they could have been separated, it's not definitive proof. There's also the interesting, what I call it a fact? I don't know, but a fact. But there are witnesses who claim to have seen the amber room burn. None of them have proven credible, and ironically have seemed to encourage the idea that if these accounts of the amber room burning aren't credible, it somehow means that it just didn't happen. In reality, it probably just didn't happen the way that these people claimed it did. For example, there was a woman who came forward years after the air raids happened, claiming that as a little girl, she walked through the ruins of the Koenigsberg Castle right after the air raids happened, and encountered a pile of what looked like melted honey, aka the amber room melted, but that's not really possible, given that the fire that tore through the castle was hot enough to completely burn the amber room to bits. It wouldn't have just melted, it would have ceased to exist. But just because it may not have happened in the way that she claimed it did, doesn't mean it didn't happen at all. Interestingly, one of the biggest points against the room perishing in the fire was that no one reported smelling it. Amber gives off an intense pine scent when burnt, but there were no reports of any kind of smell during or after the air raids. Then again, people probably had other, more important things on their mind in the aftermath of the city getting the beans bombed out of it. Every once in a while, though, a story will emerge that gives people hope that maybe, just maybe, the Amber Room did not perish in Koenigsberg in 1945. In 2017, I got super excited because I read a story about how some Polish guys thought they'd found a Nazi loot train, which is low-key a dream of mine. To find a Nazi loot train. That would be incredible. These Polish guys claim to be 90% sure that this train contained the Amber Room. But then you never hear anything about it again. Which means everyone got their underpants in a twist for nothing. There's also the sad fact that if, and that's a big if, if the panels somehow survived and are stashed in a mine somewhere or buried in an underground bunker, it's likely they'd be in really, really bad condition. I mean, they weren't even in the greatest condition when they were installed and being cared for. So imagine what 60 plus years of not being taken care of would have done to them. They would probably be crumbling. But we can't end the episode on such a sad note. I won't allow it. The Amber Room does live on today in more than just myth and black and white photographs. In fact, you can still visit it. Kind of. In 1975, 40 years after the original room likely perished, a group of artists and historians in the Soviet Union started to flirt with the idea of reconstructing the room. They started by constructing a one-fifth scale model of the room to determine just how much amber they would need for such a project. The answer? A lot. The scale model alone required over 500 pounds of amber, so the real deal would require 2,500, and that's just the stuff that would make it onto the walls. They probably needed at least three or four times that to get 2,500 pounds of finished product. Even so, the reconstruction project got greenlit sometime after 1975, and by 1979, the project had acquired funding and people were actively working on it. That work was spearheaded by a pair of archaeologist historian types, which might surprise you, because the original idea for the room came from an architect. However, the first 11 years of this project were dedicated to intensive research into the room, how it was made, and reconstructing what it looked like. A process that included taking any archival photographs they had, blowing them up to life size, and studying the shapes and shades of the original room, which in case you've forgotten, hadn't been seen in over four decades. In the entire history of the original Amber Room, there is one hand-colored photograph of the room, but for the most part, all of the other photographs were in black and white. These historians, however, had an ingenious method for figuring out what shades of amber they should use for each piece of the mosaics. They would take black and white photographs of amber in the present day and compare them against the original photographs. There were also fragments of amber left behind when the Germans took the room. There's something like 30 or 40 small broken bits of amber, which I'm sure was actually very helpful in that process. Those life-size photographs also helped amber craftspeople create patterns as to what shapes each amber piece should be. One of the artisans who worked on the project said that just one of the panels required 3,000 patterns for the individual pieces of amber that would go onto it. That is how meticulous this reconstruction was. They wanted everything from the shape and color of individual pieces to be on point. The only real difference between the old room and the new room was that the team decided to make these pieces of amber just 3mm thick, as opposed to the original five, likely to save on costs and the amount of material needed. But it wasn't just the room that needed reconstructing. The entire craft of amber working also had to be recovered, as it had all but died out in the 20th century. So not only was this team reconstructing an entire masterpiece, they were reconstructing an entire art form. No pressure. It wasn't until 1986 that craftsmen got started on the material stuff of the project. At this point, the Soviet Union was still very much in function, which was good for the amber room reconstruction because it meant that the Soviet government regulated the cost of both amber and labor. But the project wasn't terribly efficient, and those working on the room during the Soviet period were often not paid enough, or on time, or at all. The process of harvesting and mining the amount of amber needed also took forever. Things with this reconstruction project really went off the rails after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the cost of amber skyrocketed. The project was also moving at an absolute snail's pace. As of 1994, only 30 to 40% of the panels were complete, and they were staring at the year 2003 as if through the barrel of a gun. And it was really, really important for this project to be done by 2003, which marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg by Tsar Peter the Great. The reconstructed amber room was supposed to be a centerpiece of that celebration, but the project, it seems, was at risk of shattering. That is, until a hero comes sweeping in with a bunch of cash. In an ironic twist of fate, that hero was German, specifically a German company named Rohrgas, which donated $3.5 million to the project. This ensured two things. One, that the project could be completed, and two, that it would be finished in time for the St. Petersburg 300th birthday party. In a 1999 article I found this company, Rurgas, stated that this multimillion dollar donation was, quote, a symbol of the company's desire to support an internationally important cultural project, end quote. How altruistic of them. It certainly didn't hurt, though, that Rurgas was the biggest importer of Russian gas to Germany, making this whole Russia-Germany relationship pretty damn important to them. There was also speculation at the time that the donation was intended to encourage slash demand the return of some German art and valuables that the Soviets looted in World War II. I believe that was somewhat successful. I don't think they got as much as they hoped, but they did get back some stuff. For those of you who listened to Mini Sode 1, you'll know all about the museum in Bremen, Germany that got looted in the wake of World War II. It's a long story, but some of the stolen works that were returned as part of this donation had been stolen from that museum, along with Van Gogh's drawing of Starry Night. That, however, was not returned. In the end, the project to reconstruct the Amber Room marks the collaborative effort of countless individuals, including three master amber craftsmen, the youngest of whom was 70 by the time the project was completed. But dozens of other artists and scholars were involved. The total cost of the project hovered at about $11.5 million, which was chump change compared to the previous room, which had an estimated worth of over $140 million. Compared to that, this new project was a bargain, a steal, if you will. The newly reconstructed Amber Room was revealed to the world on May 31, 2003, in honor of St. Petersburg 3rd centenary, right? On schedule. It was also attended by hundreds of VIP guests, including a few dozen heads of state from all your major players in global politics, like Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and American President George W. Bush. What a fun party! Given that this was 2003, which is only 60 years or so after World War II, there were still people around who had seen the Amber Room in person before its demise. Mind you, 60 years is a long time to remember the details of something, but even so, those who could make the comparison often remarked that this new room looked way better than the old room. And that makes total sense, because this new room was, well, new. Whereas the original room had 200 years of wear and tear, including several de-installations, reinstallations, and then a century plus of hanging out in a space where people were constantly burning candles and probably smoking. It's also highly likely that at some point the amber room was varnished in an attempt to make it shiny, but that varnish would have inevitably turned yellow and dirty by 1941. So yeah, the new room probably did look pretty damn good. This brings me to my final point. The amber room that is currently installed at the Catherine Palace outside of St. Petersburg may look exactly like the original. Maybe even a better version of it. But it isn't the original. And I don't just mean materially. I also mean spiritually, if you'll allow me to use that word. I can't think of a better one. What I mean by that is that the original amber room was a testament to international collaboration and diplomacy. It was designed by a German. Its original Amber Master was a Dane. It was expanded by an Italian. And it was given by the King of Prussia to the Russian Tsar in a show of diplomacy and alliance. But by the time the Germans came through in 1941, nationalistic ideologies clung to the amber room like cobwebs in its corners. The Germans considered it a product of Germany, by Germany, and for Germany, while the Russians prized it as one of their country's greatest treasures, one that they had managed to safeguard until those fateful days of 1941, when curators hastily wallpapered over it in the hopes of tricking their conquering foes. That didn't work, and the room's capture became an act of war in and of itself. An act aimed at breaking the Russian spirit and violently reclaiming a fiercely coveted gift. In comparison, the reconstructed amber room is made by Russians for Russians, using amber mined and harvested exclusively from Russia. It stands as a symbol of Russian perseverance and a glimpse into a stolen past. But it's also a symbol of absence. For this amber room can never be that amber room. That isn't to say it's not a masterwork or to discount the enormous efforts of those who worked for years, decades, to rebuild it, a process that required the resurrection of an entire art form. In time, this new room will have its own history, one that I hope sees the end of war rather than becoming victim to it. As for the Amber Room, the one that once cocooned Catherine the Great and the Romanovs in a warm pine-scented glow, the fate of that room remains a mystery, one that will likely never be solved. Personally, I think there's something comforting in the ambiguity of the room's fate, even as I acknowledge that it most likely perished in those air raids of 1945. But that fate isn't proven, and so the search will continue. There will always be people who hunt for those famous panels, hoping to open a dusty old chest and reveal the art historical equivalent of Willy Wonka's golden ticket, thereby claiming the fame and honor of being the people who rediscovered the eighth wonder of the world. I hope the Amber Room was found someday. That would be amazing. But more than anything, I hope that people keep looking. Not because I think they might find it, but rather because you never know what you might find along the way. And there are so many other works of art that are probably out there, waiting to be returned to their rightful owners. The Amber Room might never find its way home, but those things can. And I think that that is a beautiful thing. That is all I have for you on the Amber Room, from its making to its unmaking to its remaking. That was a fun one. I enjoyed that one very much. As for the sources I used to write today's episode, I read so much stuff and watched all of the Russian YouTube videos. Like, I think the government's probably pretty concerned about me. I relied most heavily on Catherine Scott Clark and Adrian Levy's The Amber Room, The Untold Story. It was by far the most detailed account of the room, though most of the book is more about the investigative process behind finding those details. It was super helpful, though I would not recommend it for light reading. One of the most helpful essays I found was a 2004 essay by Patty Rice about the 2003 reconstruction of the room. Patty Rice also wrote an entire book about Amber the Material, which I found incredibly informative. There was also a hugely helpful essay by Russell Shore. In addition to all of those, I also read a bunch of articles appearing in various trade publications and journals, by the likes of Richard Evans, Jess Bloomberg, Vladimir Izashenkov, Livia Gershon, and more. You can find the full list of sources as well as some other content like images and links to videos on the podcast's website, stuff about thingspodcast.com. As for Gussie Corner, for those of you listening for the first time, I always talk a little bit about my dog at the end of the episode. Gus is doing great. He turned 10 in April. He's a little old man, but he's still going strong, getting those daily walkies, and he is constantly guarding my mom as she does the yard work because he is a very good boy. What's not so great is that in the summers he eats a lot of grass and it creates, uh, shall we say, complex perfumes from his backside that are, quite frankly, as impressive as they are deadly. As for me, I am neither impressive nor deadly. I'm just working, trying not to crumble like the amber room. I am looking forward to heading home soon to see the fam and Gus, but in the meantime, I am continuing to work hard on the podcast on a nearly daily basis, learning all of the stuff about all of the things so I can tell you all about it. I do have some really good topics in the pipeline that I'm very excited about. If only there were more hours in the day and more wine in my fridge. If you liked the episode and have been enjoying the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you took the time to leave it a review. I see the numbers of people who listen to the episodes, but it's the reviews and the messages that give me the motivation to continue. Because I don't make this show for numbers, I make it for people. I also know that the show is not for everyone, I'm not for everyone, the earlier episodes are a little bit hoky, whatever. But I hope the love shines through, even if my tendency for accents and bad jokes make you cringe. At least you felt something. But for those of you who are still here listening to my voice, show the podcast some love by either leaving it a review or sharing it with someone you think might like it. If you're not into any of that, you can also send me an email at stuffabout thingspodcast at gmail.com. It might take me a while to reply, but I do always respond eventually. I will be back in a couple of weeks with another mini sode that is kind of sort of related to this episode. I'm excited about it and I'm gonna go work on it right now. That is it from me. The usual thanks go to hooksounds.com and freemusicarchive.org for the royalty free music featured in the podcast. The first song you hear is a version of Box Brandenburg Concerto number four by Kevin McLeod. The second, jantier tune, is called Success Dreams. That's it from me. I am parched, my throat is like sandpaper, and I'm going to sign off. But before I do that, please, please, please, don't forget to look at something beautiful today. A la prossima, which actually is not the worst of my absolute I'm making chicken. Goodbye.