Summerpalace of Catherine I, Pushkin, Russia
The story of the Amberroom

Location:

In the Russian town of Pushkin, 10km from St. Petersburg, in the northern part of Russia, not far from the Finish border.

History:

In the beginning of the 18th century, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm, order the building of the Amberroom. It was build between 1701 and 1711 by the Danish artist Gottfried Wolffram. The room consisted panels, clothed with pieces of amber (click here to get an impression what the Amberroom looked like).

In April 1716, the room was sent to Czar Peter the Great as a present from king Friedrich Wilhelm. The Amberroom was rebuild in one of the rooms of the Summerpalace of the Russian Czars in Zarskoje Selo (Lenin renamed it Pushkin after the Russian revolution).

During the 900-day Leningrad Seige, the German troop, occupied the palace and stole most most of it's treasuries, including the Amberroom. The Amberroom was taken to Konigsberg (the former capital of east-Prussia, it is currently a Russian town and called kaliningrad).

From that moment on, think tend to get a little bit mysterious: no one really knows what happened to the Amberroom!

This is a short summary of theories that evolved in the year after the war:

• The Amberroom was burned/destroyed during a Allied Airraid in January 1945.
• The Amberroom, together with other artifacts was brought in the Wilhem Gustloff. The Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed by a Russian submarine in January 1945.
• Some say it was moved away Konigsberg, before the Russians captured it and was taken to Thuringen, Germany. In Thuringen a number of possible hiding places were named:
  • Secret rooms under the Gauforum in Weimar, Thuringen, Germany.
  • The new headquarters for Hitler, codenamed SIII, near Ohrdruf, Thuringen, Germany.
  • The V2 Rocket Combustion Chamber testing facility in Schmiedebach, near Lehesten, Thuringen, Germany.
  • Various other former caves, mines, etc were marked as the hiding place for the Amberroom.
• Some people think the Amberroom is a tunnel system called Hora Svate Kateriny in Czech.
• In 1998 there was a newsflah that panels of the Amberroom were found in Hamburg
• etc.
• etc.

People are still looking at places all over Europe to find the Amberroom.

Current status:

The Russians couldn't wait any longer, so they started to reconstruct the Amberroom. It is a very time consuming and costly affair. Until now (1998), they reconstructed two panels.

		The back of the Summerpalace, with a part of the garden.
		The palace in 1944, after the recapturing by the Russian troops
		One of the reconstructed Amberroom panels
		Detail of the panel
		The rest of the room is empty!
		All photos were taken in 1998.

References:

• Movie: Cascadeur - Die Jagd nach dem Bernsteinzimmer - The Amber Chamber (German)
• Movie: Cascadeur - Die Jagd nach dem Bernsteinzimmer - The Amber Chamber (English)
• Die Bernsteinzimmer-Theorien des Hans Jürgen Frank (German)
• Herr Reimann und das Bernsteinzimmer (German)
• Das Bernsteinzimmer (German)
• BERNSTEINZIMMER Online (German)