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Amber Notes:
Amber is a mineral of the class of organic compounds, mineral pitch of coniferous trees. The most common is the Baltic amber, called Succinite. On the outside, amber is usually an opaque grey or brown, the result of oxidation. It does not dissolve in water, and can be easily machined or worked on mechanically. Amber has about 350 tints, and is found in various forms and sizes up to several kilograms.
Amber Room opening hours: The Amber Room is located at the State Museum 'Tzarskoje Selo', situated 25km south from St.Petersburg. It is opened daily from 10:00 to 17:00 hours, except Tuesdays and the last Monday of each month. For more information, see their website, http://eng.tzar.ru
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STORY RAINER SIGEL
Boundless vanity and court politics, the ravages of time and the brutality of war wrote one of Europe's most convoluted royal treasure sagas. In the end, many of the legendary Amber Room's mysteries remain unsolved.
VAIN people have grandiose ideas. Such as the first Prussian King FriedrichI. After crowning himself in 1701, he immediately set out on a massive reconstruction of the Great Royal Palace in Berlin. True to form, he also commissioned the use of amber, a natural gemstone never before used for interior decoration, to complete one of the palace's rooms.
A succession of famous architects worked on the royal pet project, which foresaw the use of over 100,000 pieces of carved amber panelling, covering a total area of 55 square metres. Endless court intrigues, though, caused long delays, and in the end, the king was never to see the completed work.
After his death in 1713, King Friedrich's successor, King Friedrich Wilhelm I, saw the whole thing as a folly and stopped it. The amber panels and other architectural details were taken away to a warehouse in Berlin, and the heavy dust of history settled on the idea.
Several thousand miles to Berlin's East though, word of this unusual Amber Room had reached the Russian Emperor PeterI, another grandiose man known as Peter the Great. He decided to add the Amber Room pieces to his curio collection, and in 1716 convinced King Friedrich Wilhelm I to give him the whole lot as a 'diplomatic gift'.
Eighteen huge boxes of amber subsequently arrived at the Tsar's own pet project, the new city of St. Petersburg, in 1717. They had survived the trip in good shape, but again did not see any daylight. Tsar Peter, busy with the construction of St. Petersburg, and doling out unspeakable cruelties - including the fatal torturing of his son Alexei - never got around to completing the Amber Room.
After his daughter, Empress Elizabeth I, seized the Russian throne, she decided to install the almost-forgotten Amber Room in the new Winter Palace. As there were not enough pieces of amber, her Italian architect used mirrored plasters and amber-coloured panels to complete the job.
In 1746, the ill-fated project was finally completed for the very first time. The Amber Room was used for some of Elizabeth's official receptions, but for reasons unknown, she decided in 1755 to move the whole lot yet again. The panels were dismantled, packed again into boxes, and shipped to her summer palace, the Tzarskoje Selo, also referred to as Catherine Palace.
Elizabeth I died in 1761, and Russia's monarchy again went on a roller-coaster ride. Elizabeth's successor, Peter III, was assassinated in 1962, and succeeded by his German-born wife, Catherine II (Catherine the Great). Not satisfied with the hatchet job her predecessors had done with the Amber Room, she ordered all painted panels replaced with real amber in 1763. Over the following years, 450kg of amber went into the project.
After its official completion in 1770, and almost 70 years after its original conception, the Amber Room had finally become what it was designed to be, and how it later appeared in old photographs.
Over the ensuing centuries, temperature changes and stove heating damaged the amber. During the 19th century, the room was restored 3 times, and additional major repairs were undertaken during the 1920's.
History's cruelty intervened once more when German troops invaded the area in 1942, promptly dismantled the panels and sent them to Koenigsberg (now known as Kalinigrad). The amber panels and doors were first displayed in the Koenigsberg Palace, but fear of Allied bombing raids in 1944 forced yet another dismantling.
Packed and stored in the by now familiar boxes, the original Amber Room finally vanished for good some time around April 1945. Since then, one outlandish theory on the whereabouts of the treasure chased another. The most likely explanation though, is that the boxes were burned during a fire at Krolewiec Castle, following a bombing in April 1945.
It would have been the end of it all, if not for the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation, which on 10 April 1979decided to reconstruct the Amber Room. Over the ensuing 20 years, about half the project was completed, despite frequent disruptions due to Russia's difficult economic situation and budget shortfalls.
Again, it could have been all over, but history is unpredictable. A sponsor emerged out of nowhere - the German energy conglomerate Ruhrgas AG. Their grant of USD3.5 million assured the completion of the Amber Room in time for the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city of St. Petersburg.
On 31 May 2003, Russian President Putin and German Chancellor Schroeder officially opened the newly restored Amber Room in its full glory.
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