Why wasn t the Amber Room saved?

The Mystery of Koenigsberg: The Amber Room is a quest in the genre of historical detective story. The game is based on the mysterious story of ancient Koenigsberg about the Amber Room stolen from the Royal Castle! During the Second World War, the amber room was dismantled, packed into wooden boxes, and disappeared without a trace. Since then, many enthusiasts and scientists have searched for the amber room, but have not found it. You are a special group of researchers sent on an expedition. You will visit abandoned cellars and forts where the Germans may have managed to hide it. Your main task is to search and rescue the kidnapped person. To successfully achieve your goal, you need to use logic, be attentive, and bring your wits with you. We hope that luck will be on your side.

IMPORTANT

Number of players: 2-4 people
Duration: 60 minutes
Difficulty: difficult
Age: 14+, from 10 years to 14 years – accompanied by an adult

PRICES

Cost of one quest per team
from 2 to 4 people
on weekdays, until 17:00
2000 rubles
on weekdays, after 17:00
2500 rubles
on weekends and holidays
2500 rubles
any day after 20:00
3000 rubles

Requirements and rules:

The management of the facility does not bear any responsibility for harm to the health of a participant of any severity that arises due to the participant’s failure to comply with these requirements. Children aged 10 to 14 years old can only participate in the quest if accompanied by an adult or our operator. The cost of operator support is 500 rubles. If the team of players is under 14 years old, the number of allowed players for the standard price indicated on the website is from 2 to 4 people. The 5th player is paid separately – 500 rubles. Your adult companion can go to the quest for free. If the team of players is over 14 years old, the number of allowed players for the standard price indicated on the website is from 2 to 4 people. The 5th player is paid separately – 500 rubles. You must arrive at the game 10 minutes before the start. The time you are late is deducted from the time you have to pass. The team has 60 minutes to complete the quest. If after the specified game time the team did not have time to complete the quest, the doors are opened by the operator. Payment is made before the quest. After this, you must leave personal belongings in special boxes. The main task is to get out of the room in which you find yourself. To do this you need to solve puzzles, find keys, open doors and locks. To pass, you only need your thinking, observation and attention. None of the puzzles are solved using brute physical force. We ask that you DO NOT break down doors, pick locks, break or disassemble furnishings. In case of breakage of items due to the fault of the participants, players must compensate the material damage to the Koenig Quest company. You are prohibited from taking or deliberately damaging any props or equipment. Actions that harm the quest props or other players will result in the game being stopped without a refund. To prevent injury, please follow instructions posted on premises and items. A video surveillance system is installed in all premises. At any time, at your request, the game can be stopped, the doors can be opened, and the participants can be released. The operator is in touch with you throughout the game, participants can always ask for a hint. It is prohibited to take photos or videos of solved puzzles and clues. The game is not recommended for persons who have medical contraindications for being in a confined space under conditions of increased emotional and mental stress, including chronic diseases of the cardiovascular system and neuropsychic disorders. The administrator has the right to refuse to play to persons under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. In case of inappropriate behavior of guests, the operator has the right to refuse service. In this case, the service is considered rendered; money is not returned. In the 18th century, among the premises of the palace in Tsarskoye Selo, a room appeared, the details of which were brought to Russia from abroad. Its dazzling beauty was enjoyed for two centuries until it was lost, perhaps irretrievably, during the Great Patriotic War.

Gift to Peter the Great

The fate of the Amber Room could have been different if it had not left Prussia. At first, they planned to place the masterpiece in Litzenburg Castle, the summer residence of Queen Sophia Charlotte. Her husband Frederick I, after ascending the throne, decided to rebuild the capital, taking advantage of the achievements of the best architects and sculptors. Prussia in those years was the center of amber fishing, and therefore it is not surprising that the choice when creating an outlandish room was made in favor of “Baltic gold”. The authorship of the Amber Room project is often attributed to the German architect Andreas Schlüter, but there is an opinion that in reality, Sophia Charlotte (she, by the way, was well versed in the fine arts and was very educated) owed the appearance of the masterpiece to his colleague, Johann Eosander. He also supervised all work on the expansion of Litzenburg Castle. Alas, in 1705 the queen died without ever seeing the finished Amber Room. Frederick I ordered the work to be suspended: he wanted to preserve the castle in the same form as it was during the life of his beloved wife. In 1712, the Prussian king was visited by Peter I, who examined the panels of the Amber Cabinet with interest. Since then, the tsar, who had a weakness for European wonders, did not part with the idea of ​​​​creating and placing such a creation in the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera. Evil tongues will subsequently report that the Russian monarch allegedly begged the Amber Room from Frederick, but this is not so. The king, of his own free will, presented such a diplomatic gift (especially since no one in Berlin planned to finish the room), and in return, by the way, received fifty-five grenadiers who joined the ranks of the Potsdam Guard. By 1717, panels from the Amber Room arrived in the Russian capital on eighteen carts. On behalf of Peter the Great, his associate Alexander Danilovich Menshikov accepted the gift and immediately fell under suspicion: it turned out that several parts had disappeared, and therefore it would not be possible to assemble the room. It later turns out that the Prussian king simply forgot to hand them over. The remaining parts of the Amber Cabinet will reach St. Petersburg during the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna. By the summer of 1755, all the contents of the precious room were transported from the Winter Palace to the Catherine Palace, but work on creating the interiors was completed under Catherine II. It took four years and 450 kilograms of amber to produce additional parts according to Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s design.

Amber is the new gold

In the 18th century, the popularity of amber was extraordinary. Fans of this material enjoyed using its ability to temporarily become transparent when wetted. For example, the lids of the boxes were decorated with amber plates, and miniature ivory reliefs were hidden under them. As soon as the lid was wetted a little, the image appeared and then disappeared again. Another entertainment associated with amber was placing so-called natural inclusions in the form of insects inside the stone. Butterflies and bugs frozen in a bright piece of “Baltic gold” symbolized the greatness of time, the connection of past and present. The Amber Room turned out to be the only example of the use of this capricious material in such large-scale and labor-intensive works. The fact is that creating a mosaic from amber was extremely difficult: it reacts strongly to changes in temperature and increased humidity, crumbles, cracks and falls off the wooden base on which it is placed. Almost immediately after the details of the Amber Room were installed in the Winter Palace by order of Elizabeth Petrovna, they required serious restoration. A separate position appeared for a servant in the Amber Room, who closely monitored the condition of the material and carried out minor repair work. Over the two centuries of its existence, the room underwent four restorations. The fifth was planned for 1941, but was not implemented – the Great Patriotic War began.

Lost masterpiece

On the eve of the war, in 1940, the Minister of Propaganda of the Third Reich, Joseph Goebbels, instructed art historians to compile a list of all German cultural property that was at that time in other countries. Among them was the Amber Room, which the Nazis considered theirs. After the outbreak of hostilities in the Soviet Union, a massive export of cultural property began, but due to the fragility of amber, it was impossible to evacuate the room from the Catherine Palace to Novosibirsk. In order to somehow save the masterpiece from looting and blast waves, museum workers hid parts of the decorations under the wallpaper, and covered them with cotton wool and gauze on top. Unfortunately, these desperate attempts did not help preserve the Amber Room: in less than two days, the enemies dismantled the precious panels and sent them to Konigsberg Castle. For two years, some of the panels of the Amber Room were located in a small hall of the Royal Castle of Königsberg, while others were hidden separately. When British bombs fell on the city in August 1944, a fire broke out and the room almost burned down. The long-suffering panels were again hastily dismantled, put into boxes and hidden – and so securely that they have not been found to this day. The last documentary evidence about her was a letter from the director of the Koenigsberg Museum of Art, Alfred Rohde, dated September 2, 1944, to his superiors. It says the following: “Despite the destruction of the castle, the Amber Room, with the exception of six basement elements, is safe and sound.”. When the territory of East Prussia was occupied by Soviet troops in April 1945, no traces of the Amber Room could be found.

Where the search leads

Decades have passed since the disappearance of the Amber Room, and more and more versions of its fate are appearing. Some researchers claim that she probably died during the bombing, others that she was hidden in a dungeon in Germany, and others that she even ended up in the United States or at the last moment was sent by the Nazis to South America on a submarine. According to one of the most popular assumptions, there is no point in continuing the search for the Amber Room today, since it was destroyed during the bombing of Koenigsberg. However, a ten-year investigation report compiled during the Soviet period suggests otherwise. It notes that none of the witnesses mentioned unusual odors when Koenigsberg was burning. But when amber burns, it gives off a very specific smell (almost like church incense), and it was simply impossible not to feel it, especially considering the size of the Amber Room. In addition, in 1997, the incredible happened: in Potsdam, the police discovered an amber-encrusted chest of drawers and a mosaic panel from the Catherine Palace. The last one (called “Smell and Touch”) was one of four Florentine mosaics that have decorated the Amber Room since 1787. It was taken out of the Catherine Palace in the first days of the occupation of Tsarskoye Selo by the Nazis and fell into the hands of an officer, who kept it as a souvenir. In photographs of the dismantling and reassembly of the room in Koenigsberg, this mosaic is no longer present, and after the war, the officer handed it over to a notary for safekeeping, from whom the police confiscated the precious item. Germany transferred both finds to Russia in 2000. Among the many versions, there is one more – both fantastic and sad. If you believe her, then none other than I.V. is involved in the disappearance of the Amber Room. Stalin, who outwitted everyone – both the Nazis and future seekers of precious interiors. He could have commissioned the creation of replicas of the amber panels and ordered that they be left in the Catherine Palace especially for the Germans. The real Amber Room was securely hidden – but we will no longer be able to find out where, because the information was available only to the Father of Nations himself. Be that as it may, in 1981, work began on the reconstruction of the Amber Room using material from Kaliningrad. For sixteen years they were led by the artist Alexander Alexandrovich Zhuravlev. A completely new Amber Room was erected for the three hundredth anniversary of St. Petersburg and, according to art critics, its current interior is hardly inferior to the original. You can still admire the details of the room in the Catherine Palace, the imperial summer residence, which today is a museum. Cover: The Amber Room (photo: Reshinna CC BY-SA 4.0) See also: