Germany: Hunt For Legendary Amber Room To Begin Again
By Ria Novosti
The governor of Germany’s Nobitz municipality Hendrik Labe announced plans to search for the legendary Amber Room, looted by Nazi Germany during the World War II, in a local forest, the Bild newspaper said on Tuesday.
Labe said the search would be conducted on the border between the eastern German states of Thuringia and Saxony. Digging is due to begin this spring.
He sited research by amateur historian Thomas Kuschel, who collected wintesses’ statements about the last days of the war. He also conducted a geoelectric sounding of the area, which revealed cavities measuring 70 by 40 meters deep in the ground.
“I’m sure we will eventually find something here,” Bild quoted Kuschel as saying.
Labe is not the first German official to announce a search for the legendary treasure, housed at the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg and looted during WWII by Nazi Germany. It was brought to Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) and its further whereabouts were lost in the chaos at the end of the war in 1945.
The Amber Room is also being searched for by Heinz-Peter Haustein, the mayor of Deutschneudorf in Saxony. The search is being conducted in an abandoned copper mine in the Ore mountains, where a radar screening revealed a large amount of metal, believed to be too dense for copper.
Haustein said that the search in Nobitz is unlikely to yield any result. He added that the treasure hunting in the Ore mountains will resume after Easter.
The Amber Room is the 18th century chamber of amber panels, which was given by Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm I to Russia’s Peter the Great as a gift in 1716.
The six-ton treasure, dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world,” is decorated with pure amber panels, mirrors and precious stones.
Only two small elements of the room’s decoration were eventually rediscovered and returned to Russia.
A partial replica of the Amber Room has been recreated according to available blueprints at Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg.
