(A late 1900’s reconstruction of the Amber room built at Tsarskoye Selo)
The claim
There’s around $150 million of gold and amber artworks hidden somewhere in Europe
For anyone who likes treasure stories you surely would have heard of the amber room. Created in 1701 with a total build time of just over 10 years, the amber room is a series of gold and amber artworks and decorations within the Catherine Palace near Saint Petersburg.
It was originally built by the First king of Prussia for his second wife Sophie Charlotte and only the most prestigious master craftsmen from around Europe were commissioned to work on the room.
It contained the most magnificently carved amber decorations using a total of 6 tonnes of Amber, as well as a sizable but unknown weight of gold works.
But our story of treasure begins during world war 2 when the Nazi’s invaded the city and stripped all 590 square feet of the room, packed it all up into box’s and shipped it out. The room took a total of 36 hours to remove all the gold and amber under strict supervision of 2 experts sent to oversee the project.
On the 14th of October 1941 the amber room was sent to Königsberg in East Prussia for safe keeping in the cities castle. On 13th November the same year a city newspaper announced an exhibition of the Amber room on display at the castle.
So where is it now?
At the end of the war Hitler gave out orders in January of 1945 to move all looted goods from Königsberg and bring them into Germany for safer keeping. The Reichminister of Armaments, Albert Speer and his team were left to oversee the task.
However things didn’t quite go to plan as Speer fled from the city and abandoned his responsibilities as so many Nazi officers did towards the end of the war. The problem was that they thought they would be executed due to their rank, and after a heavy firebombing from the Royal air force and later a sever bombardment from Soviet forces who were about to enter the city any day, organisation and responsibility of many German troops simply went out the window, and so the Amber room was never moved to its intended location.
There’s $150 worth of treasure still hidden in Europe, could that be true?
Yes it most certainly could be, but its where abouts and current value may have changed drastically. Apparently in 1945 people witnessed the room being loaded on-board a ship called the Wilhelm Gustloff which left Gdynia, a city in Poland on 30th January 1945 which is a few days after the original orders were sent out to move it from its original location of Königsberg castle. However shortly after the ship left port it was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine and sunk an unknown distance off the coast.
The next story comes from a finding in Italy in 1997 when an Italian stone mosaic that was in the Amber room was found with the family of a soldier who claimed he helped to pack up the room, but no other pieces were found.
In 2004 during an investigation to locate the room a report was found made by Alexander Brusov, the man put in charge after the war to locate the room who claimed “Summarizing all the facts, we can say that the Amber Room was destroyed between 9 and 11 April 1945”.
The report claimed that the room was destroyed when the RAF fire bombed the city and destroyed the castle, however Brusov later claimed that he only said that as he was under pressure to do so by the Soviet authorities and claimed there was no conclusive evidence that the room was destroyed in the castle, claiming it was blamed on the British as the room was still lost and they didn’t want to seem like they destroyed it when they ruined the castle with artillery during their advance.
Likely locations?
This ones anybodies guess so I’ll just give you mine. The room is at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Gdynia.
The story about the room being destroyed in the castle doesn’t quite work as it included 6 tonnes of Amber and a large amount of gold. Even if the castle was blown to pieces there would still be a huge amount of melted amber and gold chunks within the rubble, but no pieces of the room were recovered from the rubble.
If the Russians found it they would have restored it to its original location, as the officer who returned it would be set up for life and if a Russian during the 2nd world war was caught stealing something like that it wouldn’t end well for them.
Also the room would be near impossible to sell as a whole or even in pieces as it was very distinctive. It had unmatched Amber works that were 1 of a kind in terms of design and size, and with pretty much everyone looking for it after the war you simply could not sell it to anyone.
This is also why i don’t believe it to be in the hands of black market collectors as the risk of possessing something you cant show to anyone, combined with the amount of time no one has seen a trace of it suggests that no one at all has it.
Using a ship to move something of such weight and importance at the end of the war would be the best choice given their situation. Train tracks were constantly being bombed and sabotaged and roads were being cut off by advancing allied forces and with 6 tonnes of Amber plus added gold weight it would be a sensible choice.
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