WWII Mystery: What Happened to Russia's Amber Room?

“Eighth Wonder of the World” is a privileged nickname bestowed on only a handful of sites. Some of these places, like California’s Burney Falls and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, are still around to visit. But one magnificent place was lost to history as a result of Nazi looting and a World War II siege.

The Amber Room, so called because of its amber-paneled walls, was an opulent salon over 200 years old at the time of its disappearance. Nobody knows for sure what happened to its precious walls and treasures, but some continue to search for its contents.

The gilded room was a gift to Russian czar Peter the Great from King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia in 1716. However, the idea for a room lined with amber was conceived in 1701 by then-Prussian ruler King Friedrich I, according to a 2018 paper published in the journal Gems & Geology, and was going to be mounted within Berlin’s Charlottenburg Palace. The intent was to challenge the splendor of France's palace at Versailles.

But after more than a decade of work and various craftsmen falling in and out of favor with the court, Friedrich I died in 1713 with the Amber Room unfinished. His successor, King Friedrich Wilhelm I, resented the garish project and shipped the materials to the Berlin armory. It wasn’t until 1716 when Peter the Great visited the Prussian court that Friedrich Wilhelm I offered the amber panels as a strategic gift to solidify a diplomatic alliance in amber.

The room became part of the Catherine Palace located in the imperial village Tsarskoye Selo, meaning “Tsar’s village,” outside of Saint Petersburg. The amber panels adorning the walls were made of fossilized tree rosin from the giant Baltic pine (Pinus succinifera). But the room wasn’t completed until 1745—20 years after Peter’s death, at which point it had been moved from palace to palace in Russia in search of a permanent home.

Twelve amber panels lined the high walls, creating a golden glow as if emanating from within. Eighteen rectangular mirrored columns separated these panels, and intricate gilded cornices decorated with carved wreaths, coated in gold foil, hung above each one. Faux amber mosaics were painted above the true amber, and decor like mounted gilded figurines, carved reliefs and candelabras covered the imitations.

“It's such an extraordinary work of art,” says William Brumfield, a professor of Slavic studies at Tulane University, adding, “German art, by the way.” As he points out, the Kingdom of Prussia was a German state from 1701 to 1918, and played a significant role in creating a unified Germany. The fact that Germans created the Amber Room was likely one reason why the Nazis pilfered it, according toe Brumfield. 

Indeed, the Amber Room had been included in the Kümmel report. This list, devised by German art historian Otto Kümmel at the behest of German propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, enumerated German-made artworks to be returned to the Aryan Empire. (Though the Nazis were also simply fond of looting.)

In the summer of 1941, 3 million Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. By September, the army had reached Catherine Palace. According to a 2018 paper published in the journal Gems & Geology, the army detached the amber panels and other fabulous trimmings within 36 hours.

The once-glamorous gift was reduced to 27 crates, all shipped by rail to the German city of Königsberg, then the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia—in a nod to the Amber Room’s origin. Once in Königsberg, the room was reassembled and displayed in the city’s castle.

But in 1943, the Nazis dismantled and stowed the room’s contents once again as British and American bombers attacked the city. The amber panels were last seen on January 12, 1945, by a German museum director. Brumfield believes that the amber panels were destroyed in the bombing. Amber “has a relatively low melting point,” Brumfield says. “Fires or any sort of heat… could simply destroy it.” Amber’s melting point is between 392 and 716°F (200 and 380°C).

But some continue to search for the room’s bounty. In October 2020, Polish divers found the remnants of a steamer called the S.S. Karlsruhe, a German cargo ship that sank in April 1945 and potentially carried goods from the Amber Room. No such luck.

Though the authentic Amber Room may never be recovered, a replica adorns Catherine Palace in the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum and Heritage Site in Saint Petersburg. And conspiracy theories about the room persist, including that the Soviets accidentally destroyed it themselves, or that Joseph Stalin replaced the crates with fakes. But Brumfield sticks to his more straightforward theory. “You can spin various versions about what might have happened," he says, "but there's no compelling evidence for any of those."