Customer Reviews

The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the (true) story of two journalists who embark on a quest to find out what happened to the Amber Room.

The Amber Room was a room in Catherine Palace in St Petersburg that was decorated with panels of amber mosaics. During World War 2, with the Nazis heading towards St Petersburg, the Russians packed up as many treasures as they could and sent them across the country to be safely stored. But they were unable to pack up the Amber Room, so they tried to conceal it in situ. This ruse was unsuccessful. The Nazis dismantled the room and relocated it to Konisberg Castle in Prussia. When the war ended, the Russians went to recover the room - but it had vanished. Where was it? Was it still in existence? There was evidence to suggest that it may have been moved again - but to where?

The story is told from the point of view of the two authors, as they sift through archived data in both Russia and Germany, and also try to track down any surviving witnesses to that time. It's very easy to read and surprisingly gripping. Not a dry history book at ALL.

I found the book fascinating from two perspectives. Firstly, it was interesting to learn about the Amber Room itself, and also about life behind the Iron Curtain in the post-World War period. But equally, it's an intriguing story of investigation - red herrings, false trails, surprise discoveries - that reminded me in some ways of reading "All The President's Men" (otherwise a vastly different book).

Sometimes it loses pace - but I suppose that mirrors the experience that the journalists themselves had. Sometimes I also got confused with all the Russian names (particularly one central character who is referred to by different names at different times), but there is a handy "who's who" at the beginning of the book.

Is the mystery solved? Yes and no. While there are no definitive answers, the authors draw a convincing conclusion about what probably happened.

If you are interested in Russian history, or just want to know what it's like to be an investigative journalist, I recommend this book.

After reading a fictional account of Russia's famous Amber Room, I decided to read a nonfiction account of the search for this missing treasure in The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure by Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy. While The Amber Room started out to be a very promising and interesting book, the second half was a disappointment.

Scott-Clark and Levy provide us with a detailed history of the Amber Room, starting with the Prussians who created this work of art. King Frederick William I of Prussia had no interest in his father's creation, so gifted the Amber Room to the young tsar Peter the Great. Peter never reassembled the room in Russia, and it wasn't until his daughter Elizabeth became empress that she finally found a place for it. After shifting it around between palaces, it ended up in the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. During World War II, the Nazi's confiscated a large quantity of Russian art including The Amber Room. They installed it in Konigsberg Castle, where it remained until the Allies started bombing Konigsberg late in the war. When the Allies took control of Konigsberg, the Amber Room was gone. At first, it was thought destroyed by the bombing of Konigsberg Castle. But then clues were found that indicated that the room was packed up and evacuated as the Allies neared.

Scott-Clark and Levy are investigative reporters and they spent quite a bit of time in Russia and Germany looking up old documents, interviewing key characters and tracing leads. In both countries, secrets abound and official documents are hard to come by. Many who possess knowledge are reluctant to talk. Unfortunately, since the Russians, the Germans, the KGB, the Stasi (the German version of the KGB) , and independent individuals were all involved in the search for the Amber Room over a period of 50 years, the story gets very confusing at times. Also, the authors claim that their book "shows incontrovertibly what happened to the most valuable lost treasure in the world." This claim is totally false--it's just speculation.

I found the first half of The Amber Room extremely fascinating. I just wish that the authors could have sustained this momentum throughout.

These two authors wrote another book (The Stone of Heaven) about their search for 'lost' jade and it, too, was more about them and their search than the titled mineral and its history. After reading 'Stone of Heaven', I felt I had been conned. Sucker that I am, I tried again with 'Amber Room', only to have that feeling confirmed. I was hoping against hope that this book - on a subject for which there is ample historical information available elsewhere - would really be about the Amber Room. Alas, more of the same. Save your money, look up the topic in Wikipedia and know that you have missed nothing by not reading this book.

In the early 18th Century, Prussian ruler Frederick I presented Tsar Peter the Great with a truly unique treasure: meticulously carved amber (then worth twelve times its weight in gold) that had been expertly assembled into enough wall panels to decorate an entire room. The beauty and value of the amber aside, as a work of craftsmanship the Amber Room was remarkable: imagine trying to repeat the same feat entirely from a single type of gemstone! The panels were assembled and re-assembled by the Romanovs, eventually finding a home in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. There it remained until the Nazis stole it at the opening of the siege of Leningrad in 1941. The Nazis "returned" their ill-gotten prize to its city of origin, Königsberg (now the military enclave of Kaliningrad). It is from Königsberg where the Amber Room disappeared at the end of the war.

This is where authors Levy and Scott-Clark ("The Stone of Heaven") begin their book, exploring the efforts of various German and Russian parties to determine the fate of Russia's greatest lost treasure. Taking the reader through the spadework of securing and reviewing archival materials from former Soviet and East German archives, the result is a highly entertaining work of non-fiction that thoroughly illuminates both the mystery of the Amber Room and the issues involving works of art stolen by various parties during the Second World War. The missing amber panels became something of a Cold War propaganda football, being pushed back and forth between the Soviets and the West (West Germany in particular). The result is that "The Amber Room" reads very much like the kind of non-fiction thriller that would involve Cold War espionage, except that instead of military secrets or mole hunting, the book is about missing art. It is filled with tales of betrayal, intrigue, cynical careerism, and bureaucratic stalling that are often absurd, but always frustrating.

Like a real thriller, Levy and Scott-Clark include a real twist in theirs. As it follows the various investigations, the book seems to be leading towards a particular explanation, but ultimately the authors turn the story back on itself and return to the first theory regarding mysterious fate of the Amber Room. While their theory cannot be proven yet, their thought-process provides a certain dramatic edge to this work where espionage meets art history.

I bought this book because I knew absolutely nothing about the subject (though I consider myself fairly well-educated, despite being from Texas). I took it to Mexico with me and read it in just a couple of days on the beach. I could hardly put it down. Last weekend, I was privileged to go to the Book Expo meeting in Chicago, where I had the pleasure of meeting the authors. They have done a superb job of covering this complex story. It's easily the best thriller I have read in years. And I learned quite a lot about Russian and Soviet politics through the centuries as well.

I thought I would love this book, as I devour anything about the Romanovs or Imperial Russia, but while reading the first chapter, I discovered an error on page 12, which made me wonder if the authors verified their other so-called facts........while discussing the Alexander Palace and Nicholas II, they state that Nicholas petitioned "Cousin Bertie' in England for exile and was turned down. It was NOT Cousin Bertie, who was dead by 1917 (he was King Edward VII), but Cousin Georgie who Nicholas wrote to. Cousin Georgie was Berties son (Bertie was married to Nicholas' maternal aunt, making him Uncle Bertie), who became King George V upon his fathers death. King George denied exile to his relatives, and by doing this, sealed their fate of death, which then haunted him for the rest of his life. My point is, however, that if this fact wasn't checked, how many others were not? I lost interest in this book immediately after reading the error. What a waste of thirty bucks.

The authors of this book are to be commended for their dogged determination and commitment to their project. They do very well in outlining both the history of the Amber Room and the time period from Catherine the Great to the Cold War, writing in a way that is both engaging and intelligible. Other reviewers have laid out competently the strengths of the book, but I noted several significant weaknesses:

First, neither of the authors speak Russian and only scraps of German (this according to the book), yet most of their sources and interviews are in these two languages. As a Russian speaker and someone who lived in Russia for several years, I have to note the tremendous disadvantage the authors have in this regard. Inevitably, nuances and ideas are missed in conversation. In fact, the book keeps awkwardly pointing out the authors have to wait on translations from a "friend" who is a professor in St. Petersburg. The "friend," never identified, clearly had another job and a life not committed to the Amber Room. One wonders what archival materials must have been missed, or how the authors competently reviewed documents in Russia using only translators.

Second, the authors twice go on at length about the dreary Russian weather or the joys of multiple rounds of vodka toasts with people you barely know. Any expatriate will tell you this is not pithy observation. The authors' perspectives lack depth and insight, and don't combine well with the rest of the book. Leave questions of exploring the interiors of the Russian soul to those who know the job, ideally Russians themselves. Certainly, they don't lack for authors who have taken up the theme: Dostoevsky, Gogol, Pushkin, and many others.

Finally, on the same theme of Russian vodka: the authors plainly admit to having been tipsy in their seminal (and mid-day) interview with the curator of the Catherine Palace. As truculent and impossible as Russian bureaucrats can be, the authors effectively sealed their fate and guaranteed no cooperation by this act of irresponsibility. I find it hard to believe the curator would not have noticed and been offended by this conduct.

To conclude: the book is well-written, fast-paced (I read the whole thing on one trans-Atlantic flight), and enjoyable. The research has some structural weaknesses, but the conclusions are probably sound.

If you have visited St. Petersbourgh you have visited this beautiful room, this amber room disapeared during the invasion of the Nazis to Russia and it still a mistery but this book is a very interesting one, Steve Berry is a very good writer I like him a lot and I'm reading more of his books.

Though offering no irrefutable conclusions as to the whereabouts of the lost Amber Room, this is an incredibly well-researched book. It presents a variety of theories investigated over the years and explores many sources such as eye witnesses and archives of various institutions and governments. I cannot deny its thoroughness, but the intrigue did not pick up pace until halfway in. Aside from the history of the Amber Room itself, the first half was tedious as the authors attempt to locate restricted files and introduce various characters connected with the missing treasure. As more evidence surfaces in the latter part of the book, it is an eye-opener as to how the Iron Curtain affected the gathering of information. The bureaucracies of government agencies such as the KGB and the East German Stasi do nothing but aid in the propagation of misinformation. I really enjoy reading about WWII and the mystery of the Amber Room is a fascinating one. Despite its slow start, this book is exhaustive in its detail and stakes its claim as the most authoritative book written about the subject so far.

What a great detective story on the search for Peter the Great's lost Amber Room! It details an impressive investigation of witnesses, KGB and Stasi archives, and private journals and personal papers ranging from Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Ukraine, all over the former East Germany, West Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Britain, and even touching on America. It is difficult at times to keep all of the people and the connections among them straight. This is an excellent book, but is not dispositive on the fate of the Amber Room. I'm stlll a believer that parts of it may still be out there waiting to be found.