"Watson-TheAmberRoom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

The creation of the amber room began in the year 1702 in Denmark. Disagreements
and delays occurred, but by 1713 the amber room was on display in Berlin, either
gloriously or partially, when Peter the Great visited Frederick. The ebullient
Tsar was so enchanted that Frederick could do no other than make a gift of the
whole caboodle to Peter.

Off to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg went sleigh-loads of crates
containing wall panels, pediments, turned comers, embellishments, rosettes, et
al.

In 1755 Empress Elizabeth had the room transferred to the Summer Palace at
Tsarskoe Selo. Finishing touches were still occurring as late as 1763 --
culminating in one of the wonders of the world. Visitors expressed their sense
of stepping inside of a dream or fantasy.

Although constructed by human hands, surely that room did indeed partake of
otherness. Such golden luminosity! Such mosaic contrasts of yellows and
honey-browns and caramel and clear red. Such a wealth of carvings: of Roman
landscapes allegorizing the human senses, and of flowers and garlands and of
tiny figures las if seen from high in the air) and of trees. Such mirrors, such
chandeliers dripping amber lustres. Amazing the parquet floor. Ravishing, the
allegorical ceiling.

In 1941, eight years after Gran-Annie's parents fled with her from Germany, Nazi
armies were about to lay siege to Leningrad. Art treasures were being evacuated
to vaults in the Urals -- but the Germans overran the Summer Palace. They
dismantled the amber room and shipped it to Konigsberg Castle. There, it was
reassembled under the eye of the director of the Prussian Fine Arts Museum, a
certain Dr. Alfred Rohde. (It was from seven hundred kilometers further west,
from Hannover, that Gran-Annie's parents had emigrated to England.)

Within a couple of years loot filled Konigsberg Castle to bursting point. But
British bombs! were raining; down. Dismantled once more, the room departed --
and so likewise did Rohde. Konigsberg was wrecked; Konigsberg was overrun, soon
to become Kaliningrad -- politically a district of Russia but separated by the
three Baltic republics.

Weirdly, Dr. Rohde returned to his post. He co-operated freely with the Soviet
occupation forces. Yet he disclaimed any knowledge of the whereabouts of the
wonder of the world. Soon after Dr. Rohde's return, he and his wife both died
suddenly. According to their death certificates the cause was dysentery. These
documents were signed by a Dr. Paul Erdman -- but when the KGB investigated they
could find no trace of any such doctor.

Supposedly the dismantled amber room came to rest on the bottom of the Baltic
Sea some twenty nautical miles off the German coast in a ship which a Soviet
submarine had torpedoed.

There is such a thing as disinformation. . .