How it was №1 12.09.1998 (1998)

The Amber Cabinet or Amber Chamber was created in the early 18th century by order of the King of Prussia, Friedrich I. His son, Friedrich Wilhelm I, who hoped for military support from Russia, presented this masterpiece of German craftsmen to the Russian Emperor Peter the Great.

Video footage: Surviving photographs of the room.

Fragments of amber jewelry: panels, figurines, panels. 1941. Fascist troops on the territory of the Soviet Union.

The city of Pushkin, formerly Tsarskoye Selo, where the Amber Room was kept, devastated after the German attack. 1941. Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).

Fascist symbols.

Military march.

Photograph of the Gauleiter of East Prussia, Erich Koch.

The Royal Castle.

German soldiers take away art objects packed in wooden boxes.

Soviet troops in Königsberg.

In the castle where the Amber Room, taken from the Leningrad Region, was supposedly located.

Inspection of the palace halls and cultural valuables.

Andrei Przhezdomsky says that Professor Alexander Bryusov, who led the search for valuables taken by the Nazis and examined the Royal Castle in Königsberg that burned down, decided that the Amber Room had suffered the same fate.

However, after a detailed inspection, these assumptions were not confirmed.

Video chronicle: Liberation battles near Königsberg.

The building of the Royal Castle.

Filming of the underground tunnels of the castle.

Valentin Yerashov, in 1949, was a journalist for the newspaper "Kaliningradskaya Pravda".

He was invited to cover the work of the State Commission for the Search for the Amber Room.

Interview with Veniamin Krolevsky, who headed the first search commission.

He talks about his meeting with the Regional Committee Secretary Vladimir Shcherbakov, who conveyed Stalin's personal request to organize a search for the lost Room.

Andrei Przhezdomsky talks about his meeting with members of the commission for the return of stolen valuables: Anatoly Kuchumov and Maria Popova.

He tells how work was carried out to discover possible secret tunnels in the dungeons of the Royal Castle of Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad).

Viktor Kuptsov demonstrates a metal frame, with the help of which, according to him, one can find the lost room.

Valentin Yerashov talks about the existence of many versions of the burial of the Amber Room.

About the participation of the KGB and simply adventure lovers in the search work.

Video chronicle: Erich Koch, sentenced to life imprisonment, who is in a Polish prison, gives an interview, walks around the prison yard.

He came up with a deal proposal: he reveals where the Amber Room is, and they give him the opportunity to go to Germany.

The deal did not take place.

Koch with Hitler, with children.

Koch's grave.

Andrey Przhezdomsky and Viktor Kuptsov say that there was a complete lack of simple equipment and manpower in the places where the search work was carried out.

Video chronicle: The headquarters of Hitler's troops.

German soldiers are preparing to defend the city.

Piled-up barricades on the streets.

German troops take out paintings and other works of art, load them into a car to rebury them in secret places.

Alexander Konyukhov talks about the search that was carried out in the Kaliningrad region in 1988. Video chronicle: Excavations in the former Ponart brewery (Kaliningrad).

German specialists are working on the excavations.

Ivan Koltsov tells how, with the help of an entrogeoscope device, large deposits of amber were identified in the ground near Kaliningrad.

Alexander Konyukhov, answering a question about the cost of the Amber Room, if it were discovered, notes that jewelry amber, like any mineral, has its own service life.

And even before the war, museum employees collected pieces of rock peeling off from the interior items of the Room every day.