# The Amber Room > The Prussian court amber workshop, Berlin and Danzig - 1701 to 1713 in Berlin, enlarged at Tsarskoye Selo 1755 to 1770 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/prussian-court-amber-workshop/amber-room/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-27 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** The Prussian court amber workshop, Berlin and Danzig - **Date:** 1701 to 1713 in Berlin, enlarged at Tsarskoye Selo 1755 to 1770 - **Medium:** Baltic amber sawn into strips about 5 mm thick and set as mosaic on bronze foil over oak carcass panels, fixed with a pine resin and beeswax adhesive, with carved amber, gilded wood carving, mirror glass in the pilasters and four Florentine hardstone mosaics in coloured stones. Where amber ran short at Tsarskoye Selo the museum records that the wall was canvas painted in imitation of the stone by Ivan Belsky. - **Dimensions:** Figures for this object and for the 2003 reconstruction are routinely quoted as if they were the same, and they are not. For the original: Gems and Gemology gives the Berlin cabinet room as measuring more than 74.25 square metres and standing about 5 metres from floor to ceiling, with the design calling for the finished amber to cover 80 per cent of the wall surface, and 12 main panels over 3.5 metres high with most of them close to 56 cm wide. 74.25 is the room, not the amber. The Tsarskoye Selo museum gives the hall that received the panels in 1755 a floor area of 96 square metres; Gems and Gemology gives the wall space of that room as approximately 216 square metres, nearly three times the Berlin cabinet, and the 12 amber panels there as covering 68.5 square metres with a further 5.57 square metres of other elements. Those two figures together are the sharpest way to see what this object was: amber over roughly 74 of 216 square metres of wall, against a reconstruction that covers more than 150 of the same walls. The much repeated figures of six tonnes of amber, 100,000 pieces and more than 150 square metres of wall describe the RECONSTRUCTION, not this object. The only weight of amber documented for the original is the 450 kg the museum records as used between 1763 and 1767 for Catherine II's lower tier. - **Object type:** Furniture - **Period:** Prussian and Russian, eighteenth century - **Current location:** Lost. The panelling has not been seen since it was crated inside Koenigsberg Castle in 1944 and no institution holds it. One element has come back: the Florentine mosaic Touch and Smell, seized in Bremen in 1997, which the Tsarskoye Selo museum states was returned to the museum preserve in April 2000 together with a Russian marquetry chest of drawers from the room. The room open to visitors in the Catherine Palace at Pushkin is the reconstruction completed in 2003 and is a different object. The amber casket and amber mirror in the State Hermitage that are widely captioned as remains of the Amber Room are, on the Hermitage's own account, separate gifts made to Peter the Great on the same occasion in 1716 and not parts of this room. - **Attribution:** workshop ## Summary Amber panelling begun for Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, given to Peter the Great in 1716 to seal an alliance, enlarged by Rastrelli at the Catherine Palace between 1755 and 1770, removed by German forces in 1941 on accounts that differ over the month and the unit, displayed at Koenigsberg Castle, crated there in 1944 and never seen since. No object lost in the Second World War has been searched for longer or by more people, and it has never been found.The record separates the original from the full-size reconstruction completed at the Catherine Palace in 2003, which is what almost every published photograph of the Amber Room actually shows, and from which most of the quoted figures for amber weight and wall area are taken. One element of the original has come back: the Florentine mosaic Touch and Smell, seized by police in Bremen on 13 May 1997 and handed over at Pushkin on 29 April 2000. The amber casket and mirror in the Hermitage usually captioned as survivals are, on the Hermitage's own account, separate gifts of 1716 that never entered the room.Two Soviet investigations reached opposite conclusions within a year of each other. The first, on the ground in Koenigsberg in June 1945, recorded that the room had burned; that diary was suppressed for forty-five years and its author was summoned to withdraw it in 1949. The second found that the panels had left the city and must survive, and eighty years of searching has been built on it. This record gives both, names who holds each and does not arbitrate. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1701-1713** Frederick I, King in Prussia `[documented]` (commission and manufacture) Begun 1701 for the Prussian court. Designed by Andreas Schlueter on the account of Gems and Gemology and by Johann Friedrich Eosander on the German account. Built by Gottfried Wolfram to 1707, then by Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht after Eosander von Goethe dismissed him. An inventory of 1713 records most carvings, four of twelve pilasters and most panels complete. Frederick I died in 1713 and his successor stopped the work. The panels stood as a cabinet in the Berlin palace. - **1716-11-1717** Peter I of Russia `[documented]` (diplomatic gift) Given by Frederick William I to Peter the Great at their meeting of November 1716, sealing a Russo-Prussian alliance. Peter's letter to Catherine of that date records the gift. Two years later Peter sent 55 grenadiers of gigantic stature and an ivory goblet he had turned himself. Shipped by way of Memel and Riga. The Tsarskoye Selo museum records eighteen large and small crates including unused amber; Gems and Gemology records eight crates packed on 13 January 1717. - **1717-1743** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) The holding museum states in terms that there is no evidence about where Peter ordered the panels installed, or whether he did so at all, and that speculation about their use in his Winter Palace is unfounded. For about twenty-six years the object has no recorded location beyond its crates. - **1743-1755** Empress Elizabeth of Russia `[documented]` (installation, third Winter Palace) Elizabeth ordered the panels installed in 1743. The room was assembled in 1746 and used for official receptions. The continuing rebuilding of the Winter Palace meant it was moved more than once. Redesign work at this stage is associated with the Italian stucco master Alexander Martelli on the German account. - **1755-07-1770** Empress Elizabeth, then Catherine II `[documented]` (removal to Tsarskoye Selo and enlargement) Elizabeth ordered Rastrelli to create a new Amber Room in the Great Palace at Tsarskoye Selo in July 1755; a detachment carried the crates by hand from the capital. The hall had a floor area of 96 square metres. Rastrelli added mirrored pilasters and gilded carving, and Ivan Belsky painted canvas in imitation of amber where the material ran short. Catherine II ordered the painted wall replaced in 1763; 450 kg of amber went into the work and the room was complete in 1770. - **1770-1941** The Russian imperial house, then the Soviet state museum at Detskoye Selo and Pushkin `[documented]` (in situ) Refurbished in 1833, 1865 and 1893 to 1897; minor renovation 1933 to 1935 by the sculptor I. V. Krestovsky; a major restoration scheduled for 1941. Photographed in colour by Andrei Zeest between June and August 1917 for the Provisional Government commission. Conserved in place in June 1941 under paper, gauze, cotton wool and boards because the amber was judged too fragile to dismount. - **1941-10-1941-11** Removed by German forces `[documented]` (wartime removal to Koenigsberg) The Tsarskoye Selo museum records that German units at Pushkin were followed by specialists of the Nazi art-plundering team, that the panels were removed and that they were sent to Koenigsberg. The Frankfurter Personenlexikon records the removal as one of the first acts of Ernstotto Graf zu Solms-Laubach as art protection officer of the 18th Army, appointed 1 October 1941, with Georg Poensgen. The German account dates the dismantling from 14 October 1941, 36 hours, 28 crates; Gems and Gemology gives September 1941, 36 hours, 27 crates. - **1941-11-1944-03** Koenigsberg castle museum, director Alfred Rohde `[documented]` (exhibited) Entered in the Gift Book of the Koenigsberg museum as item 200, a present from the Third Reich administration of palaces and gardens, and shown with the carved and gilded doors in a castle hall that already housed an amber museum. The Koenigsberger Allgemeine Zeitung reported the display on 13 November 1941 and one Florentine mosaic was already missing from it. Rohde wrote in 1942 that the room, returned to its homeland, was Koenigsberg's finest adornment. - **1944-03-1945-01** Koenigsberg castle museum `[documented]` (dismantled and crated) Taken down again and packed into 28 crates against the risk of bombing. RAF Bomber Command attacked the city twice at the end of August 1944, on the nights of 26 to 27 and 29 to 30 August; the German account of the raids records 174 Lancasters on the first night, 189 Lancasters and 480 tonnes of bombs on the second, and the castle among the historic buildings destroyed. Gems and Gemology dates Rohde's last recorded note to 12 January 1945: the panels were being crated and he would then evacuate them to Wechselberg near Rochlitz in Saxony. This is the last documented handling of the object. - **1945** Unknown `[unknown]` (loss) Two findings, never reconciled. The Soviet investigator Brjussow, in Koenigsberg from late May 1945, recorded on 10 June 1945 that in the Great Hall both the Amber Room and the Keyserling furniture had burned and that a fire started by Soviet soldiers had probably caused it; his diary was suppressed, archived in the Lenin Library in 1974 and found there in 1990, and he was summoned in December 1949 to withdraw it. The curator Anatoly Kuchumov searched the same ruins as late as 1946. The Art Newspaper, which gives his forename as Alexander, records that he found the burnt Florentine pietre dure at the entrance to the north wing, in tiny fragments rendered colourless by heat and still stuck to their ground, that he took one corner to Leningrad and lost it, and that he nonetheless remained convinced that at least some parts of the room had left Koenigsberg. Gems and Gemology records that the investigators sent to the castle found furniture from the Catherine Palace in an intact tower and, the following year, the ruins of three of Zocchi's mosaics. Soviet forces at the castle in 1945 and 1946 found door hinges from the room, iron plates with screws and charred remains, and specialists objected that amber melts rather than chars. Rohde died on 7 December 1945. No later evidence has settled it. - **1967-1984** Not applicable `[documented]` (state search) A Soviet state commission searched repositories in the USSR and Germany for the panels from 1967 and was wound up in 1984 without result. Private and East German searches ran alongside it: Georg Stein from 1958 until his death in 1987, and Paul Enke's East German special commission, which spent two and a half million marks in the Aue district and found nothing. - **1997-05-13-2000-04-29** One Florentine mosaic only, not the room `[documented]` (seizure and restitution of a single element) This link concerns one panel and nothing else. Police seized the Florentine mosaic Touch and Smell, 55 by 70 cm, in central Bremen on 13 May 1997 during an undercover operation, after it was offered at 2.5 million US dollars. Its holder was a Bremen pensioner whose father, a Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel, is said to have taken it in 1941 during the transport to Koenigsberg. The lawyer who offered it was fined 90,000 marks for attempted fraud after the federal court raised the Bremen sentence. Bernd Hockemeyer bought the panel from the family for 200,000 marks and on 29 April 2000 the mayor Henning Scherf and the culture minister Michael Naumann presented it at the Catherine Palace, with 101 works returning to the Bremen Kunsthalle. The Tsarskoye Selo museum records the mosaic and a Russian marquetry chest of drawers arriving in April 2000. The panelling itself was not part of this and did not come back. - **1945-2026-09-27** No holder `[unknown]` (whereabouts unknown) The amber panelling has not been located. Searched on 27 September 2026, the German Lost Art Database returned no entry under Bernsteinzimmer, Bernsteinkabinett or Amber Room, and the public search of the Russian Ministry of Culture's consolidated catalogue of wartime losses returned nothing under the Russian words for amber. Interpol's database is not publicly searchable, so an entry there can be neither confirmed nor excluded. The room open at the Catherine Palace is the reconstruction completed in 2003. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This object has never been offered at auction and cannot be. It was a diplomatic gift in 1716, it was crown and then state property until 1941 and it has been missing since 1944. No hammer price exists for it and none of the prices below is a price for the room. - **** , - The only figures the market has produced concern one Florentine mosaic panel, given as 55 by 70 cm framed by the Weser-Kurier and as 61 by 45 cm by the Kulturstiftung der Laender. It was offered privately in Bremen at 2.5 million US dollars in 1997 and seized by police on 13 May that year; no sale took place and the asking price was never tested. The panel then changed hands once for 200,000 German marks in a private purchase by Bernd Hockemeyer from the holder's family, made to head off a civil dispute rather than as a market transaction, and was presented to Russia on 29 April 2000. Bremen received 101 works from Russia in the exchange. The two figures differ by a factor of about twenty-two and neither is a valuation. ## Open questions - Whose design was built? Gems and Gemology gives Andreas Schlueter, appointed 1701 and dismissed 1707, with Eosander von Goethe keeping his drawing. The German account gives Johann Friedrich Eosander as the designer outright. No document produced so far settles which man's scheme reached Russia. - How many crates left Berlin in 1717, and how many left Pushkin in 1941? The Tsarskoye Selo museum says eighteen large and small crates in 1717; Gems and Gemology says eight, packed on 13 January 1717. For 1941 the German account gives 28 crates from 14 October, Gems and Gemology gives 27 from September. Both sets of figures circulate as fact. - How much amber was in the original? No source gives a weight for the whole room. The only documented figure is the 450 kg used between 1763 and 1767. The six tonnes universally quoted is the reconstruction's material requirement and has migrated backwards onto the original. - What became of the burnt fragments of the other three Florentine mosaics? Gems and Gemology records that Soviet investigators discovered the ruins of three of Zocchi's mosaics in the castle in the year after the war, and The Art Newspaper gives Kuchumov as the finder, describing fragments rendered colourless by heat and still stuck to their ground, of which he took one corner to Leningrad and lost it. No source consulted here establishes whether anything of those three panels is held anywhere today, or where the corner went. - Did anything leave Koenigsberg Castle after March 1944? Rohde's last recorded note of 12 January 1945 states an intention to evacuate the crates to Wechselberg near Rochlitz. No source establishes that the move happened, and the whole eighty-year search rests on the assumption that it did. - What became of Rohde's own scholarly file? He published two articles on the room in 1941 and 1942 and, on the German account, knew more about it than anybody. No source consulted here establishes what happened to his notes, his correspondence or the museum's own records when the castle fell. - Why is the object on no register? Neither the German Lost Art Database nor the public search of the Russian consolidated catalogue of wartime losses returns an entry for it, checked 27 September 2026. Whether that is an omission or a deliberate judgment that a destroyed or unsaleable object does not belong on a recovery register is not established here. - How many main panels were there? The Tsarskoye Selo museum describes the middle tier of the finished room as eight large upright panels. Gems and Gemology describes 12 amber panels covering 68.5 square metres in the same room. Whether the twelve are the eight plus four of something else, or a different count of the same wall, is not resolved by either source. - What do the Hermitage's own collection records say about the amber casket and the amber mirror? The correction in this record rests on an article published by the museum on its own social account rather than on a catalogue entry. The collection-database entries for inventory ERS-2222 and ERRz-3036 would settle whether either piece was ever part of the room, and neither could be reached here. ## Sources - [1] Tsarskoe Selo State Museum and Heritage Site, 'Amber Room'. The holding museum's own account of the original, its enlargement, the 1941 removal, the loss and the reconstruction. - [2] Gems and Gemology (Gemological Institute of America), Winter 2018, 'The History and Reconstruction of the Amber Room'. The fullest technical account in English of how the panels were made. - [3] Frankfurter Personenlexikon, 'Solms-Laubach, Ernstotto Graf zu'. Scholarly biographical dictionary; the entry for the officer who removed the room. - [4] Kulturstiftung der Laender, 'NS-Raub in der Sowjetunion'. Institutional survey of German cultural plunder in the Soviet Union. - [5] Berliner Zeitung, 'Tagebuecher des Historikers Brjussow: Das Bernsteinzimmer ist im Koenigsberger Schloss verbrannt'. Report on the suppressed 1945 diary of the first Soviet investigator. - [6] The Art Newspaper, January 1992, 'Forty-five years later and they're still hunting for the legendary Amber Room'. The most detailed published survey of the search, its sites and its searchers. - [7] Weser-Kurier, 'True Crime: Wie ein Teil des Bernsteinzimmers nach Bremen kam'. Local reporting on the 1997 seizure, the family, the prosecution and the 2000 handover. - [8] 123recht.de, 'BGH erhoeht Geldstrafe im Verfahren um Bernsteinzimmer-Mosaik'. TERTIARY: a legal news report of the Bundesgerichtshof decision. Replace with the published decision of the 5th Criminal Senate. - [9] State Hermitage Museum, 'Larets i zerkalo iz solnechnogo yantarya', an article published by the museum on its own VKontakte account at m.vk.ru. It is the museum's own voice but it is not a catalogue entry; the collection-database records for inventory ERS-2222 and ERRz-3036 should replace it. - [10] Wikipedia (German), 'Bernsteinzimmer'. TERTIARY, used for the German dating of the dismantling, the crate counts, the Koenigsberger Allgemeine Zeitung notice and the Kuchumov papers. Replace with Wulf D. Wagner on Koenigsberg Castle and with Levy and Scott-Clark directly. - [11] Wikipedia (German), 'Alfred Rohde (Kunsthistoriker)'. TERTIARY, cites Wulf D. Wagner (2011) and Guenther Haase (2008). Used for Rohde's posts, publications and death. - [12] Smithsonian Magazine, 'A Brief History of the Amber Room'. Used for the reconstruction's total cost and its dedication. - [13] Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, artist entry for Giuseppe Zocchi. - [14] German Lost Art Foundation, Lost Art Database search interface. Searched 27 September 2026 under Bernsteinzimmer, Bernsteinkabinett and Amber Room; no entry returned. - [15] Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, 'Cultural Valuables - Victims of War', consolidated catalogue of Russian wartime losses. Source of the Catherine Palace inventory and loss figures; its public search returned no Amber Room entry on 27 September 2026. - [16] Baltictech, 'Karlsruhe wreck research IX 2021'. The diving group's own report of what it found and did not find on the wreck. - [17] The Jerusalem Post, 'New Clues in Poland's Search for the Eighth Wonder'. Report of the 2025 Dziemiany excavation. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, file page for 'Andrey Zeest - Amber Room (autochrome).jpg'. Source of the 1917 dating, the Lukomsky commission and the Frederick the Great model. - [19] Wikimedia Commons, file page for 'Original Amber Room's remains - mirror (1700-5., Hermitage) 01 by shakko.JPG'. Source of the mirror's dimensions, inventory number and the uploader's Amber Room attribution. - [20] Federal Foreign Office of Germany, germania-online, 'Yantarnoe chudo: tri stoletiya istorii, zagadok i tain'. German state cultural portal; used for the 2003 opening and the survival of the mosaic and the commode. - [21] Tagesspiegel, 'Teil I: Reise des Bernsteinmosaiks'. Contemporary reporting from January 2000 on the mosaic case and the pending return. - [22] Wikipedia (German), 'Luftangriffe auf Koenigsberg'. TERTIARY, used only for the dates, aircraft numbers and tonnage of the two RAF raids of August 1944 and for the destruction of the castle. Replace with the Bomber Command campaign diary. - [23] Wikipedia (English), 'Andreas Schlueter'. TERTIARY, used only for the offices Schlueter actually held and for the absence of any Danzig directorship. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.