The Mystery of the Lost Amber Room

from the beginning of January. A listener, longtime listener, she says, name Laura Pietro Maca Pietroica, one of those two. She wrote in and suggested it, and I'd heard of it before, but I didn't know virtually anything about it. Yeah, So we won't ruin any of the deeds, but we will just broadly say that the Amber room was called the eighth Wonder of the World at one point, and it was a h a masterpiece of Baroque art made from

amber and and panels on a on a wall. So it was a room made of these beautiful, beautifully crafted amber walls, amber and wood. And there's a mystery and that it uh, it kind of disappeared and that no one knows where it ended up for sure. Yeah, it's actually considered one of the great mysteries of World War Two. Uh. We also want to thank um Dave relied on the work of Adrian Levy or Levy and Catherine Scott Clark, investigative journalists for The Guardian, who also wrote a book

called The Amber Room. You know it's coming colon the fate of the World's greatest Lost treasure. Uh, so big thanks to Dave and for their work. But we should talk a little bit about Amber because it's pretty amazing. We we could probably do a short stuff to pair it with this, but we won't, right, And if your name's Amber, you're gonna of this episode because we talked about how great Amber is the whole time. So just

pretend we're talking about too, That's right. If anyone has seen Jurassic Park, you know that dan O d na uh was found um stuck in Amber and through that little short film that Steven Spielberg saw fit to make to help explain it, which I think at the time was probably necessary. Uh. Most of us know a little bit, and that is that Amber is fossilized pine resin from the pine tree. Yeah. Um. And there's the world's biggest

deposit of amber. Uh is in the Baltic area northern Europe, Um, southern Scandinavia, which is still Europe, but you know what I mean. And by the way, Germany UM is on the Baltic Sea. It's not landlocked so um. But it

all comes from pine resin. When a bug would like chew into a pine tree, the pine would secrete this kind of res any stuff to to not only like get rid of the bug, um, it would also kind of create a seal over that that part of the tree that had just been exposed um after the bark was chewed off, and that a band aid exactly, It's

a tree made band aid. And that resin would sometimes harden enough that it would fall off of the tree or maybe the tree would fall over, and the resin would survive um enough to make it into like a stream, a river or something like that. And if it made it all the way to the ocean and was covered with sediment in time before it degraded, it would the process of it becoming amber, which is fossilized tree resin

would begin, that's right, Uh. And then eventually also saw it could be in like wet clay and stuff like that and still kind of have the same effect. But it seems like the bulk of amber comes from deep, deep in the ocean, and it would get dislodged by weather in the movement of water and and float. Amber actually floats, so it's sort of stuck down there, but then it becomes dislodged, it floats to the top. A big storm will come through and it just would literally

wash onto the shore. Wherever it was an abundance in the Baltic Sea is certainly one of those places. And it was extremely valuable. I think it was, I mean, how many times more valuable than gold at the time at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was twelve times more valuable than gold in in Europe. That's amazing, Yeah, which is one reason why this making an entire room paneled in amber was so incredibly opulent. UM. And when you polish it, it's also very beautiful. UM. There's um.

It comes in all sorts of different shades, from like kind of a light honey color to um, you know, a watery slurry of brown sugar color. I guess molasses colored yeah, um, and uh, you make yourself a slur of brown sugar wants chuck and take a sip and you'll be like, brown sugar, how come you taste so good? It is delicious? So the whole idea of paneling an entire room in amber could only come from the fever racked, greedy mind of a king. And exactly what happened with

the amber room. There was a king of Prussia. Uh, and his name was Frederick the First who came up with this idea. That's right. In seventeen and one he was crowned the King of Prussia and said, boy, I would really love to do something splashy here too, uh to make my mark, you know. And he said, how about a room lined with this Baltic amber. I don't think we mentioned that one of and this will come up later. One of the main centers for amber production

was Karnitz Kernigsberg. Another was Danzig, but Kernigsberg and they're both on the Baltic Sea. And so he's like, let's let's do this thing. We got all this amber, A room full of it lined with it would be pretty amazing. And uh so they they said, let's do this in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. Berlin was part of Prusch at the time. And let's pick out a couple of folks to get this going. And I'll go with Andreas

uh Schluter. Yeah, that's right with the uom lout did you roll your the R and turn it into an L though Schluter No, in Andreas Andreas did I I may I may have added flair. Uh Schlucha was a Baroque sculptor. He's an architect. He I looked up his works and um did a lot of stuff, so it's about very well regarded. Uh. And then a carver name Gottfried wolf From was who did the work. And these guys were like as about elite as you could find um in carving amber designing something like an amber room.

Gottfried wolf From was recommended directly by the King of Denmark to Frederick the First, the King of Prussia, so became very highly accredited, right. And Schlewter, like you said, he had a bunch of stuff under his his belt, but he was really good at designing, not just entire buildings or whatever, UM, but in like really intricate detailed work as well. And so that's what he got to work doing, was creating this Baroque room. And Baroque is a really um. As Dave puts it, Baroque equals busy.

There's a lot of ornamentation, there's a lot of designs, there's a lot of shiny stuff. The way I would put it is that Baroque is maximum maximalist to the max essentially. Yeah, if you if you check out photos of uh, well, I was about to say the original amber room, but as we will learn, there has been a recreation and it looks like it. So you could look at that one if you want to. Oh dude,

but it's um, it's it's amazing. It's um. There are mirrors and candles and these framed panels with little figurines carved into it, and little angels and nymphs and horses, and it's just the most intricate um grouping of like carvings and inlays, like tiny stuff that you need a magnifying glass to see. It's really really incredible. Right. So Schlewter was the one who designed the room and said more nymphs, more angels, you know, um. But Gottfried Wolfram

was the one who actually made this happen. Who made this vision happen? And he was like, Okay, how are we going to make entire an entire room out of amber? And he came up with a paneling method, a mosaic method,

where he would take a panel of wood. Uh in this case, I believe the original were all oak, of course, and these were huge, like like many meters wide, many meters tall um and in in imperial that's many feet and wide and men feet tall um oak panels, and then they would put like I believe, a bronze foil

between the panel and the um amber. And then they would um take pieces of amber, cut them, slice them in in like five millimeter thick slices, and add them like just stick them together, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, but really a mosaic of different amber. And remember amber comes in different shades and colors, so each panel had like just this riot of different shades of amber. But they were also done by artists who knew what they were doing with amber and impairing different shades of amber.

So the whole overall effect was incredibly pleasing. Yeah, And that bronze foil, it had a couple of uses. One is it helped protect it. That would it was a moisture barrier between the wood and the amber and its bronze foil. So if it's lined with that and then the stuff is put onto it, the most tiny minuscule little gaps and little things are gonna have bronze foil behind it. So it's just gonna make everything pop. Right.

They also used UM. They came up with a special kind of adhesive just to make this room, just to adhere the um the amber to the foil. Right. I think I saw ship culk and bees wax and a lot of other stuff they tried. Um would not work because it would either like turn a certain color and like ruin the whole effect. So they came up with a special adhesive for it too. Right, So you can imagine this like really took a very long time to do. Yes,

it's very slow. Uh, and you know any project like this is going to be slow, much less one this intricate. And in this time that it was being done, Um, both of these guys got fired. I think schleuder Um just sort of uh, it sounds like he just sort of fell out of um favor with the royal family.

And then Oh, yeah he did. He was an architect, but apparently it wasn't a great architect and he designed a water tow were for the Prussian royal family that collapsed, and so he lived in disgrace on the court for a few years. Tell that to Frank Lloyd right, moved the desk. That was his quote. Uh, Wolform was fired as well. You know why he was fired. I don't know why he was fired, but I do know that

he was barred from his workshop for life. They came in and said, you're not allowed to work here anymore, and they stiffed him. Really all right, I read that he was just scrumpy and they hated his guts. Is that right? I'm just kidding. So basically, the two people that were leading this project, designer and builder, both got fired. And then King Frederick died about twelve this years after

it was commissioned. So along comes Frederick William, the first UH to succeed the first Frederick, and said, this thing is stupid, it's ridiculous. I don't want to I don't want it, like, but it's beautiful and they've been working hard. He's like, I don't want to see this thing. Pack it up, get it out of here and take it to Berlin. And that's what they did until Uh, well, i'll tell you what. Let's take a break. And I just said until and that's a great cliffhanger. Yeah, there's

an ellipse. So we'll get to that writer for this alright, Chuck, there was an ellipse that we ended on. You said until until what until Czar Peter the First of Russia comes for a visit. This was in seventeen sixteen, I guess, three years or so after the amber panels mid project were statued away in Berlin, and was really into this thing. And he's like, I really like these this amber room idea, and I think I could make use of it. So Frederick Williams said, sure, you can have it. Give me

forty of your grenadiers or grenadiers. I looked these guys up. It's it's exactly what you think. It's people that were the best at throwing hand grenades. And also I think just generally some of your top largest, strongest soldiers. But I mean these are like not just hand grenades. These are early seventeen hundreds hand grenades. So I can't think of too many more dangerous jobs in the army at the time than that probably, you know. So he took

forty of those in exchange for the amber panels. It took about half year to ship them over there to St. Petersburg, and then they unboxed these things. And this is where it gets very frustrating and and non creative, because they of course found that these were built for a certain sized room, so they didn't necessarily automatically just fit in

one of these palace rooms. So instead of trying to work with it and saying, maybe you should just put some additional paneling around, or we can fit it in somehow, he just said, I guess they can't be used here, Yeah, and just packed him up into storage. This is the guy who got them out of storage, took them to Russia, took six months to ship them, finds that they don't fit the room, like he just didn't think at all,

and then pack them up for another twenty five years. Yeah, that's like not buying a house because you don't like the ceiling fan in the bedroom. But that no, that's like buying the house and just leaving it abandoned because of the ceiling fan. You're right, So he had a daughter, luckily named Empress Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was like, I really

like this idea. I'm gonna make it work. She was a real go getter as far as Russian royalty went, big time, and she hired UM an Italian sculptor named Alexander Martelli, because at first, when she decided to to build the amber room out in her palace, she found that there was no one locally who had anywhere near

the skills needed to complete this. So she searched far and wide for somebody with enough amber work experience UM to do this in Alexander Martelli was the guy, and he actually finished creating this in seventy and his story would have ended there. But Elizabeth was like, I actually wanted to try a different I want to move this to a different room man. And Martelli was like what, and she said, yes, we're gonna move it over here.

So Martelli ended up staying on board for more decades more from what I can tell, like recreating this room. And every time that it was recreated, Elizabeth will would be like more more nymphs, more angels, more candelabras, stuff like that, and so Martelli had a lifetime of work basically moving the amber room around the um Winter Palace for for Empress Elizabeth. Yeah, and continually building it out.

I think in the Catherine Palace it was named after her mom um it was the place where it ended up was three times the size of that original room in Prussia. So not only are they having to keep rebuilding and adding to this thing, but they need more and more amber. I think they needed an additional six

tons of amber. And a part of me wondered if it was just like I don't know, if this was if she really enjoyed the act of designing and and doing like house stuff, or if it was like an obsession to get it just right, or if it was like my dad said, it couldn't even be done, so I'm gonna do it in every room in the house. I don't know that there's a weird obsessive quality to moving it so many times, and it does kind of smack of the Winchester Mystery House a little bit, you know.

Oh yeah, good point one other thing. Okay, So Elizabeth, Um, I guess she never actually finished it. Um she had her niece or her niece stepped up, Katherine the Second or Katherine the Great who who said? Um? Who said I'm gonna actually finish this in the the Katherine Palace after I guess her grandmother? Um, and that's where it ended up. No, Katherine, would that have been Katherine the second grandmother? I think it would have been her great aunt,

right if this was Elizabeth's niece. Okay, you're right, sorry about that. So, um, No, it could have still been her her grandmother. It could have been Elizabeth, could have been Katherine's parents like niece too, and they would have shared the same grandmother, just a generation apart. I will say this. I am the last person to comment on this because I am. I get so confused when it comes to lineage, so don't listen to me at all. Okay,

so we're just gonna say that they shared the same grandmother. Okay, let's get her on the horn. A Michelle, how how are they related? She'd be like the second cousins twice removed, like she can figure that stuff out. It just astounds me. That's a that's a great answer to second Cousins twice removed. Yeah, it's got everything you need in there. I think so.

But Catherine the Great was the one that finished the whole thing right in seventeen eighty, after almost eighty years after the whole thing was was conceived of, that's right, and finished it um with her own flourish, which was, I want four stone mosaics depicting the senses. We'll have one for sight, one for taste, one for hearing, and

one for touch and smell. It's kind of like you know those signs, handwritten signs, where like the letters get kind of bunched up at the end because they started with not enough room. That's how touch and smell ended up on the same mosaic, like every sign made by an elementary school student. Basically. Yeah, and also stone threw me off initially until I went and looked this up stone meaning colored marble. Did you see those mosaics? Oh yeah, it was amazing. They are amazing. It looks like a

painting um. But no, it's a mosaic made from different colored stones. And she had four of these mates. So it was like the amber room was already over the top, and then every single time Elizabeth moved it it got more and more over the top. And then Catherine the Great was like, here's the finishing touch. These four stone mosaics that's right, and I'll hire a Florentine artists named Giuseppe Zoki to finish this thing. I think it was finally finally done in seventeen eighty years after it was

originally commissioned in Prussia. And uh, I mean it's amazing. You gotta go look at pictures. They had um and fifty wall mounted candles in the amber room. So you've got this warm candlelight glowing around this already warm because you know amberuss is that very warm, like you said, sort of plenty hued color, and then that bronze foil like it's just it looks like just this glowing tanned

uh Man sterpiece. It was really really pretty. The other thing about it, too, Chuck, is like that was when you entered the room and we're maybe standing in the middle of the room, we're just surrounded by the warmth. If you walked up to any wall, um, you would just be blown away by the detail of the what

was what turned out to be a mosaic. It was almost like an Impressionist painting where from afar it's this seamless hole almost and then as you get closer you realize it's just a bunch of smudges, smudge paint like paint smudges essentially, and that was the same way with the Amber room. It was this cohesive hole and then as you got closer you saw it was all different mosaics of of amber um. And again it's really hard to get across what what price you could have put

on this room. It was the definition of priceless just from the sheer amount of like tons of amber that went into creating this room and how expensive amber was at the time. But then also like the craftsmanship, the intricacy, the the uniqueness of it. There was nothing like it in the entire world. And it sat tucked in um the Amber room room at the Summer Palace, the Catherine

Palace for a good almost two centuries. Even after the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen, the Bolsheviks were like, we're leaving this alone, like this is there's nothing that's a greater symbol of the decadence of the monarchs that we are overthrowing in the amber room. But it's so amazing, we're just going to turn it into a museum. Yeah. Uh so you know who decided to mess with this, the Nazis. Uh in nineteen seventeen, after the Russian Revolution,

it was turned into a museum. Catherine Palace was in the Amber room was obviously a key part of that museum. And in Hitler uh launched Operation barb Barbara sorry, Barbara Rossa. Yeah, exactly. When um, they invaded the Soviet Union, and everyone knew like Hitler likes art, and he likes to steal art. He used to fancy himself a painter even, and he likes to to pillage, especially stuff that he thinks were

originally German. Um, he thinks he wants back and like we said, this was born in Berlin, in Prussian Berlin, so he thought he had a claim to this thing. And as this invasion of the Soviet Union is going on, they're packing away, you know, because his reputation preceded himself. They're packing away art. They're trying to get you know, get rid of everything. They can take it to Siberia and sort of put it in a you know, a warehouse. Yeah, exactly,

they knew that the Amber room. It was like, this is something he's definitely coming for, so let's let's remove these panels. And they tried to and apparently the amber was brittle and it and it shattered, and they said, well, we can't do anything, so let's just cover it up with like, you know, tapestries and stuff and maybe they won't notice it. Yeah. And apparently it took the Nazis about two hours to find it um once they entered

the Catherine Palace and occupied it. Um. And when that, when word got out there, they packed it up within thirty six hours. Um. Yeah, successfully packed it up in twenty seven crates and they put him on a train to Krunigsberg Um, which was the Amber capital on the Baltic Sea, formerly of Prussia now of Germany of the German Empire. I guess um. And it was actually reassembled and displayed in the Kernigsberg Castle, which is like a straight up castle from the thirteenth century along the Baltic

That was just an amazing beautiful castle. And we know that that actually happened, so we could we can trace the Amber Room to Koenigsberg Castle. It made it from Russia to Kernigsburg because there were newspaper announcements telling of how this um it was being reassembled and would be open for displayed to the German public. Yeah. And that was it. I mean, it wasn't some temporary staging ground there like here's where it's gonna live and uh, like

you should have seen this move this thing. I don't know why they couldn't do it, because we did it pretty easily. But it's stay and put until July when the Royal Air Force the r a F came in with a pretty drastic bombing campaign on Kernigsberg, including the castle. Um. Although it didn't like destroy the castle, it was damaged pretty badly. Um, but it seems like the well, we don't know. The big question is did the Amber Room

survived that bombing. And there's a bunch of different leads that kind of guide us down a particular road that says it it probably did. Um. One of which was a gentleman named Alfred Road, who was an art historian in Germany and the director of the Kernigsberg sol Museum for the Nazis. And he said, and this is after the war, but he said, under interrogation by the Russians that, um, we had a lot of art in there that was looted from Russia. The Amber Room was in there. I

personally oversaw its installation. So he said it was definitely in there, but he said four weeks before that bombing, he said that they evacuated it to a safer place. Right, So the bombing happened the Amber Room. According to Rhode, who was the guy who literally was in charge of installing the Amber Room and Kurnicksburg Castle, UM had it removed and then afterward brought it back to Kurnicksburg Castle.

I don't know where they stashed it. That would be a really great question to answer, like in the interim, Yeah, yeah, I don't know, UM, but it was back at Kurnicksburg Castle after the bombing raid. UM it was locked in a tower and you would think, okay, well it was safe them because after UM, the Soviet army ground their way into East Prussia, which included Kernigsberg during a three month campaign that UM where Germany saw fifty thousand soldiers

die and just East East Prussia alone. UM. The Soviets took the city on April nine, and photos that were taken shortly after the surrender show the castle is still standing. It's still intact. The problem is a month later, May ninety five, when the KGB sent specialists to go look for looted Russian art. Um. They were specifically looking for the amber room and found that the castle was ruined. It was scorch it had been burned to the ground,

probably by Russian troops. So this is I mean, this is kind of where they ended up as far as not knowing where this thing ended up. I mean, the official line I guess was that, well, no, it's you know, we found some charred remains of bits and pieces of this thing. I think they found fragments from three of the four stone mosaics by Zoki that Katherine the Great commission. And so the official line is like this this thing burned along with the rest of Kernigsburg Castle in a

and that's you know, it's it's it's nowhere anymore. Yeah. And that, um, very tellingly is where Catherine's got Clark and Adrian Levy ended up. And remember they wrote this really exhaustive book in their investigative reporters. So if they're saying, yes, it probably burned up in the castle, then it probably burned up in the castle. Uh, And that would mean

cases closed. Right. But but this is, like I said, one of the great unsolved mysteries of World War two, which means there are a lot of other competing theories out there based on the idea that, no, it wasn't in the castle at the time of the Russian troops burned the castle to the ground, Right, And I guess we should take our last break. Yeah, and we'll touch

on those theories when we get back, right. Yeah. So there's a few things that people say, this doesn't smell right, the idea that the amber room was in the castle and was burned up. Um. On the one handsome people point out and there are people who are like dedicated to this mystery is just like any mystery on the internet, but they have been since long before the internet. Um. Some people point out that the KGB apparently didn't think it was destroyed in the castle because they kept searching

for it for decades more. It's a pretty good argument. Another person points out that they would be um, there would have been a really remarkable smell of literal tons of amber burning um insense like amber burning all at once when Kurnigsburg Castle was was lit on fire. It's not quite as strong as the KGB argument, but it makes sense too. Then, on the other hand, you have friends of Rhodes who are saying no, this guy I was.

I was a friend of Rhodes and he showed me a big charred lump of amber in the castle after it was destroyed. So you have people from both sides without any real evidence, conjecturing um that it was or it wasn't destroyed in the castle. The ones that are the more interesting, I think are the ones that say Nope, it wasn't in there, right um. I mentioned that they found pieces, charred pieces of three of those four stone

mosaics uh. In the late nineties there was a tip to the German authorities that there was an art dealer trying to sell that fourth, like fully intact fourth mosaic UH, and that they that led to a dude named Rudy Vorst who was the son of an s S officer that was assigned to transport the amber room by train to Kernigsberg from Russia. So I mean, that's how did that pan out? I mean that sounds pretty first and to me it does. Did he just have the one panel?

And that doesn't prove because this is when it was on the way to Karnigsberg. No, it doesn't prove that the amber room as a whole wouldn't have made it to Kernigsberg. It could have everything else could just be propaganda or lies or something like that. Um. But I think the ultimate thing is it's more like, um like, it's it was possible that this stuff could have survived, and this is a good example of how it could have survived, like some ss Nazi scumbag looting the loot. Basically, Well,

wouldn't that one still be out there? Though? Yeah, I believe it is out there as a matter of fact, we'll we'll touch on where it is, um towards the end. Oh, is that fourth panel a part of the thing that I want mentioned? Yeah? I don't think I saw that part. Okay that that that clears up a lot for me. All Right, great, well, let's talk about some of these theories. Uh, there's one called the Wilhelm gust Loft theory. This was a ocean liner from Germany, um, and it was bombed

and sunk in the Baltic Sea in July. I'm sorry, Januar, not only that, chuck. It was bombed and sunk with eleven thousand people on board. Yeah, wounded Germans, killed people. Apparently it's the largest maritime disaster in the history of the world. Yeah, I mean, would you call that a maritime disaster? An intentional act of war sinking? Somebody did. I didn't make it. I wasn't saying it's not a disaster, but I can like an accidental sinking sounds more like

a disaster. This sounds like an act of war. I totally get your point for sure, you know what I mean. Um, So some people said, was the Amber room possibly in that? Uh. They have been diving expeditions they have found nothing. Uh. In addition to other sunk in German ships that sailed around the same time in the same area as these, some of those have been uh scoop it up and

they've said there's nothing down here. Yeah. The Wilhelm goose Laften, these other ships were part of this one thousand shift ship boatlift evacuation that was like way bigger than dunkirk Um and that since they all shipped out from Kernigsberg. A lot of people are like, it had to have

been on one of those ships. We just haven't found the right ship yet, or it could have been on a ship that made it, because not all the ships in this thousand boat boat lift we're sunk, so it could have made it somewhere out of Kurnigsberg in that floatilla. There's another one called the Jonas Valley theory. And we must have talked about the Jonas Valley in the um the attempt to Kill Hitler episode. We do one on that. We did, we did we we we It wasn't just

the Nazi speed episode. I think we did one specifically on the plot to kill Hitler. Yeah, this was the big tunnel complex, uh in the Jonas Valley in Germany, sort of in the closing days of World War Two, which is basically like, all right, we're digging out these tunnels, is going to make our last stand here? Didn't work out that way. Americans took it, handed it over to the Soviets and they sealed them off. And some people

say the Amber room was in those tunnels. Yeah, along with allegedly Germany's atomic bomb that was never used and probably may not have existed. Right, The Jonas Valley and also the Vulpor House in mind probably also both made appearances in our Nazi Gold episode, which was a good one. Yeah, because you know, these tunnels and mines were uh vast areas that they would use to hide things, notably all this pillaged art among you know, other stuff, valuables in

cash and all all sorts of stuff. Uh. And I think they said that, um, this could have been in one of those minds that was plundered by the British uh and Polish workers and apparently locals got in on the act and uh. But they were saying that if that was the case, then you would see some of this stuff that would be people be selling pieces of amber or pieces of this installation, and that just didn't happen.

That's a really great point. Um. There was a mysterious explosion that destroyed the Vulper Housing Mind in September of nine UM, and everything inside was destroyed. I never saw an inventory of what might have been in there. Maybe everything had been removed and they were just like keeping sealing, yeah, ceiling off. That's great one. But UM, the thing that kind of gives legs to this stuff is like these like mind shafts holding loot and these huge tunnel complexes.

They exist like they're real. Like it's entire really possible that the amber room could have made it to this, So it's not like they're just completely off the Wall theories like that, if you don't trust Nazis who were interrogated by the Russians after the war, it's really easy to guess that the Amber Room was stashed away somewhere and it's just sitting somewhere in some mountain side or in the basement of a museum or something like that. Um,

it's not. It's just not the most crackpot adjacent um mystery I've ever seen. I can tell you that. Yeah, it's like the end of the Raiders. Yeah, exactly, wheel that lost dark. I don't think anyone, even when they saw that movie, said what come on? That would never have that happened. I think everyone saw that and said, ah, that figures, you know, like stashing some great work in here with just a bunch of other stuff. And I mean, war is a really great mechanism for art and treasure

to move from place to place. Um. And in fact, Germany had been looking for Heinrich Schleiman's trove of Troy gold Trojan gold when he discovered the Lost City of Troy in the nineteenth century. Schleiman was as German as

it gets, I mean, just listened to his name. Yet that trove had been plundered by the Soviets, probably in World War Two, because it was discovered sitting in boxes in the basement of the Pushkin Museum, um like years later, I think, not that many years ago actually, So it's entirely possible the Soviets have it, maybe don't even know it, of some other ally has it, doesn't even know it, or the Germans have it and maybe they don't know it. It's just sitting in on mark crates and in a

museum somewhere. Like you said, all the Raiders of the Lost Ark, we uh, we should ruby that. Finally the other day, the writers the Lost Art. Yeah, I was like, she's ready and she loved it. Man, that's awesome that. I mean, that really says a lot about her. I think, yeah, she she likes adventure movies and stuff like that. So she was she was in from the drop and yeah, it was it was way in and it was it was great. And I told her, I was like, there's a few more of these and a couple of them

are pretty good. Are you watch them? We'll watch them all? Are you Are you gonna follow the m p A a suggestion and wait until she's thirteen to show her raiders are Temple of Doom. Nah, she's fine. She she knows that stuff is a movie. She didn't get scared. I told her from a very early age that like movies is all make believe, and you don't need to worry about any of this stuff. People don't actually eat huge snakes that they cut the baby snakes out of.

That's right. Uh, should we talk about the Vimar theory? This was another you know, kind of like the rest of these. It's like, now, this thing was on a train this time. Uh, and it was there were a bunch of valuable shipped to wine Mar in February. Um, it was basically anything that what happened in the first

like six months of nineteen forty five. It seemed like whether it was a ship or a train or a tunnel there like it could be at any of these places, because this train was carrying very valuable things, very valuable art.

The Coke collection was in there, the the coffin for the Prussian King Frederick William the first even was in there, ironically, and it was going to uh the land Museum in Weimar, and the director there apparently swore two investigators from Russia that the day after it got there, that everything was shipped off to an undisclosed location. And some people are saying, like, now he was lying. The amber room was there, and it's it's hidden, uh, in these bunkers near the museum.

So I think there are bunkers. But when they checked them out in the nineties, there was no amber room in there. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't there at one point who knows. Yeah, and the coffin of King Frederick William the First was like moved around. It was discovered in a salt mine in Germany by the Allies in so it's entirely possible they packed the amber room up once. They could have packed it up. No,

they picked it up twice. As a matter of fact, they could have picked it up a third time and send it off with this stuff again. Though, if you find the coffin of Prussian King Frederick William the First, why would you also not say we also found the amber room. Can you believe it? Why would it have been separated out? Who knows? But at the same time, why would they have moved m Frederick Williams coffin and not the amber room? Yeah? Close dude, I just dropped

my microphone. I would have if it wasn't wasn't attached to this Mike boom arm uh. Dave included some stuff here about an amber room curse. I don't really subscribe to this stuff. No, But George Stein's death is strange. Yeah, there were a few people connected to the amber room that died, but I don't I didn't find like, typhoid fever is not mysterious, a car wreck is not mysterious.

But George Stein he was. He was an amber room hunter and in eight seven he died of what was ruled ritual suicide from his stomach being cut open by a scalpel. Yes, which is a very strange way to take your own life. And um, even stranger he was naked at the time, because he was found naked, and this forest that he was found in was a few hundred miles from his home. He was supposedly going to

meet another amber room hunter. Um, and why would if you were going to do this, why would you travel so far and do it in such a bizarre, painful manner. So it is at the very least a very strange little footnote to the whole thing. Yeah, and it's not a curse like, uh, maybe he was snuffed out because he knew too much or something here now, mab, I mean, we're not promoting conspiracies, of course. I was just it's

just a conjecture. No, but if you are into this kind of stuff, we should direct everybody check to the new stuff. They don't want you to know book, don't you think. Yeah, our buddies, our colleagues Ben and Matt and Noel, have a book just like we did stuff. They don't want you to go check it out, pick it up. Yeah, it's good stuff. They're good guys. Yeah, And I think we should finish here on this rebuilt

amber room that we've kind of teased out. Uh. In nineteen seventy nine, Soviet authorities commissioned a full scale replica in the Catherine Palace, which is, like we said, a state museum, and uh, you sent me an article on on the process of this. I think they took three plus years before they even started on it because it was so there was so much pre planning in to figuring out how to do this as an exact replica.

They were working off of their so few actual like photo documents or descriptions or sketches of the original amber room. But they had a pile of about eighty of them that had been UM photograph or eighty photographs that have been done and like I think the nineteen thirties of the original amber room. But they're black and sat together, but they were black and white before they even did

that part. They they had to like blow up these black and white photos and then deduce from the different gray scales of the different mosaics what piece was, what color or what shade and what you know, what around it was a different shade, what what the different shades were. That's how faithfully they've recreated the original amber room. Yeah, and that that uh, and it's right here. I don't know how I missed it, but that fourth UM mosaic, the touch and smell that was recovered I guess through

illegal sale, uh, was in there. So I'm not sure how I missed that, but that that's one of the original pieces as part of this recreation. Yeah. So it's amazing and you can go see it. Um. It was open to the public in two thousand three, after twenty five years of construction years. Man, that's correct, that's incredible. Yeah, because they I'll tell you another amazing thing they did. They took one of the original pieces because there were pieces surviving pieces of the Amber room that had been

like this is actually from the original amber room. We know it like it broke off during transit or like those um conservatives from the palace when they tried to remove one of the panels and it shattered. Those things were kept. So they actually had UM like one of the local crime labs um analyzed the adhesive that have been used and that's how they came up with that. They used the same adhesive um that's the original one did. But like that's the level of detail they went into

recreating it. It's just my hats off to them. And today that amber room, the recreation alone is valued at five hundred million, which kind of gives you an idea of what the original would be would be worth today. Although I've seen also like it would be in such bad shape that you would just be like this is it, Like this isn't really amazing at all. So yeah, I would recommend going and reading the Gemological Institute of them Erica's website article on the Amber Room. It's got a

lot of detail in it. But it talks a lot about the recreation process. Too very cool. You got anything else, man, I got nothing? Well, big thanks to Dave Ruce for helping us out with this one. Uh And since I thank Dave Ruce, of course, it's time for a listener name. I'm gonna call this toast watery. So this is not a review by me. I still plan on having toast water and I will follow up. But this is from

Carl uh rush out in Texas. Okay. So Carl listens to stuff you should know with his son and on family family trips when they go to scouting events and stuff like that. He said, my wife tolerates it on family trips, So Carl, you need to get her more on board. Yeah, turn the volume way up for this part.

That should do it. Uh. So they wanted to try the different things we were talking about in the toast episode, uh and said, we quickly made a trip trip to the grocery story pick up a loaf of Josh's recommended Nature's Own Perfect White, which was only available in thick

slice form. Good stuff. Yeah, we fired up the old toaster, which does operate on a bimetallic alloy thermostatic control dropped in a couple of slices toasted to perfection, slathered with some organic butter, and placed it between two other untoasted slices. So this was the toast sandwich that you talked about. And he said it was like a mouthful of bread, exactly how you think it would taste. Reminded me of the rama noodle sandwiches I made in college with less flavor.

Uh added he added some barbecue sauce and some sliced sausage. Just yea gussie it up. I don't. I don't think that's a toast sandwich any longer. Well, no, no, no, he After the tasting, he was like, I want to enjoy this. So that was three slices of bread. Henry, his son, thought it was great and devoured it plain so just like a kid would do such a it. Then we moved on to uh, well know this is Texas, I know, but he's British and spirit. Then we moved

on to toast water. While the meal was in progress, we had another toasted slice of bread steeping in a pan of just boiled water. Uh. Still too hot after dinner, so we took the dog for a walk and allowed it's cool three bear style. Upon returning, we decanted the khaki colored liquid and wine glasses, toasted each other's health and took a swig. My son immediately spat his out. I, on the other hand, thought it was great. Really. In fact, I think it would make a soothing tea for anyone

suffering his stomach illness. So move over, vitamin water, bring on the toast water. And this is uh from Carl, He said, I love the asides, love the humor, love the knowledge. From Carl Rush sh helped in Victoria, Texas. That's awesome. Thank you Carl, Thank you Henry. Thank you to a lesser extent, Carl's wife and Henry's mom. And if you want to be like Carl and Henry and get in touch with us to let us know about the results of your s Y s K scientific taste testing,

we would love to hear about that. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.