Questions and Answers
What is amber?
Amber – a gold-brown semi precious stone – is the fossilized resin from ancient pine trees. Most of the world’s amber is found within Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary rocks (approximately 30-90 million years old). Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Cut and polished amber has been made into jewellery since prehistoric times.
Why is amber called Baltic Gold?
Amber is sometimes known as the gold of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea and its coastline abound with vast deposits of amber. About 80% of the world’s known amber is found here in an area once covered millions of years ago by vast pine forests. Amber has been collected and admired by humans since prehistoric times, its deep gold-brown colour and high value leading to its popular name of Baltic Gold.
What is the Amber Room?
The fabulous Amber Room was the largest work of art ever made out of amber. It was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, and later presented to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great. It consisted of hundreds of thousands of pieces of carved amber backed by a lining of silver and gold leaf and accentuaed with semi-precious stones, elaborate carvings and four Italian mosaics. These amber panels covered an entire room of 55 square metres and weighed more than six tons. It took a team of craftsmen ten years to carve, and has been described as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. The Amber Room is believed to be worth in excess of $250m and is without a doubt the world’s greatest lost treasure.
What links the Amber Room to the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustlof ?
In January 1945, just ten days before the flagship of Hitler’s civilian fleet, the Wilhelm Gustloff set off on her doomed voyage, the magnificent Amber Room was seen for the last time, packed in 27 cases in the compound of Königsberg Castle. On the eve of the ship’s departure, crammed with over ten and a half thousand sleeping refugees, eye witnesses observed the arrival of heavily laden trucks at the quayside and the loading of dozens of heavy crates onto the waiting ship. The wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff was for a long time considered to be a likely location for the missing Amber Room, but because of her size, location and depth, no one had ever searched the wreck thoroughly enough to find it.
Who was Erich Koch?
Erich Koch was a Gauleiter (Area Commander) of the Nazi Party (NDSAP) in East Prussia from 1928 until 1945, and Reichskomissar (Commissioner of the Reich) in Ukraine from 1941 until 1944. His domain was extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Erich Koch had a passion for collecting amber ornaments and it was on his direct orders that the Amber Room of the Tsarskoe Selo Palace near Leningrad was dismantled and transported back to East Prussia to be reconstructed and put on display in Königsberg Castle.
Why was Erich Koch convicted but never executed?
Erich Koch was captured by the British at the end of the war and handed over to a prison in Warsaw, where he remained until 1958, when he was put on trial for war crimes for the extermination of 400,000 Poles. Found guilty of these crimes, he was sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment under mysterious circumstances. The Russians believed that he knew the whereabouts of art treasures looted by his special commandos during the war - in particular the Amber Room. The Russians believed he had ordered parts of this famous room to be hidden on board the Wilhelm Gustloff cruise liner, which was torpedoed and sunk in the Baltic Sea in early 1945 while evacuating over ten thousand refugees from the coastal ports of East-Prussia.
Who was Wilhelm Gustloff?
Wilhelm Gustloff was the German leader of the NSDAP (Nazi) party in Switzerland; he founded the Swiss branch of the NSDAP party in 1932. Gustloff was shot and killed in 1936 by David Frankfurter, a Jewish student incensed by Gustloff’s anti-Semitic activism. He was given a state funeral in his birth place, Schwerin in Mecklenburg, with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann and Joachim von Ribbentrop in attendance. The Kdf (Strength through Joy) cruise liner, the MS Wilhelm Gustloff was originally to be named MS Adolf Hitler.
Were other ships sunk in 1945 with a large loss of life?
Yes. In the final months of the war in Europe three large passenger liners, the Wilhelm Gustloff, the Steuben, the Cap Arcona, as well as a cargo ship, the MS Goya, were sunk through enemy action with a total loss of life in excess of 25,000.
Of the four sinkings, three were achieved by Soviet submarines during Operation Hannibal between January and April 1945, off the coast of what is now Poland; and the Cap Arcona by an allied air strike in the Bay of Neustadt (near Lübeck) in the final days of the war.
Is the wreck of the Wilhelm Gustloff a protected site or war grave?
In 1988, the site had not yet been declared a protected site or war grave. It was only after our expeditions that year that the German government decided to officially recognize the wreck as property of the German Federal Republic as the rightful and legal heir to the Third Reich. Before that time anybody - including the Poles and Russians - could have, and certainly did dive on her without restriction.
What was operation Hannibal?
Operation Hannibal was a military operation involving the evacuation by sea of German troops and civilians from East Prussia, and the Polish Corridor from mid-January to May, 1945 as the Red Army advanced during their Winter offensive.
German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered General Admiral Oskar Kummetz, as Naval High Commander, Baltic, and Rear Admiral Konrad Engelhardt, head of the Kriegmarine’s shipping department, to plan and execute the huge evacuation operation. Donitz radioed an order to the naval base of Gotenhaven in occupied Poland on 23 January 1945, to begin evacuations to the western ports of the Baltic Sea, outside of the Soviet area of operations. The operation was codenamed “Hannibal”. Dönitz stated in his post-war memoirs that his aim had been to evacuate as many people as possible away from the Soviets and he probably succeeded in saving the lives of over 5 million refugees and German soldiers.
