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Czech Treasure Hunt.(Amber Room)(Brief Article)
The tiny Czech hamlet of Hora Svate Kateriny isn't easy to find. A steep, unmarked, fog-enshrouded road twists and turns through miles of mountains and ominous forest, winding up in this remote village. Improbable as it may seem, some say, Hora Svate Kateriny promises the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For somewhere nearby, locals insist, Hitler's troops buried one of the world's greatest treasures, lost since World War II. "German soldiers arrived here with boxes in April 1945 during nighttime curfews," claims Otto Sec, the town's burly former mayor. "They were here to bury something important. Most probably the Amber Room."
The Amber Room. The masterpiece of baroque art--an 11-foot-square reception hall, paneled with amber and mosaics of precious stones and worth about $300 million--is one of Russia's greatest missing treasures. Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm I presented it to Tsar Peter the Great in 1716 as a symbol of friendship. Catherine the Great later had it moved from the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to her summer palace, Tsarskoye Selo. In 1941 Hitler's troops packed it into 27 crates (containing 100,000 pieces) and sent it to Konigsberg in East Prussia, now Kaliningrad. But when Russian forces retook the city in 1945, the Amber Room had vanished--not to be seen again.
Theories about its disappearance have percolated endlessly--and inspired countless treasure hunts. Some historians think it burned in air raids; others believe it was sunk at sea during shipment to Berlin. Still others, Indiana Jones-like, are convinced that it survived--and that they will find it. Which brings us to Hora Svate Kateriny.
Standing in the dark, dank, muddy maze of narrow tunnels of an abandoned silver mine, Sec clutches a key to the recently cleared entrance and points out the "evidence" of his find: wooden ladders, piles of rubble blocking several shafts and sections of brick wall erected, he claims, after the mine fell into disuse. Then there are villagers' recollections of mysterious explosions during the war, and the appearance of a portly German investigator some years back who claimed he was told the location by former SS officers living in Brazil. "Ask me why I'm so determined to find the Amber Room and there is one simple answer: $30 million, and that's only the 10 percent finder's fee we're entitled to under Czech law," ...
- `Amber Room' Mystery
- Newspaper article from: The Washington Post April 5, 1989 700+ words
...Leningrad. Four years later, the "Amber Room" treasures vanished inside Nazi Germany...novel "Das Bernstein Zimmer" ("The Amber Room"), a work that combines fact with...book, Konsalik fuses the history of the Amber Room collection with speculation about what...
- `Burn' by Sean Doolittle and `The Amber Room' by Steve Berry.
- Newspaper article from: South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service) November 12, 2003 700+ words
...A HIGH CONCEPT WASTED ``The Amber Room'' by Steve Berry; Ballantine Books ($24.95) ``The Amber Room'' is what's considered a high...a plausible thriller. But ``The Amber Room'' suffocates from nearly every cliche...
- The Munich Show helped: open a window on the Amber Room.
- Rocks & Minerals Keilmann, Johannes September 1, 2004 700+ words
...and when we visited the world-famous Amber Room, it was clear that it had also been...could be used for restoration of the Amber Room. Progress on this project over a thirty...movie Cascadeur: Hunting the Missing Amber Room, with Heiner Lauterbach, came out...
- Amber Room treasure found in German cavern.
- News wire article from: PTI - The Press Trust of India Ltd. February 20, 2008 700+ words
Amber Room treasure found in German cavern London...Germany, which they claim is part of the Amber Room collection stashed away by the Nazis...expect it to be either gold from the Amber Room or gold that would give us clues to another...
- The 2003 reopening of the Amber Room: Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg,...
- Rocks & Minerals Rice, Patty C. September 1, 2004 700+ words
...walls of the magnificently re-created Amber Room. in the Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye...Russian craftsmen. I had visited the Amber Room in 1991, but, at that time, I saw...amber walls. The newly re-created Amber Room opened to the public in June 2003 for...
- GOLDEN WONDER; Recreated in all its glory, Russia's amazing Amber Room, the...
- Newspaper article from: The Daily Mail (London, England) Hardman, Robert June 6, 2003 700+ words
...see what all the fuss was about. The Amber Room is back. Originally one of the greatest...celebrated its 300th anniversary. The new Amber Room was formally unveiled by the Russian...history between those two countries. The Amber Room was actually a German creation, commissioned...
- The Amber Room.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
- Magazine article from: Geographical Crowden, Sarah September 1, 2004 700+ words
The Amber Room by Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian...s Catherine Palace, the so-called Amber Room was described as the eighth wonder of...mountains, the ultimate fate of the Amber Room becomes clearer, indicting most of those...
- 9: Not forever Amber.(Amber Room in Tsarskoye Selo, Russia disappeared after...
- Magazine article from: U.S. News & World Report Caryl, Christian July 24, 2000 700+ words
...1716, the king of Prussia presented the Amber Room, a masterpiece of Baroque art, to Russian...Nonetheless, the Internet bubbles with Amber Room-related theories. A German film company...someone was trying to hawk a piece of the Amber Room. Police raided the office of a lawyer...
