Amber Room Research Paper

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Pages: 7

No other art treasure lost during the Nazi plunder of WWII has been surrounded by more mystery than the disappearance of the Amber Room. Its history has been remarkable from the very beginning which started in the early 18th century and up to the present. It is even more remarkable how this lost masterpiece always played an important role not only in arts and culture but also in politics. Even though the Amber Room has been lost for many years, it still plays an important role in the Russian-German cultural and political dialogue. It serves as a unique example of how a work of art can remain culturally and politically significant for more than 200 years after it was first the subject of the Russian-German political pact.
So what is the Amber Room and why is it so important? Amber Room (Figure 1) is a chamber located in the
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Petersburg as a part of a European art collection. In 1755 Tsaritsa Elizaveta decided to move the Amber Room to the Catherine Palace, the summer residence of the Russian tsars. Italian architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli redesigned the room to fit it into a new larger space. The Amber Room was used as a private meditation chamber for Tsaritsa Elizaveta, a gathering room for Catherine the Great and a trophy space for the amber aficionado Alexander II. As a result, the Amber Room has become largely engrained in the Russian history and cultural heritage. In 1917 Catherine Palace became part of the state museum, before the Nazi plundered it during WWII. The Amber Room was last seen in Catherine Palace in May, 1941 as Nazi troops reached St. Petersburg. On the day of the invasion the order came to evacuate St. Petersburg which is a treasure trove of the arts in Russia. The State Hermitage Museum housed 2.5 million artworks with hundreds of thousands more located in Alexander, Catherine, Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Oranienbaum and Gatchina