AGI – The discovery of the wreck of a German ship sunk in the Baltic Sea at the end of the Second World War reopens the mystery about the fate of Amber Room, the “eighth wonder of the world”, donated by the King of Prussia Frederick William I to the tsar Peter the Great in 1717 and then “recovered” by the Nazis in 1941 during the invasion of Russia.
The panels and precious ornaments of amber and gold that had been installed in the Catherine Palace, the summer residence of the Tsars in St.Pietroburgo, had been brought by the Germans to the port city of Konigsberg, today the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. After the bombing of the city, there was no news of the finds and many assumed they had been destroyed. However, Polish divers who found the wreck of the “Karlsruhe”, a steamship sunk by the Russian air force in 1945 during the last months of the war, in the Baltic at 88 meters, believe that the boat could hide those lost treasures.
“We have been looking for the wreck for a year, once we realized that it may be the most interesting story hidden on the bottom of the Baltic Sea,” Tomasz Stachura, of the Polish Baltictech diving team, explained in a statement, “the ship is practically intact. In its hold we discovered military vehicles, porcelain and numerous crates whose contents are still unknown. “
Karlsruhe had taken part in theoperation “Hannibal”, the evacuation of one million German civilians and soldiers fleeing the Soviet advance. His last mission took place on 11 April 1945, when he set sail in great haste from the port of Pillau, today Baltiysk, carrying 150 soldiers, 25 railway workers and 888 civilians, including several children, and a load of hundreds of tons of contents. unknown. Two days later the Karlsruhe, while en route to the port of Swinemunde (now Swinoujscie, Poland), was identified and sunk by Soviet bombers. The survivors recovered were 113. Nothing more was known about the cargo.
“All of this, put together, stimulates the human imagination,” another diver, Tomasz Zwara, told Reuters, “the finding of the German steamer on the bottom of the Baltic and crates with its as yet unknown contents could be very significant for the whole story “. The Amber Room was completely rebuilt and reopened to the public on May 13, 2003.
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