RUSSIA: GERMANY SET TO RETURN TWO PIECES FROM PETER THE GREAT'S AMBER ROOM LOOTED BY NAZI'S IN WORLD WAR II

Record ID: 860269

  • Title: RUSSIA: GERMANY SET TO RETURN TWO PIECES FROM PETER THE GREAT'S AMBER ROOM LOOTED BY NAZI'S IN WORLD WAR II
  • Date: 28th April 2000
  • Summary: ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA (FILE) (REUTERS) GV CATHERINE PALACE (2 SHOTS) ZOOM AMBER ROOM CU/PAN/CU AMBER INLAY ON WALLS (5 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 13th May 2000 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MOSCOW AND ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
  • City:
  • Country: Russia
  • Topics: Conflict,International Relations,History,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3RR8PI86J1AKZWPSNPQR1H93O
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Germany is set to return two pieces from Peter the Great's Amber Room which were looted by Nazi troops in 1941.
    Russia is returning 101 sketches and paintings to Germany by masters such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet and Goya which were stolen from the Bremen Art Gallery in 1945.
    Russian Culture Minister Mikhail Shvidkoi presented his German counterpart Michael Naumann with two paintings in Moscow on Friday (April 28), an oil by Durer and a sketch by Toulouse-Lautrec.
    Naumann is due to travel to St.Petersburg later on Friday (April 28) for a meeting with Acting Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday (April 29) where he will hand over the two Amber Room pieces, a mosaic by Giuseppe Zocchi and an inlaid chest of drawers.
    The original Amber Chamber was sent as a gift to Russian Tsar Peter the Great from Prussia's King Frederick William I in 1716.
    The Zocchi mosaic -- entitled 'Allegory of the Sense of Smell' was part of the original Chamber.
    Peter's daughter, Tsarina Elizabeth, later had the room assembled in her newly built palace in the village of Tsarskoye Selo, 24 km (15 miles) south of St.Petersburg, where it remained until the German army invaded Russia in 1941.
    The Russians managed to rescue many of the precious furnishings from the room, including amber jewellery boxes and tables, but the Nazis seized the panels and shipped them off in 27 crates to the German city of Koenigsberg in East Prussia.
    The Amber Chamber was last seen in 1945, shortly before advancing Soviet troops took Koenigsberg and renamed it Kaliningrad.It remains a Russian city to this day.
    Both Russians and Germans have spent decades looking for the chamber.Some experts believe it was destroyed by bombs in 1945 but many more think its panels were hidden, perhaps in a mine or underground bunker.
    The Zocchi mosaic was found by German police in 1997 in Bremen.The inlaid chest of drawers was also found in 1997, when a German woman who had bought it recognised it on a television report and gave it to authorities.
    Russian craftsmen have begun restoration work on the Amber Chamber, financed in part by Germany's Ruhrgas AG and hope to reopen it in 2003, the 300th anniversary of St.Petersburg's founding.
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