Stuff You Should Know - The Mystery of the Lost Amber Room

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Chuck and Josh turn into the Hardy Boys for one of the great unsolved mysteries of WWII, a work of art worth a king’s ransom that went missing in 1945.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, a history mystery-type episode, but that's not copyright infringement. Where did you hear about this? Because this was your selection that Dave helped us out with, and I'd never heard of this, and it's great. Actually, Chuck, it was a listener request. From not too long ago, from the beginning of January, a listener, a long-time listener,

she says, named Laura Pietromica. Pietromica, one of those two. She wrote in and suggested it, and I'd heard of it before, but I didn't know virtually anything about it. Yeah, so we won't ruin any of the deets, but we will just broadly say that the amber room was called the Eighth Wonder of the World at one point, and it was a masterpiece of baroque art made from amber and panels on a wall. So it was a room made of these beautiful, beautifully crafted amber walls, amber and wood, and there's a mystery in that it kind of disappeared and that no one knows where it ended up, for sure. Yeah, it's actually considered one of the great mysteries of World War II.

We also want to thank Dave Relyed on the work of Adrian Levy or Levy and Catherine Scott Clark, an investigative journalist for The Guardian, who also wrote a book called The Amber Room. It's coming. Colin, The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure, so big thanks to Dave and for their work, but we should talk a little bit about amber because it's pretty amazing. We could probably do a short stuff to pair it with this, but we won't. Right, and if your name's Amber, you're going to love this episode because we talk about how great amber is the whole time, so just pretend we're talking about you. That's right. If anyone has seen Jurassic Park, you know that dino DNA was found, stuck in amber, and through that little

short film that Steven Spielberg sought fit to make to help explain it, which I think at the time was probably necessary. Sure. Most of us know a little bit, and that is that amber is fossilized pine resin from the pine tree. Yeah, and there's the world's biggest deposit of amber is in the Baltic area, northern Europe, southern Scandinavia, which is still Europe, but you know what I mean. By the way, Germany is on the Baltic Sea. It's not landlocked. But it all comes from pine resin. When a bug would chew into a pine tree, the pine would secrete this kind of resiny stuff to not only get rid of the bug, it would also kind of create a seal over that part of the tree that had just been exposed

after the bark was chewed off. Yeah, it's like a bandaid sort of. Exactly. It's a tree made bandaid, and that resin would sometimes harden enough that it would fall off of the tree, or maybe the tree would fall over and the resin would survive enough to make it into like a stream or river or something like that. And if it made it all the way to the ocean and was covered with sediment in time before it degraded, the process of it becoming amber, which is fossilized tree resin, would begin. That's right. And then eventually also saw it could be in wet clay and stuff like that and still kind of have the same effect, but it seems like the bulk of amber comes from deep, deep in the ocean and it would get dislodged by weather and the movement of water

and float. Amber actually floats. Oh, yeah. So it's sort of stuck down there, but then it becomes dislodged. It floats to the top, a big storm will come through, and it just would literally wash onto the shore wherever it was in abundance. And the Baltic Sea is certainly one of those places. And it was extremely valuable. I think it was, I mean, how many times more valuable than gold at the time? At the beginning of the 18th century, it was 12 times more valuable than gold in Europe. That's amazing. Yeah, which is one reason why this making an entire room paneled in amber was so incredibly opulent. And when you polish it, it's also very beautiful. It comes in all sorts of different shades, from like kind of a light honey color to a watery slurry of brown

sugar color, I guess, molasses colored. Yeah, sure. And you make yourself a slurry of brown sugar once, Chuck, and take a sip and you'll be like, brown sugar, how come you taste so good? It is delicious. So the whole idea of paneling an entire room in amber could only come from the fever-wracked, greedy mind of a king. Right. And just exactly what happened with the amber room, there was a king of Prussia. And his name was Frederick I, who came up with this idea. That's right. In 1701, he was crowned the king of Prussia and said, boy, I would have really loved to do something splashy here to make my mark. And he said, how about a room lined with this Baltic amber? I don't think we mentioned that one of, and this will come up

later, one of the main centers for amber production was Kernigsberg. Another was Danzig, but Kernigsberg, they're both on the Baltic Sea. And so he's like, let's do this thing. We got all this amber, a room full of it lined with it would be pretty amazing. And so they said, let's do this in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin. Berlin was part of Prussia at the time. And let's pick out a couple of folks to get this going. And I'll go with Andreas Schluter. Yeah, that's right, with the umlaut. Did you roll the R and turn it into an L though? Schluter. No, in Andreas. Andreas, did I? Yeah. I may have added some flair. Sure. Schluter was a Baroque sculptor. He was an architect. He looked up his works and did a lot of stuff. So it was very well regarded.

Yeah. And then a carver named Gottfried Wolfram was who did the work. And these guys were like as about elite as you could find in carving amber, designing something like an amber room. Gottfried Wolfram was recommended directly by the King of Denmark to Frederick I, the King of Prussia. So he became very highly accredited. And Schluter, like you said, he had a bunch of stuff under his belt, but he was really good at designing not just entire buildings or whatever, but really intricate detailed work as well. And so that's what he got to work doing was creating this Baroque room. And Baroque is a really, as Dave puts it, Baroque equals busy. Yeah. There's a lot of ornamentation. There's a lot of designs. There's

a lot of shiny stuff. The way I would put it is that Baroque is maximum maximalist to the max, essentially. Yeah. If you check out photos of, well, I was about to say the original amber room, but as we will learn, there's been a recreation and it looks like it. So you could look up that one if you want to. Oh, dude. Yeah. But it's amazing. There are mirrors and candles and these framed panels with little figurines carved into it and little angels and nymphs and horses. And it's just the most intricate grouping of carvings and inlays, like tiny stuff that you need a magnifying glass to see. It's really, really incredible. Right. So Schluter was the one who designed the room and said, more nymphs, more angels, but Gottfried Wolfram was the one who

actually made this happen, who made this vision happen. And he was like, okay, how are we going to make an entire room out of amber? And he came up with a paneling method, a mosaic method, where he would take a panel of wood. In this case, I believe the original were all oak, of course. And these were huge, like many meters wide, many meters tall. And in imperial, that's many feet wide and many feet tall, oak panels. And then they would put, I believe, a bronze foil between the panel and the amber. And then they would take pieces of amber, cut them, slice them in like five millimeter thick slices and add them, like just stick them together, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, but really a mosaic of different amber. And remember, amber comes in different shades and

colors. So each panel had like just this riot of different shades of amber, but they were also done by artists who knew what they were doing with amber and pairing different shades of amber. So the whole overall effect was incredibly pleasing. Yeah. And that bronze foil, it had a couple of uses. One is it helped protect it, that wood. It was a moisture barrier between the wood and the amber and its bronze foil. So if it's lined with that, and then stuff is put onto it, the most tiny minuscule little gaps and little things are going to have bronze foil behind it. So it's just going to make everything pop. Right. They also used, they came up with a special kind of adhesive just to make this room,

just to adhere the amber to the foil, right? Yeah. I think I saw ship caulk and beeswax. And a lot of other stuff they tried would not work because it would either like turn a certain color and like ruin the whole effect. So they came up with a special adhesive for it too, right? So you can imagine this like really took a very long time to do. Yes. It was very slow. And you know, any project like this is going to be slow, much less one, this intricate. And in this time that it was being done, both of these guys got fired. I think Schluter just sort of, it sounds like he just sort of fell out of favor with the royal family. I know why. Oh, really? Yeah. He was an architect, but apparently he wasn't a great architect.

Right. And he designed a water tower for the Prussian royal family that collapsed. And so he lived in disgrace in the court for a few years. Tell that to Frank Lloyd Wright. Move the desk. That was his quote. Yeah. Wolfram was fired as well. You know why he was fired? I don't know why he was fired, but I do know that he was barred from his workshop for life. They came in and said, you're not allowed to work here anymore. And they stiffed him. Oh, really? All right. I read that he was just grumpy and they hated his guts. Is that right? No, I'm just kidding.

Okay. So basically the two people that were leading this project, designer and builder, both got fired. And then King Frederick died about 12-ish years after it was commissioned. So along comes Frederick William I to succeed the first Frederick and said, this thing is stupid. It's ridiculous. I don't want it. I don't want it. But it's beautiful. And they've been working hard. He's like, I don't want to see this thing. Pack it up. Get it out of here and take it to Berlin. And that's what they did until... Well, I'll tell you what. Let's take a break. And I just said until and that's a great cliffhanger. Yeah, there's an ellipse. So we'll get to that right after this.

What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends. Sugar Steve, Laia Fontigolo, Unpaid Bill. And we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS team supreme. They're like a second family to me. If you're a fan of deep diving and music, everything, all monacking your musical history and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought,

then you're a lot like me. But you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the I Heart Radio app. App a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, Hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic

and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads from my heart podcast and school of humans? This is let's start a coup. Listen to let's start a coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists

are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money you took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism

on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, there was an ellipse that we ended on. You said until, until what? Until Tsar Peter, the first of Russia, comes for a visit. This was in 1716, I guess three years or so, after the Amber panels mid project were stashed away in Berlin. And was really into this thing. And he's like, I really like this, this Amber room idea. And I think I could make use of it. And so Frederick William said, sure, you can have it. Give me 40 of your grenadiers or grenade ears. I looked these guys up. Yeah, it's exactly what you think. It's people that were the best at throwing hand grenades. And also, I think just generally, some of your top largest,

strongest soldiers. But I mean, these are like not just hand grenades, these are early 1700s hand grenades. So I can't think of too many more dangerous jobs in the army at the time than that. Probably, you know, so he took 40 of those in exchange for the Amber panels. Took about half a year to ship them over there to St. Petersburg. And then they unboxed these things. And this is where it gets very frustrating and non creative, because they of course found that these were built for a certain size room. So they didn't necessarily automatically just fit in one of these palace rooms. So instead of trying to work with it and saying maybe you should just put some additional paneling around or we can fit it in somehow, he just said, I guess

they can't be used here. Yeah, and just packed them up into storage. This is the guy who got them out of storage, took them to Russia, took six months to ship them, finds that they don't fit the room like he just didn't think at all. And then packs them up for another 25 years. Yeah, that's like not buying a house because you don't like the ceiling fan in the bedroom. But that no, that's like buying the house and just leaving it abandoned because of the ceiling fan. You're right. So he had a daughter, luckily named Empress Elizabeth. And Elizabeth was like, I really like this idea. I'm going to make it work. She was a real go getter as far as Russian royalty went. Big time. And she hired an Italian sculptor named Alexander Martelli,

because at first when she decided to build the amber room out in her palace, she found that there was no one locally who had anywhere near the skills needed to complete this. So she searched far and wide for somebody with enough amber work experience to do this. And Alexander Martelli was the guy. And he actually finished creating this in 1745. And his story would have ended there. But Elizabeth was like, I actually wanted to try a different, I want to move this to a different room. Oh man. And Martelli was like, what? And she said, yes, we're going to move it over here. So Martelli ended up staying on board for decades more from what I can tell, like recreating this room. And every time that it was recreated, Elizabeth would be like more,

more nymphs, more angels, more candelabras, stuff like that. And so Martelli had a lifetime of work basically moving the amber room around the Winter Palace for Empress Elizabeth. Yeah. And continually building it out. I think in the Catherine Palace, it was named after her mom. It was the place where it ended up was three times the size of that original room in Prussia. Yeah. So not only are they having to keep rebuilding and adding to this thing, but they need more and more amber. I think they needed an additional six tons of amber. Yeah. And a part of me wondered if it was just like, I don't know, if this was a, if she really enjoyed the act of designing and doing like house stuff. Or if it was like an

obsession to get it just right. Or if it was like, my dad said it couldn't even be done. And so I'm going to do it in every room in the house. I don't know. There's a weird obsessive quality to moving it so many times. For sure. And it does kind of smack of the Winchester Mystery House a little bit, you know? Oh yeah. Good point. One other thing. Okay. So Elizabeth, I guess she never actually finished it. She had her niece or her niece stepped up, Catherine II or Catherine the Great, who said, I'm going to actually finish this in the Catherine Palace after, I guess, her grandmother. And that's where it ended up. No, Catherine. Would that have been Catherine II's grandmother?

I think it would have been her great aunt, right? If this was Elizabeth's niece. Okay, you're right. Sorry about that. So no, it could have still been her grandmother. It could have been, Elizabeth could have been Catherine's parents like niece, too. And they would have shared the same grandmother just a generation apart. I will say this. I am the last person to comment on this because I am, I get so confused when it comes to lineage. So don't listen to me at all. Okay. So we're just going to say that they shared the same grandmother. Catherine the Great's grandmother. I should call my sister. She's great at it. Okay. Let's kid her on the horn. Say, hey, Michelle, how are they related? She'd be

like, duh, second cousin's twice removed. Like she can figure that stuff out. It just astounds me. That's a great answer, too. Second cousin's twice removed. Yeah. It's got everything you need in there. I think so. But Catherine the Great was the one that finished the whole thing, right? In 1780, after almost 80 years after the whole thing was conceived of? That's right. And finished it with her own flourish, which was, I want four stone mosaics depicting the senses. We'll have one for sight, one for taste, one for hearing, and one for touch and smell. It's kind of like, you know, those handwritten signs where like the letters get

kind of bunched up at the end because they started with not enough room. That's how touch and smell ended up on the same mosaic. Like every sign made by an elementary school student, basically. Yeah. And also stone threw me off initially until I went and looked this up. Stone meaning colored marble. Did you see those mosaics? Oh yeah, it was amazing. They are amazing. It looks like a painting. Yeah. But no, it's a mosaic made from different colored stones. And she had four of these made. So it was like the amber room was already over the top. And then every single time Elizabeth moved it, it got more and more over the top. And then Catherine the Great was like, here's the finishing touch, these four stone mosaics.

That's right. And I'll hire a Florentine artist named Giuseppe Zocchi to finish this thing. I think it was finally, finally done in 1780, 80 years after it was originally commissioned in Prussia. And I mean, it's amazing. You got to go look at pictures. They had 550 wall-mounted candles in the amber room. So you've got this warm candlelight glowing around this already warm, because you know, embers just that very warm, like he said, sort of honey-hued color. And then that bronze foil, like it's just, it looks like just this glowing, tanned masterpiece. It was really, really pretty. The other thing about it too, Chuck, is like that was when you entered the room and were maybe standing in the middle of the room or just surrounded

by the warmth. If you walked up to any wall, you would just be blown away by the detail of what turned out to be a mosaic. It was almost like an impressionist painting, where from afar, it's this seamless hole almost. And then as you get closer, you realize it's just a bunch of smudges, like paint smudges, essentially. And that was the same way with the amber room. It was this cohesive hole. And then as you got closer, you saw it was all different mosaics of amber. And again, it's really hard to get across what price you could have put on this room. Wow. Yeah. It was the definition of priceless, just from the sheer amount of tons of amber that went into creating this room and how expensive amber was at the time. But then also,

like the craftsmanship, the intricacy, the uniqueness of it, there was nothing like it in the entire world. And it sat tucked in the amber room at the summer palace, the Catherine palace, for a good almost two centuries. Yeah. Even after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks were like, we're leaving this alone. There's nothing that's a greater symbol of the decadence of the monarchs that we are overthrowing in the amber room. But it's so amazing, we're just going to turn it into a museum. Yeah. So you know who decided to mess with this? The Nazis. Boo. In 1917, after the Russian Revolution, it was turned into a museum. Catherine palace was in the amber room was obviously a key part of that museum. And in 1941, Hitler

launched Operation Barbarossa. Redbeard. Yeah, exactly. When they invaded the Soviet Union. And and everyone knew like Hitler likes art and he likes to steal art. He used to fancy himself a painter even. And he likes to pillage, especially stuff that he thinks were originally German. Right. He thinks he wants back. And like we said, this was born in Berlin in Prussian Berlin. So he thought he had a claim to this thing. And as this invasion of the Soviet Union is going on, they're packing away, you know, because his reputation preceded himself. They're packing away art. They're trying to get rid of everything they can, take it to Siberia and sort of put it in a, you know, a warehouse. Let the Yeti guard it. Yeah, exactly. They knew that the amber room was like,

this is something he's definitely coming for. So let's let's remove these panels. And they tried to and apparently the amber was brittle and it and it shattered and they said, well, we can't do anything. So let's just cover it up with like, you know, tapestries and stuff. And maybe they won't notice it. Yeah. And apparently it took the Nazis about two hours to find it. Once they entered the the Catherine palace and occupied it. And when that when word got out, they packed it up within 36 hours. Successfully. Yeah, successfully packed it up in 27 crates. And they put them on a train to Königsberg, which was the amber capital on the Baltic Sea, formerly of Prussia, now of Germany, of the German Empire, I guess. And it was actually

reassembled and displayed in the Königsberg castle, which is like a straight up castle from the 13th century along the Baltic. That was just an amazing, beautiful castle. And we know that that actually happened. So we could we can trace the amber room to Königsberg castle. It made it from Russia to Königsberg, because there were newspaper announcements telling of how this it was being reassembled and would be open for display to the German public. Yeah. And that was it. I mean, it wasn't some temporary staging ground. They're like, here's where it's going to live. Right. And like, you should have seen us move this thing. I don't know why they couldn't do it, because we did it pretty easily. But it's staying put until July of 44, when the Royal

Air Force, the RAF came in with a pretty drastic bombing campaign on Königsberg, including the castle. Although it didn't like destroy the castle, it was damaged pretty badly. Yeah. But it seems like the, well, we don't know. The big question is, did the amber room survive that bombing? And there's a bunch of different leads that kind of guide us down a particular road that says it probably did, one of which was a gentleman named Alfred Road, who was an art historian in Germany and the director of the Königsberg Castle Museum for the Nazis. And he said, and this was after the war, but he said under interrogation by the Russians, that we had a lot of art in there that was looted from Russia. The amber room was in there. I personally oversaw its

installation. So he said it was definitely in there. But he said four weeks before that bombing, he said that they evacuated it to a safer place. Right. So the bombing happened, the amber room, according to Road, who was the guy who literally was in charge of installing the amber room in Königsberg Castle, had it removed and then afterward brought it back to Königsberg Castle. I don't know where they stashed it. That would be a really great question to answer. Like in the interim? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But it was back at Königsberg Castle after the bombing raid. It was locked in a tower and you would think, okay, well, it was safe then because after the Soviet army ground their way into East Prussia, which included Königsberg,

during a three month campaign that where Germany saw 50,000 soldiers die in just East Prussia alone. The Soviets took the city on April 9, 1945, and photos that were taken shortly after the surrender show the castle is still standing. It's still intact. The problem is, a month later, on May 31, 1945, when the KGB sent specialists to go look for looted Russian art, they were specifically looking for the amber room and found that the castle was ruined. It was scorched. It had been burned to the ground, probably by Russian troops. That's right. So this is kind of where they ended up as far as not knowing where this thing ended up. I mean, the official line, I guess, was that, well, no, we found some charred

remains of bits and pieces of this thing. I think they found fragments from three of the four stone mosaics by Zoki that Catherine the Great commissioned. And so the official line is like, this thing burned along with the rest of Königsberg Castle in April 1945. And that's, it's nowhere anymore. Yeah. And that very tellingly is where Catherine Scott Clark and Adrian Levy ended up. And remember, they wrote this really exhaustive book in their investigative reporters. So if they're saying, yes, it probably burned up in the castle, then it probably burned up in the castle. And that would mean cases closed, right? But this is, like I said, one of the great unsolved mysteries of World War II, which means there are a lot of other competing theories out

there based on the idea that, no, it wasn't in the castle at the time the Russian troops burned the castle to the ground. Right. And I guess we should take our last break. Yeah. And we'll touch on those theories when we get back, right? Yeah. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove. And, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends, Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill. And we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS

Team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving into music, everything, all monacking your musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought. Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the I Heart Radio app. Have a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism.

I'm Ben Bullitt. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler, and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From I Heart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing,

and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there's a few things that people say. This doesn't smell right. The idea that the amber room was in the castle and was burned up. On the one hand, some people point out, and there are people who are dedicated to this mystery, just like any mystery on the internet, but they have been since long before the internet. Some people point out that the KGB apparently didn't think it was destroyed in the castle because they kept searching for it for decades more. It's a pretty good argument. Another person points out that there would have been a really

remarkable smell of literal tons of amber burning, incense-like amber burning all at once when Kernigsberg Castle was lit on fire. It's not quite as strong as the KGB argument, but it makes sense too. On the other hand, you have friends of Rhodes who are saying, no, this guy, I was a friend of Rhodes and he showed me a big charred lump of amber in the castle after it was destroyed. So you have people from both sides without any real evidence conjecturing that it was or it wasn't destroyed in the castle. The ones that are the more interesting, I think, are the ones that say, nope, it wasn't in there. Right. I mentioned that they found pieces, charred pieces of three of those four stone mosaics.

In the late 90s, there was a tip to the German authorities that there was an art dealer trying to sell that fourth, like fully intact fourth mosaic, and that led to a dude named Rudy Wurst, who was the son of an SS officer that was assigned to transport the amber room by train to Kernigsberg from Russia. How did that pan out? I mean, that sounds pretty first hand to me. Or did he just have the one panel and that doesn't prove, because this was when it was on the way to Kernigsberg? No, it does improve that the amber room as a whole wouldn't have made it to Kernigsberg. It could have. Everything else could just be propaganda or lies or something like that. But I think the ultimate thing is it's more like it was possible

that this stuff could have survived, and this is a good example of how it could have survived, like some SS Nazi scumbag looting the loot, basically. Well, wouldn't that one still be out there though? Yeah, I believe it is out there. As a matter of fact, we'll touch on where it is toward the end. Oh, is that fourth panel a part of the thing that I won't mention? Yeah. I don't think I saw that part. Okay. Okay. That clears up a lot for me. All right. Great. Well, let's talk about some of these theories. There's one called the Wilhelm Gustloff theory. This was a ocean liner from Germany, and it was bombed and sunk in the Baltic Sea in July, I'm sorry, January 1945. Not only that, Chuck, it was bombed and sunk with 11,000 people on board.

Yeah, wounded Germans. Killed 9,500 people. Apparently, it's the largest maritime disaster in the history of the world. Yeah. I mean, would you call that a maritime disaster, an intentional active war sinking? Somebody did. I didn't make it up. I wasn't saying it's not a disaster, but like an accidental sinking sounds more like a disaster. This sounds like an active war. I totally get your point for sure. You know what I mean? So, some people said was the amber room possibly in that. They have been diving expeditions. They have found nothing in addition to other sunken German ships that sailed around the same time in the same area as these. Some of those have been scubaed up, and they've said there's nothing down here. Yeah, the Wilhelm Gustloff

and these other ships were part of this 1,000 ship boat lift evacuation that was way bigger than Dunkirk. Since they all shipped out from Königsberg, a lot of people were like, it had to have been on one of those ships. We just haven't found the right ship yet. Or it could have been on a ship that made it because not all the ships in this 1,000 boat lift were sunk. So, it could have made it somewhere out of Königsberg in that flotilla. Right. There's another one called the Jonas Valley theory, and we must have talked about the Jonas Valley in the attempt to kill Hitler episode. Did we do one on that? We did. It wasn't just the Nazi speed episode. I think we did one specifically on the plot to kill Hitler. Yeah, this was the big tunnel complex

in the Jonas Valley in Germany, sort of in the closing days of World War II, which is basically like, all right, we're digging out these tunnels. This is going to make our last stand here. It didn't work out that way. Americans took it, handed it over to the Soviets, and they sealed them off. And some people say the amber room was in those tunnels. Yeah, along with allegedly Germany's atomic bomb that was never used and probably may not have existed. Right. The Jonas Valley and also the Volperhaus in mine probably also both made appearances in our Nazi Gold episode, which was a good one. Yeah, because these tunnels and mines were vast areas that they would use to hide things, notably all this pillaged art among other stuff

valuables and cash and all sorts of stuff. And I think they said that this could have been in one of those mines that was plundered by the British and Polish workers and apparently locals got in on the act. But they were saying if that was the case, then you would see some of this stuff. People would be selling pieces of amber or pieces of this installation and that just didn't happen. That's a really great point. There was a mysterious explosion that destroyed the Volperhaus in mine in September of 1945 and everything inside was destroyed. I never saw an inventory of what might have been in there. Maybe everything had been removed and they were just keeping it from sealing off. That's a great one. But the thing that gives legs to this stuff

is these mine shafts holding loot and these huge tunnel complexes, they exist. They're real. It's entirely possible that the amber room could have made it to this. It's not like these are just completely off the wall theories. If you don't trust Nazis who were interrogated by the Russians after the war, it's really easy to guess that the amber room was stashed away somewhere and is just sitting somewhere in some mountainside or in a basement of a museum or something like that. It's just not the most crackpot adjacent mystery I've ever seen. I can tell you that. Yeah, it's like the end of Raiders. Yeah, exactly. When they wheeled that lost dark, I don't think anyone even when they saw that movie said, what? Come on, that would never

happen. I think everyone saw that and said, oh, that figures stashing some great work in here with just a bunch of other stuff. War is a really great mechanism for art and treasure to move from place to place. No kidding. In fact, Germany had been looking for Heinrich Schleeman's trove of Trojan gold when he discovered the lost city of Troi in the 19th century. Schleeman was as German as it gets. Just listen to his name. Yet that trove had been plundered by the Soviets probably in World War II because it was discovered sitting in boxes in the basement of the Pushkin Museum years later. I think not that many years ago, actually. It's entirely possible. The Soviets have it, maybe don't even know it. If some other ally has it, doesn't even

know it. Or the Germans have it and maybe they don't know it. It's just sitting on Mark Crates in a museum somewhere. Like you said, all the Raiders of the Lost Ark. We should ruby that finally the other day. Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yeah, I was like, she's ready and she loved it. Man, that's awesome. That really says a lot about her, I think. Yeah, she likes adventure movies and stuff like that. She was in from the drop and was way in and it was great. I told her, I was like, there's a few more of these and a couple of them are pretty good. We'll watch them all. Are you going to follow the MPAA's suggestion and wait until she's 13 to show her Raiders Temple of Doom? No, she's fine. She knows that stuff is a movie. She doesn't get scared.

Okay, cool. I told her from a very early age that movies all make belief and you don't need to worry about any of this stuff. People don't actually eat huge snakes that they cut the baby snakes out of. That's right. Should we talk about the Weimar theory? Yes, let's. This was another, you know, kind of like the rest of these. It's like, no, this thing was on a train this time and there were a bunch of valuables shipped to Weimar in February 1945. It was basically anything that happened in the first like six months of 1945, it seemed like whether it was a ship or a train or a tunnel. They're like, it could be at any of these places because this train was carrying very valuable things, very valuable art. The Koch collection was in there. The coffin for

the Prussian King, Frederick William I, Stephen was in there, ironically. And it was going to the Land Museum in Weimar. And the director there apparently swore to investigators from Russia that the day after it got there, that everything was shipped off to an undisclosed location. And some people are saying like, no, he was lying. The amber room was there and it's hidden in these bunkers near the museum. So I think there are bunkers, but when they checked them out in the 90s, there was no amber room in there. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't there at one point. Who knows? Yeah. And the coffin of King Frederick William I was like, moved around. It was discovered in a salt mine in Germany by the Allies in 1945. So it's entirely possible. They

packed the amber room up once. They could have packed it up. No, they packed it up twice as a matter of fact. They could have packed it up a third time and send it off with this stuff. Again, though, if you find the coffin of Prussian King Frederick William I, why would you also not say we also found the amber room? Can you believe it? Right. Why would it have been separated out? Who knows? But at the same time, why would they have moved Frederick William's coffin and not the amber room? Yeah. Case closed, dude. I just dropped my microphone. I would have if it wasn't, wasn't attached to this Mike boom arm. Dave included some stuff here about an amber room curse. I don't really subscribe to this stuff. No, but George Stein's death is strange. Yeah, there were

a few people connected to the amber room that died. But I don't I didn't find like typhoid fever is not mysterious. No. A car wreck is not mysterious. No. But George Stein, he was the he was an amber room hunter. And in 87, he died of what was ruled a ritual suicide from a stomach being cut open by a scalpel. Yes. Which is a very strange way to take your own life. And yeah, even stranger, he was naked at the time because he was found naked. And this forest that he was found in was a few hundred miles from his home, he was supposedly going to meet another amber room hunter. And why if you were going to do this, why would you travel so far and do it in such a bizarre, painful manner? So it is at the very least a very strange little footnote to the whole thing.

Yeah, it's not a curse. Like, maybe he was snuffed out because he knew too much or something, you know, maybe. I mean, we're not promoting conspiracy. So of course, I was just it's just conjecture. No. But if you are into this kind of stuff, we should direct everybody, check to the new stuff they don't want you to know book, don't you think? Yeah, our buddies, our colleagues, Ben and Matt and Noel have a book, just like we did stuff they don't want you to know. Go check it out, pick it up. Yeah, it's good stuff. They're good guys. Yeah. And I think we should finish here on this rebuilt amber room that we've kind of teased out. In 1979, Soviet authorities commissioned a full scale replica in the Catherine Palace, which is,

like we said, a state museum. And you sent me an article on the process of this, I think they took three plus years before they even started on it. Because it was so there was so much pre planning into figuring out how to do this as an exact replica. They were working off of there's so few actual like photo documents or descriptions or sketches of the original amber room. Yeah. But they had a pile of about 80 of them that had been photographs or 80 photographs that had been done in like, I think the 1930s of the original amber room. But they're black and white together. They did. But they were black and white. So before they even did that part, they had to like blow up these black and white photos and then deduce from the

different grayscales of the different mosaics what piece was what color or what shade and what around it was a different shade with the different shades. That's how faithfully they've recreated the original amber room. Yeah. And it's right here. I don't know how I missed it. But that fourth mosaic the touch and smell that was recovered I guess in 1997 through illegal sale was in there. So I'm not sure how I missed that. But that's one of the original pieces as part of this recreation. Yeah. So it's amazing and you can go see it. It was open to the public in 2003 after 25 years of construction. 25 years, man. That's correct. That's incredible. Yeah. Because they I'll tell you another amazing thing they did. They took one of the original pieces because there were pieces

surviving pieces of the amber room that had been like this is actually from the original amber room. We know it like it broke off during transit or like those conservators from the palace when they tried to remove one of the panels and it shattered. Those things were kept. So they actually had like one of the local crime labs analyzed the adhesive that had been used and that's how they came up with that. They used the same adhesive that the original one did. But like that's the level of detail they went into recreating it. It's just my hat's off to them. And today that amber room the recreation alone is valued at 500 million which kind of gives you an idea of what the original would be would be worth today. Although I've seen also like it would be

in such bad shape that you would just be like this is it. Like this isn't really amazing at all. Interesting. Wow. Yeah. 500 million. So yeah I would recommend going and reading the Gemological Institute of America's website article on the amber room. It's got a lot of detail in it but it talks a lot about the recreation process too. Very cool. You got anything else ma'am? I got nothing. Well big thanks to Dave Ruse for helping us out with this one. And since I thank Dave Ruse of course it's time for a listener name. I'm going to call this Toast Water. Oh boy. So this is not a review by me. I still plan on having Toast Water and I will follow up but this is from Carl Ruschaupt in Texas. Okay. So Carl listens to stuff you should know with his son

and on family trips when they go to scouting events and stuff like that. He said my wife tolerates it on family trips. So Carl you need to get her more on board. Yeah turn the volume way up for this part. That should do it. So they wanted to try the different things we were talking about in the Toast episode and said we quickly made a trip to the grocery store pick up a loaf of Josh's recommended Nature's Own Perfect White which was only available in thick slice form. Yeah that's a good start. Yeah. We fired up the old toaster which does operate on a bi-metallic alloy thermostatic control. Dropped in a couple of slices toasted to perfection slathered with some organic butter and placed it between two other untoasted slices. So this was the toast

sandwich that you talked about. What did he say? And he said it was like a mouthful of bread exactly how you think it would taste. Reminded me of the ramen noodle sandwiches I made in college with less flavor. He added some barbecue sauce and some sliced sausage just to you know gussy it up. I don't I don't think there's a toast sandwich any longer. Well no no no he after the tasting yeah he was like I want to enjoy this so I got you and not wait. I don't want to waste these three slices of bread. Henry his son thought it was great and devoured it plain so just like a kid would do. Such a Brit. Then we moved on to well no this is Texas. I know but he's British in spirit Henry. Then we moved on to toast water while the meal was

in progress. We had another toasted slice of bread steeping in a pan of just boiled water. It was still too hot after dinner so we took the dog for a walk and allowed it to cool three bears style. Upon returning we decanted the khaki colored liquid into wine glasses toasted each other's health and took a swig. My son immediately spat his out. I on the other hand thought it was great. Really. In fact I think it would make a soothing tea for anyone suffering a stomach illness. Huh. So move over vitamin water bring on the toast water and this is from Carl. I said love the asides love the humor love the knowledge from Carl Rush out in Victoria Texas. That's awesome thank you Carl thank you Henry thank you to a lesser

extent Carl's wife and Henry's mom. And if you want to be like Carl and Henry and get in touch with us to let us know about the results of your SYSK scientific taste testing we would love to hear about that. You can wrap it up spank it on the bottom and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast navigating narcissism. This season we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships,

gaslighting, love bombing and their process of healing. Listen to navigating narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast Main Accounts, the story of MySpace. I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.