Russia Regains Two Treasures of Amber Room

In a gesture of justice and goodwill, Germany returned two remnants of Russia’s priceless Amber Room to a palace outside St. Petersburg on Saturday, nearly 60 years after the bejeweled chamber was plundered by the Nazis.

But it remains to be seen whether the recovered treasures--an 18th century marble mosaic and a lacquered chest--will generate enough goodwill to weaken Russia’s hold on its own World War II booty.

“Today is a day rich with emotion for me as for many of my countrymen. One of our most sacred possessions has been returned, thanks to the efforts of our German friends,” President-elect Vladimir V. Putin said as he accepted the artworks in a ceremony at Catherine the Great’s palace.

The fact that the mosaic and chest surfaced in recent years has fed Russian hopes that the rest of the chamber--sometimes called the Eighth Wonder of the World--might someday be recovered.

The Amber Room was given to Russia’s first emperor, Peter the Great, by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I in 1716. It contained six tons of amber fashioned into 129 panels covering its floors, walls and ceilings. In 1755, it was incorporated into Catherine the Great’s summer palace outside St. Petersburg, where the Nazis found it.

In a gesture of reciprocity for Germany’s return of the two artworks, Russia has granted permission for German officials to take home 101 drawings by Western masters, including Delacroix, Goya, Durer and Manet, that were looted by Red Army soldiers from a Bremen museum collection in 1945.

Some have hailed the moves as a sign that a deadlock over the repatriation of so-called trophy art may be easing. The Nazis and the Red Army systematically looted works of art as they moved across Europe.

“This is the first step in the process of negotiations that will certainly lead to the resolution of issues in dispute between our two countries,” said German Culture Minister Michael Naumann, who received an export license Friday for the drawings.

But despite Saturday’s warm handshakes and champagne toasts, there is little sign that Russia intends to relinquish the estimated 200,000 artworks it seized from former Nazi territory in the closing days of World War II.

In fact, the opposite appears to be the case. The Russian public is firmly against returning any of those artworks to Germany, seeing them as partial compensation for Russia’s massive losses during the war. Last week, Russia’s parliament passed a bill that would make all such art Russian state property and permit its export only in limited cases.

“This should not be seen as a gesture that may have some symbolic meaning as to the revision of our legislation on displaced art. Nothing of the kind will happen,” said Emina Kuzmina, a longtime member of Russia’s state committee on restitution, referring to the return of the drawings.

Overall, Russia and Germany enjoy warm relations, but the trophy art issue has been a persistent irritant. Both countries maintain that justice is on their side.

Russian Culture Minister Mikhail Y. Shvydkoi insisted that last week’s reciprocal gestures do not represent a change in policy for Moscow.

“We are not talking about an exchange,” he said. “What we are talking about is . . . the mutual return of items that were juridically incorrectly taken out of the two countries.”

It may seem like hair-splitting, but that distinction is important to Russian officials. All the artworks returned last week were turned over by private individuals who held them illegally; none was released from an official state collection.

In the case of the drawings, they were delivered anonymously to the German Embassy in Moscow in 1993 by a retired Russian army officer whose conscience got the better of him. He said he had stolen them from a castle in Germany where they had been placed for safekeeping.

The Amber Room’s marble mosaic was recovered last year when the son of a former German officer put it up for sale in Bremen, apparently unaware of its origin. Known as one of the Florentine mosaics, it is among four that decorated the walls of the chamber. The chest--one of two originally installed in the room--was identified in 1997 by a German furniture restorer who read a description of the missing furniture and recognized it as an item he had once restored. The owner was located and agreed to return it.

Of all the damage wrought by the Nazis in Russia, the loss of the Amber Room is perhaps felt most keenly.

After their 1941 invasion, the Nazis shipped it to the port city of Koenigsberg, the former Prussian capital, then occupied by Germany. Most of the room was installed in a castle there, but as the Nazis retreated in 1944, it was packed up again and secreted somewhere outside the city, now the Russian port of Kaliningrad.

The Amber Room has not been seen since. Some people believe that it was broken up and dispersed; others say it is still largely intact, hidden in a mine or bunker. It is considered a prime goal of treasure hunters.

Not content to wait for the discovery and return of the real thing, Soviet officials decided in 1979 to re-create it. Since then, Soviet and Russian artists have been painstakingly collecting, polishing and building new panels, guided by archival and photographic records. The expensive work has been slowed by a lack of funds, but it was given a boost last year when the German gas company Ruhrgas pledged $3.5 million to the project, which is about half done.

The Amber Room has enormous symbolic meaning for Russians and tops the list of national treasures they want restored. For Germany’s part, among the thousands of items held by Russian museums, perhaps most important are 260 pieces of gold--believed to have come from the ancient city of Troy--that were discovered by German explorer Heinrich Schliemann in 1873. Russian officials have said they have no intention of relinquishing the gold.

Under the new trophy art legislation, which is likely to be signed by Putin, “nonaggressor” nations plundered by Germany, such as France, could apply for repatriation of artworks that later ended up in Russia. But artworks seized from “aggressor” nations--such as Germany, Austria and Hungary--would be considered legitimate spoils of war.

Still, the law would leave some room for flexibility in the case of “exchanges,” which would permit Russian leaders to trade items they hold for those they want back from Germany.

In that sense, because Russian law does not require the government to return any of the loot, the atmosphere of bonhomie and goodwill displayed in St. Petersburg could be critical to future progress concerning trophy art disputes.

“The fact that our German friends brought a fragment of the Amber Room to St. Petersburg today . . . means a lot to us,” Putin said. “We think that very complex issues, including national cultural treasures, can be resolved if approached constructively, calmly and with a feeling of full responsibility and goodwill.”