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The amber room, richly decorated with amber and gold, was founded in 1716 by Frederick Wilhelm, son of King Frederick I of Prussia. donated to Russian ruler Peter I. He ordered an elegant room in a palace near St. Petersburg and turned it into a luxurious banquet hall, newsru.com.
During World War II, the Germans brought this gift to Königsberg. In 1945, the Soviet army occupied Königsberg, but the Amber Room was no longer found. To this day, there are many versions of what could have happened to him. One of them is that the cargo steamer “Karlsruhe”, which was evacuating from East Prussia, from Königsberg, left Germany with a large cargo, which was later sunk by Soviet military aircraft off the coast of Poland.
Polish divers are convinced they have found the same sunken ship, “Voice of America” reports.
“We have been looking for shipwrecks since last year, when we realized that at the bottom of the Baltic Sea an interesting secret story could be hidden. The ship is practically intact. We found military vehicles, porcelain and many boxes with unknown content in the warehouses, ”said diver Tomasz Stachura.
Photo from mamerki.com / Amber Room Replica
Karlsruhe participated in one of the largest evacuations by sea, Operation Hannibal, which helped more than a million German soldiers and civilians avoid a Soviet invasion of East Prussia at the end of World War II.
Historical documents show that the steamer hurriedly left Piliava (now Baltijsk) with a large cargo and 1,083 people.
“It just came to our attention then. The discovery of a German ship and boxes with still unknown contents at the bottom of the Baltic Sea could have a great impact on this whole story,” diver Tomasz Zwara told The Guardian.
The search for rubble in Karlsruhe lasted about a year. Investigators had reports from Soviet pilots and fishing maps showing obstacles on the bottom, including sunken ships.
First, a group of divers selected a few dozen points for inspection, then the search box was narrowed to 22, and only one of them appeared the same size as the ship. In June and September, the divers dove and photographed the ship three times.
As it turned out, the steamboat sank vertically, hit the bow to the bottom and stayed on the keel. Now she’s very upright, but all her cargo has moved forward, “carts, boxes, a huge mess,” says Stachura.
The investigation will continue, but is hampered by the great depth and distance from the coast.
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