The Bernsteinzimmer (The Amber Room) was built in Prussia between 1701 and 1710 and given as a present to Elector Friedrich's friend the Tsar Peter. In 1941 Leningrad (Tsarskoye Selo) was occupied by the Nazis who took down the decorations. The resulting 6000 kg amber and 500 kg gold was sent to Königsberg, where it was last seen on Feb. 1945.
19 comments:
It ended up in Charlie's cage.
Anon.
This pales in comparison to the amount of stuff the Russians took out of Germany after the war. Were it not for the pressures of the Cold War they probably would have taken even more. Their idea was basically to leave Germany without any metallic objects - without metal you can't wage war. They dismantled all the steel mills, etc. in their zone of Germany. This is why the Trabant was made of cardboard.
Amber and gold can be replaced (and have been - the room has been reconstructed) but nothing will replace the precious lives that were taken.
K
You presume that the gold (worth today about 30 million dollars) was expropriated by the Soviet state. I doubt it. In an expression of advanced Socialist concience, it was returned directy to the victorious proletarian masses.
BTW, I received 2500 dollars as compensation of the Gold Train affair - the train that transported to the West the gold stolen from Hungarian Jews. The gold disappeared near Vienna.
You'd be interested in this
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/world/middleeast/14syria.html?hp
R
It's hard to believe that in a place as tightly controlled as Stalin's Russia that this level of private activity could have gone on beneath the eyes of the state - this is not like stealing a wristwatch from a German soldier, this was BIG. If I had to guess it was something more ridiculous. More likely, Stalin wanted the gold and amber and had the panels secretly dismantled. Probably Putin knows this now from the KGB archives but it too ashamed to admit it, so out of shame he had the panels remade. The usual rule in Russia is you take the worst that you can imagine and then the reality is even worse. The Western reporters who downplayed the horrors of the Soviet Union did so not (just) because they were Communists themselves but due to failure of imagination - Americans, raised in comfort in a society with a civic tradition, literally cannot conceive of the worst in human nature.
K
Yes, there was never a Water Master Plan for Syria. The World Bank financed large irrigation projects where they are growing cotton and wheat. The Saudis are doing the same and are going to end badly.
K,
There was much "privatized" gold in the former Soviet Union. If discovered, it was death sentence. So no one talks about it.
Benjamin Franklin said that two may keep a secret if one of them is dead. To privatize an entire room like this would have required at least several and the odds of exposure go up exponentially with each added conspirator.
K
Stalin would often personally supervise the purging of the state's records in order to ensure that no trace of his many misdeeds was left behind.
Putin may know the truth implicitly, but the records may have been scrubbed a long time ago. Besides, recreating this room is part of an effort to build Russian pride and connect to the pre-Soviet history of Russia.
K
If a trainload of gold could disappear while guarded by the American Army, imagine what went on in the Soviet area.
If a trainload of gold could disappear while guarded by the American Army, imagine what went on in the Soviet area.
A few weeks ago, maybe longer, you stated that visiting rural Poland was like being back in the 18th century, or the 17th, or maybe even the 13th. Its as if the Dark Ages ended in Western Europe in 1490 and they ended in Eastern Europe in 1990.
Mark, if you are speaking to me, I was speaking of rural Ukraine (a part that was once Poland before the war). Poland is rapidly integrating into full modernity. Ukraine less so and Belarus, Moldova, etc. even less.
In some respect, feudalism (first with great estates owned by lords and after the war collective farms) survived until modern times in parts of E. Europe.
There were little glimmers of modernity - the wagons the horses pulled had pneumatic tires - I assume they used old truck axles or such.
K
I was speaking to you, although I do need to read more carefully.
In some respect, feudalism (first with great estates owned by lords and after the war collective farms) survived until modern times in parts of E. Europe.
Which is another way of saying the Dark Ages ended in Eastern Europe in 1990, half a millennium after the West. Prior to the fall of communism most of rural Poland was probably as backward as the parts of the Ukraine you saw. That the Ukraine could be so backward is funny considering the country actually exports space-launch rockets.
Galicia (where this was - once Austria-Hungary, then Poland, now Ukraine) was always the poorest, most rural and backward section of the empire - the Ukrainian peasantry were especially crude and illiterate.
The Soviets brought some Soviet style centrally planned industry to Ukraine - most of these factories are obsolete and/or make military materiel and not consumer goods and are with a few exceptions worthless in the post-Soviet world. Rockets, being dual civilian/military use, are one of the few exceptions. But mostly they just neglected the countryside - unpaved roads, rusting farm machinery lying around. Communists really never knew what to do with agriculture - Marx didn't tell them, since he expected the revolution to come in industrialized Germany. The Soviet (and Russian) tendency was to hyperfocus on a few showcase projects that were equal to anything in the West while the rest of society was hollowed out and rotten. The Potemkin village.
On the whole, I thank God every day that providence brought my family out of that God forsaken place. My children well understand the irony that they have Hitler to thank for their comfortable American lives.
K
We don't know what to do with agriculture either at this point in American history. Most of American agriculture is either heavily subsidized or protected and it still loses money on the whole. In a rational world only crops requiring low amounts of labor would be grown in most of the US, since even illegals have better options in America's cities. Instead we subsidize dairy production even though most milk constituents can be imported from friendly countries cheaply, we protect sugar production even though no strategic interest is served and I think we even protect rice growers even though Americans don't eat all that much rice. Given time most of What Americans eat will be grown in greenhouses and most of our farms will either have to convert to growing starches (wheat, barley, corn or potatoes) or go out of business.
American agriculture (esp. cereal grains and soy) is highly automated - the % of the workforce that works in agriculture is tiny. There is increasing demand for locally grown and organic produce and most customers are (probably rightfully) suspicious of cheap Chinese or Mexican imports - having a Chinese made computer in your house is one thing, drinking Chinese powdered milk is another. Certainly it would be good for consumers if the government stopped protecting certain sectors but on the whole I am optimistic - agriculture is one of the few sectors where the US remains competitive despite labor costs. Greenhouses have a role in certain sectors but on the whole they are not competitive - if you've ever traveled thru the agricultural parts of California and seen endless crops of broccoli or artichokes or whatever mile after mile stretching to the horizon you'd understand that there are no enough greenhouses in the world to duplicate this.
K
New Zealand is a major dairy exporter, and was the country I was thinking of when I mentioned milk products. At the very least the New England Dairy Compact should be broken up so cheap "imports" from Dixie and the West Coast can move in to meet local demand.
Aside from dairy I think a lot of produce will be grown indoors in the future, and that most labor intensive crops will be grown someplace like Mexico. Eurofresh farms of AZ grows tomatoes and cucumbers indoors, although in fairness they have gone through bankruptcy reorganization. The Japanese are now growing lettuce indoors under artificial light, so I think this will be a global trend over time in most of the advanced countries.
Their are hydroponic operations growing flowers, tomatoes, lettuce, etc. in all sorts of places - Canada, Alaska, Netherlands, Israel, etc. but these are high value niche operations for the fresh market and will not replace field growing for most crops. What we don't often realize is that for a lot of crops (say tomatoes) that 90% of the crop gets processed (into sauce, ketchup, etc.) and only maybe 10% is sold fresh. Fresh produce is really a small niche compared to overall production, most of which gets processed.
K
A lot of the field growing will probably go overseas. The Northwest was until the last decade or so one of the top asparagus growing regions in the world. After Green Giant closed its asparagus cannery in the region and moved it to Peru the asparagus growers went either went out of business or changed crops.
The fresh market may continue to be served locally, but canned vegetables will probably come from outside the US.
Post a Comment