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Amber Room Is Glowing Again

琥珀廳光彩再現

　　Elaborately carved amber panels, in shades ranging from butter yellow to dark red, stretch up 8-meter walls. Gilded parrots perch on candleholders, their tiny tilted heads reflected in mirrors. Mosaics of semiprecious stones sparkle, adding to the sensation of being enclosed in an oversized jewelry box.

　　The legendary Amber Room, which went missing after German troops looted it from an imperial palace during World War II, made a dazzling reappearance in May, 2003 after an audacious, quarter-century reconstruction. President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder opened the room to 47 fellow heads of state at St. Petersburg’ s 300th birthday bash at the end of May.

　　Over the years, the lost chamber --a Prussian gift to St. Petersburg’ s founder, Czar Peter the Great --ignited imaginations and inspired a series of treasure hunts.

　　Created by German craftsmen for the Prussian king's palace near Berlin, the unfinished Amber Room was given to the visiting Russian czar, Peter the Great, in 1716, by the king’ s son and heir, Frederick William I, who was more interested in his army than art and more than happy to be rid of the treasure.

　　Russian craftsmen, under German supervision, eventually completed the Amber Room and, in the mid-18th century, installed it in the lavish Yekaterin-sky Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, just outside St. Petersburg, where it was used to entertain guests to the czarist court. Not a whole room per se, the Amber Room was a series of large wall panels covering an area a little more than 10 yards square and inlaid with several tons of masterfully carved high-quality amber, long wall mirrors and four Florentine mosaics made of semiprecious stones like quartz, jade and onyx.

　　In 1941, the Nazis stole the Amber Room from Tsarskoe Selo (which had been renamed Pushkin in 1937) and took it to K齩 nigsberg in East Prussia on the Baltic coast, where it was last seen in public in 1943. Some believe it was destroyed by Allied bombing, while others say the Nazis hid it in a mine or underground bunker. While the panels and mosaics disappeared during the war, the Russians were able to whisk most of the 100 or so objects in the Amber Room collection to safety in Siberia. These included tables, jewelry boxes and chess sets made of amber.

　　The outcome has been curiously appropriate. While the Germans built the Amber Room, gave it to Russia as a gift and eventually stole it, the circle now comes full with German money paying to complete the Amber Room’ s reconstruction.

　　The project was begun in 1979 by the Soviet Ministry of Culture, which began work based on a handful of black-and-white photographs taken shortly after the revolution in 1918. Work finally began in 1982 after various obstacles were overcome. Old methods of cutting and carving had to be relearned, but most challenging was unlocking the 18th-century mystery of dyeing amber, a process essential to enhancing the Amber Room’ s beauty. Many of the approximately 30 artisans devoted the better part of their working lives to the project. Some 6 tons of the stone were used. But the work has been hampered by lack of money. The Soviet government invested some ＄ 8 million between 1979 and 1991. But work was halted for nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. German energy giant Ruhrgas came to the rescue in 1999 with a ＄ 3.5 million donation to finish the work, enough for four tonnes of amber and the artisans’ wages.

雕刻精美的琥珀嵌板，鑲嵌在高達8米的墻上，顏色從奶黃到深紅。鍍金的鸚鵡棲息在燭臺上，它們斜側著的小腦袋映照在鏡中。由準寶石級的石料制成的馬賽克閃耀著光芒，更加使人感到倣佛置身于一個巨大的珠寶箱。

　　富有傳奇色彩的琥珀大廳，曾在二戰中被德國軍隊從皇家宮殿中洗劫一空，了無蹤跡。在經過歷時四分之一世紀勇于創新的重建後，這座大廳于2003年5月將光彩再現于世人。弗拉基米爾普京總統和德國總理格哈特?施羅德在5月底紀念聖彼得堡建城300周年的活動中向47名國家元首開啟了大廳。

　　多年來，這座消失的殿堂——普魯士人贈給聖彼得堡創建者沙皇彼得大帝的禮物——激起了無數遐想並引來了一係列的尋寶探奇。

　　德國工匠為普魯士國王在柏林附近建造宮殿，這座未完成的琥珀廳在1716年被國王的兒子及繼承人腓特烈?威廉一世送給了來訪的俄國沙皇彼得大帝。威廉一世對軍隊比對藝術更感興趣並極為樂意送出這些財寶。

　　俄國工匠在德國人的指導下最終完成了琥珀廳的修建，並于18世紀中葉將其安置到位于聖彼得堡郊外皇村裏奢華的夏宮葉卡捷林娜宮中，這裏是皇室成員接待客人的地方。琥珀廳本身並非是一個整體的大廳，它是一係列面積為10多平方碼的巨大墻板。這些墻板上鑲嵌有幾噸重的精雕細琢的優質琥珀、長壁鏡以及4個由石英、玉和縞瑪瑙等準寶石級石料制成的佛羅倫薩馬賽克。

　　1941年，納粹把琥珀廳從皇村（1937年更名為普希金城）盜走，帶到了位于波羅的海沿岸東普魯士的哥尼斯堡，1943年後琥珀廳在那裏便了無蹤跡。有些人認為它毀于盟軍轟炸，還有些人認為是納粹把它藏到了一個礦井內或是地下掩體中。雖然墻板和馬賽克已在戰爭中消失，但俄國人還是迅速將琥珀廳中100余件藏品中的大部分安全地保存到西伯利亞。這些藏品包括桌子、珠寶盒以及由琥珀制成的國際象棋。

　　其結局奇特而恰當：德國人建造了琥珀廳，把它作為禮物送給了俄國，而最終又盜走了它，現在又由德國人出資完成琥珀廳的重建，如此兜了個圈，回到了原處。

　　這一工程由蘇聯文化部于1979年啟動，他們是以大量1918年大革命之後不久拍攝的黑白照片為依據開始工作的。工程最終在克服了各種困難後于1982年開始。古老的切割和雕刻技術需要重新學習，但最富挑戰性的是揭開18世紀琥珀染色之謎，這是一種為琥珀廳錦上添花所必不可少的工藝。將近30名藝術家中，有很多人都把他們工作生涯中最好的時光獻給了這項工程。共使用了約6噸石料。但是由于缺乏資金，工程受到了阻礙。蘇聯政府在1979年至1991年間投資了約800萬美元。但是蘇聯解體後，這項工程中斷了將近10年。德國能源巨頭魯爾石油公司于1999年提供了援助，捐贈了350萬美元完成這項工程。這筆錢足以購買4噸琥珀以及支付藝術家的工資。