The search for the treasure of the legendary Amber Chamber begins inside a sunken Nazi ship

In September 2020, the discovery surprised historians: the Karlsruhe, a nazi ship torpedoed and sunk at the end of World War II, it had been found almost by chance in the Baltic Sea, off the coast of Poland. What was already a remarkable find took on astonishing hues when researchers began to suspect that it could be found in his cellar. “Ambar’s Room”, also known as The eighth wonder of the world.

The ship is 65 kilometers from the Polish coast, at a depth of nearly 100 meters, which partly facilitates the operation.

The rescue operation has now started and in the next few days tactical divers from Baltictech Company will be looking for this precious treasure. In particular, they are interested in huge unopened boxes who sank with the ship.

“The Karlsruhe was only carrying freight, a few refugees boarded it at the last minute,” he said. Tomasz zwara, a diver from the Baltictech team, in a press release sent by email to the Gizmodo site. Moreover estimated load of around 350 tonnes, the ship was carrying a company of 150 elite Nazi army commandos and some 900 civilians.

Karlsruhe was one of the two German ships of the same name which sank during WWII. The Karlsruhe that Baltictech is investigating is a steam freighter, while the other Karlsruhe was a light war cruiser that sank off Norway in 1940. The two wrecks were found a few days apart in the fall of 2020.

“We have no solid evidence that the amber chamber is there, but no one has strong evidence that the amber chamber is elsewhere, ”said Tomas Stachura, president of the SANTI diving company and technical diver who also visited the wreck. “The truth is that the Germans wanted to send something valuable west and they could only do it through Karlsruhe, since it was their last chance. We’re going to dive in and tick all the boxes, ”he added to gizmodo.com.

“La Chambre d’Ambar” and a mystery of almost 80 years

Designed in 1701 by the Baroque sculptor Andreas Schülter, this work was the most remarkable of the palace which Frederick I of Prussia had in Berlin. Its dimensions and composition explain its majesty: around 55 square meters, it was made with approximately 6 tons of amber and a lot of semi-precious stones. How much would it be worth now? Experts estimate that around $ 176,000,000.

The story goes that in 1716 the camera was offered to Tsar Peter I the Great as a means of seal the alliance between Prussia and Russia against Sweden. Thus, the treasure traveled from Berlin to present-day Pushkin, near St. Petersburg. Although initially he was to be placed in the Winter Palace, Tsarina Isabel ordered his transfer to the Catherine Palace in the Villa de los Zares, in 1755.

The years have passed and La Cámara de Ambar survived the russian revolution from 1917 and arrived intact in World War II. There everything changed: on June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler began the “Operation Barbarossa”, with the aim of invading the Soviet Union.

Although the Soviets tried to hide it, the Nazi soldiers managed to find it. His intention was take it apart and bring it back to Germany. The first step was to take him to the Königsberg Palace (now Kaliningrad), where the camera remained until the end of 1943.

It was a year later, in 1944, when the trace of this treasure began to be lost. The Allied army bombed Königsberg and the castle where Amber Chamber was located was destroyed. Of course: some versions indicated that at that time a Nazi ship came to sail from the port of the city with heavy and precious cargo. It was Karlsruhe.

What the experts say

“The ship is practically intact. In its cellars we discovered military vehicles, porcelain and many boxes whose contents are still unknown“, detailed Stachura.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Karlsruhe was part of the Operation Annibal, one of the largest maritime evacuations in history, which helped over a million German soldiers and Prussian civilians to escape the soviet advance in the last years of World War II.

Documents from the time indicate that the ship left Königsberg “in a hurry” and a “big load”. There were also 1,083 people on board. “All of this, taken together, stimulates the human imagination. Finding the German cruise ship and the boxes of as yet unknown contents resting on the bottom of the Baltic Sea can be significant for the whole storyZwara hoped.

For now, salvage work continues around Karlsruhe. And also at the The eighth wonder of the world? Time, at the end, will tell.