Amber is ubiquitous in Gdansk. This is due to his great past. Even the ancient authors praised its beauty, interpreted its mysterious origins mythically as “the golden tears of the heliads” and attributed magical properties to it. Weren’t they obvious with a stone that swims with the current, burns with a bright flame and exudes a fragrance? For Danzig, a Hanseatic city from the very beginning, amber was far more prosaic, pure gold than a commodity that was sold via a dense network of trade routes and opened up new horizons.
At least that is what Alexander von Humboldt had in mind when he cited the amber trade in his “Kosmos” as a remarkable example of the influence “the love of a single distant product can have on the opening of internal international traffic and on the knowledge of larger country routes” . Even in the Roman Empire, the Amber Road led from the Baltic States to the Adriatic. In this way gold, silver and copper came to the north, which had nothing of the kind to offer, as, conversely, amber to the south, where, especially during the imperial era under Nero, people were intoxicated with the luxury of this precious material, as Tacitus reliably reports.
In the late Middle Ages, the Teutonic Order installed rigid and effective organizational structures for the first time, which were in place for a long time before the guilds of amber turner took over and the amber handicrafts reached their peak in the Europe of kings in the 17th and 18th centuries. No other material has shaped Gdansk so much in the past. So it was not too far off to dedicate his own museum to him. At best, as an interim solution, the exhibition house, which has existed since 2006, could be viewed in its spatial confinement. Poland is not very rich in museums, so the importance of such an institution can hardly be overestimated.
The gable roof of the new museum catches the eye even in this gable-addicted city
The opening of the new amber museum at the end of July turned out to be spectacular, as the mayor cheered, “the largest cultural event in the city”. The house is centrally located, only a few minutes’ walk from St. Mary’s Church, and is housed in the walls of the former “Great Mill”, a medieval brick building of impressive dimensions and simple, functional beauty. The steep gable roof catches the visitor’s eye straight away, even in this gable-addicted city. This mill, often recorded on old engravings, badly hit in the war, rebuilt in the 1960s and finally degraded to a shopping mall, was gutted down to the outer walls, the project was also supported by the EU.
Two circumferential galleries are now the actual exhibition floors. Floor windows sometimes allow a view of the remains of the original foundation walls. But the view is drawn 26 meters up into the open beams as if by a suction. Lots of black marble under glistening spotlights makes this treasure house sparkle, arranged by the set designer Anna Bocek with a sense of popular drama.
A chess game that was created in Gdansk around 1700 – and has now returned to its hometown after traveling through Europe for centuries.
(Photo: Gdansk Museum)
Basically, this house houses two specialty museums under one roof. The first floor is entirely reserved for the natural history of amber, which is more abundant than anywhere else in the world in the Baltic States: its formation over 40 million years ago, its nature as petrified resin of early conifers, which was not unraveled until the 19th century (to this day with the emergency name ” Pinus succinifera “, amber pine, provided). Display boards, bulging showcases, peepholes that contain the coveted inclusions, the inclusions of plants and animals, and, last but not least, multimedia accompaniment aim at lively visualization, although the latter is currently out of order due to the corona.
Gift diplomacy promoted amber art, keyword: amber room
Armed in this way, one can turn to the cultural-historical part on the second floor, in which no less than several thousand years are spanned in large steps, from prehistoric artefacts to the elaborate masterpieces of the Golden Age of Gdańsk amber art. It must be said in advance, however, that the Gdańsk collection has not grown over time and can offer such an abundance and variety of treasures as can be found today in the former princely collections of Florence, Dresden or Vienna, for example. But there are highlights. They are definitely owed to a princely commission policy such as a lavishly cultivated gift diplomacy, especially by the Prussian court. Keyword: Amber Room, to name but the most famous example that still moves the imagination today (a gift that the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I gave to his coalition partner Tsar Peter the Great in 1716).
A gecko forever preserved in amber.
(Photo: Gdansk Museum)
One of the wonderful treasures of the collection is a Gdańsk amber cabinet, which impresses with its perfect craftsmanship and its rich play of hundreds of amber tiles. So far unique for an amber piece of furniture, Georg Zernebach has clearly signed it and dated it on July 28th, 1724. Perhaps the greatest rarity is presented with the most recent, also EU-supported acquisition – a chess game that very few have survived: Michel Redlin attributed to, originated around 1700. From Gdansk it reached Amsterdam, where the Scottish nobleman Lord Murray bought it in 1758 and sent it to his family at Blair Castle, where it remained over the centuries. It was launched in 2015. The renowned Munich amber specialist Georg Laue was able to purchase it, exhibited it at the Tefaf art fair in Maastricht and made sure that it could return to its place of origin.
Something like a free jewelry scene has developed over the past few decades. A selection of their productions is shown surprisingly broadly and with some pride. The resumption of something that had almost disappeared – the beginning of industrial production in the 19th century inevitably heralded the gradual decline of the amber trade. The final turning point, of course, was the Second World War. In 1945 not a single workshop survived.