On the television drama White Collar, convicted forger, conman, and art thief Neal Caffrey cuts a deal with FBI Agent Peter Burke – instead of serving the remaining years of his prison sentence in jail, Caffrey will assist Burke in his investigations of “white collar” crimes. The conman suggested the alliance after his girlfriend Kate Moreau unceremoniously ended their relationship. Despite having only four months left on his sentence, Caffrey escapes from his maximum-security cell to find Moreau, only to discover an empty wine bottle and the prospect of spending another four years in prison.
While Neal Caffrey’s arrangement with Peter Burke keeps him out of jail, it also allows him to continue searching for Kate Moreau. Although he didn’t know it at the time, his search would lead to the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” a sunken German U-boat, and a treasure of lost Nazi stolen art. The journey begins when Caffrey discovers that Moreau didn’t leave him of her on accord but was instead kidnapped by a group of FBI agents. In exchange for her freedom, they want a piece of art that was once stolen by Caffrey but never recovered.
“Catherine the Great had a room in her palace in St. Petersburg made entirely out of amber,” Neal Caffrey explains to Peter Burke. Both the room and the palace were looted during World War II by the Nazis. “One of the things they took was an amber music box.”
In the opening pages of their 2004 book The Amber Room: The Fate of the World’s Greatest Lost Treasure, British investigative journalists Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy recite the history of what was once dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” A room paneled with amber was originally conceived by designer Andreas Schluter as a way to impress the wife of Friedrich I of Prussia and thus remain in good graces with the newly established monarchy.
Construction of the project outlived the sovereign couple, however, and successor Friedrich Wilhelm I was more of a soldier than art lover. When Peter the Great of Russia visited Prussia in 1716, Wilhelm presented him with the amber panels as a gift. Peter intended to have the room built in his own palace. He likewise died before it was completed, and the room was eventually moved to the Catherine Palace. Gold leaf and mirrors were added to compliment the amber walls, with the chamber itself forming a singular work of art.
When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941, all valuables were immediately ordered out of St. Petersburg. Although crateloads of artifacts were evacuated to the remote regions of Siberia, the curator of the Catherine Palace was forced to “hide” the Amber Room behind hurriedly erected wallpaper. The Germans saw through the façade and removed the amber panels and remaining contents to the East Prussian village of Konigsberg.
What happened after that is a mystery. The bulk of The Amber Room is thus an investigation into the fate of the stolen chamber and the various attempts to locate the lost room in Soviet-controlled territories and those of both East and West Germany after World War II. Salt mines were excavated, hidden bunkers searched, and millions of dollars spent – but to no avail.
Small items from the original Amber Room in St. Petersburg have popped up through the years, however, including a chest of drawers that a West Berlin housewife was unknowingly using to store her tablecloths and napkins. Within the mythology of White Collar, a music box made of amber also survived.
During season one of the television series, Neal Caffrey draws zig-zagged lines over a map of Europe to represent the rumored journey that the priceless item took after it was pilfered by the Germans. One of it stops was the Amalienbog Palace in Copenhagen, where everyone believes it was then stolen by Caffrey. In actuality, the music box slipped through his fingers and eventually found its way to the Italian Consulate in New York City.
Neal Caffrey is finally able to acquire the piece in the season one finale of White Collar, but loses Kate Moreau forever when she dies in a plane explosion at the end of the installment. Season two of the series is thus devoted to unraveling the mystery of the music box.
In many ways, the path that Neal Caffrey finds himself began years earlier when he stumbled upon a game of Three-Card Monte shortly after arriving in New York City. The classic “find the lady” con was co-run by his future mentor, friend, and occasional comic relief Mozzie. Impressed by Caffrey’s own slight-of-hand abilities, Mozzie suggests a long con where Neal Caffrey infiltrates the inner circle of billionaire hedge-fund operator Vincent Adler.
As recited in the flashback episode “Forging Bonds,” Caffrey not only gets close to Adler but his assistant Kate Moreau as well. He also meets fellow grifter Alex Hunter, herself obsessed with finding the amber music box of Catherine the Great. While Adler disappeared before the con was completed – his entire company was built on a giant Ponzi scheme – all the major players in Neal Caffrey’s life were now present. Like some mystical force of fate, they were also tied to the mystery of the music box.
In addition to the many crimes against humanity that he authorized during World War II, Adolph Hitler was also intent on pilfering artwork from the countries that his army invaded. “By April 1945 all Nazi hope had evaporated and turned into the certainty of total defeat,” Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy write in The Amber Room: The Fate of the World’s Greatest Lost Treasure. “At this moment the Nazis no longer searched for palaces, castles, or monasteries (to display the items) but for hiding places where art might be stored and remain undiscovered for a certain length of time. Mines not castles. Caves not monasteries. Bunkers not safes.”
And in the world of White Collar, a U-boat headed for Argentina that was sunk off the shores of New York City instead. “I’ve known about the sub since I was a little girl,” Alex Hunter tells Neal Caffrey. “Grandpa, he’d take me to Coney Island when no one else was around and he’d point out to the water and tell me the greatest treasure in the world was right out there, just below the waves. He said the Nazis collected the most beautiful things in the world, then put those things in a submarine. When it was crossing the Atlantic, it went down and no one could find it. He encoded the SOS antenna design into the music box. He figured he’d come to America, he’d build a receiver and he’d find the sub. But he fled Germany after the war and the box was lost.”
While Alex Hunter’s grandfather was a German radio operator, Vincent Adler’s father was the only surviving crewman of the sunken submarine. The former hedge fund manager thus spent a lifetime searching for the wreckage, eventually using Kate Moreau as bait to entangle Neal Caffrey into the mix and having her killed to protect his secret.
Adler eventually finds the sub and its billion-dollar collection of Rembrandts, Picassos, and Salvador Dalis, but does not live long enough to take possession – setting up a new premise for the third season of White Collar in the process.
It is historical fact that Nazi Germany attempted to steal classic works of art scattered across Europe, as is the lost mystery of the Amber Room of Catherine the Great. During the first two seasons of White Collar, the television drama was able to mold these facts with fiction and create its own mythology involving a music box, sunken German U-boat, and a priceless collection of artwork pilfered by the Nazis.
In the hands of White Collar, it also made for great storytelling.
Anthony Letizia