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 unaware at the time, his quest 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 own accord but was kidnapped by a group of FBI agents. In exchange for her freedom, they demand an art piece 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. According to Caffrey, “One of the things they took was an amber music box.”
In their 2004 book The Amber Room: The Fate of the World’s Greatest Lost Treasure, British investigative journalists Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy tell the story of what was once considered the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” The idea for a room paneled with amber was originally conceived by designer Andreas Schluter, who wanted to ingratiate himself to the wife of Friedrich I and remain in good graces with the newly established Prussian monarchy.
Construction of the room 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 but likewise died before it was completed. As a result, the room was 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 remote regions of Siberia, the curator of the Catherine Palace attempted to “hide” the Amber Room behind hurriedly erected wallpaper. The Germans saw through the façade and removed the amber panels – as well as the room’s remaining content – to the East Prussian village of Konigsberg.
What happened next is a mystery. According to Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy in The Amber Room, a few items from room have popped up through the years, 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 again loses Kate Moreau when she dies in a plane explosion at the end of the installment. It is then left to season two to unravel the mystery of the music box.
The path that Neal Caffrey finds himself on 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.
During World War II, Adolph Hitler was intent on pilfering as much artwork as he could 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. “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 spent his entire life searching for the wreckage, eventually using Kate Moreau as bait and having her killed to protect his secret. Although Adler does find the sub and its billion-dollar collection of Rembrandts, Picassos, and Salvador Dalis, he does not live long enough to take possession – setting up a new narrative for the third season of White Collar in the process.
It is an 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 its first two seasons, White Collar 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.
It may not have been historically accurate but it made for great storytelling nonetheless.
Anthony Letizia