War Damage of Tsarskoe Selo and Peterhof

[Alexander1917]

It's still a mysterious thing in the story of WWII.....

[Michael HR]

The Nazi's have a lot to answer for, sadly.

[Alexander1917]

and the mystery is not solved...where thos 19 boxes are....last year was a search...again....in saxony

[Nadezhda_Edvardova]

I've tried to copy and paste this picture but failed.  It's an image of the waterfall facade of Peterhof showing the wartime damage superimposed upon a modern image.  Horrifying but also uplifting.

http://englishrussia.com/?p=2720

scroll down about 1/2 the page.

Pax et bonum,

Nadezhda

[Douglas]

Deeply moving......haunting and very sobering.

There is a second page of photos also.

Douglas

[Clemence]

Thanks Michael HR for your kind words.

This is my passion.

Robert Hall in my haste I should have mentioned that it was the unburied statues that the Germans smashed - they did look for the buried statues and did find a few and destroyed them but most of the hidden statues were saved. A cute story - some people/palaces laboriously mapped every placement of every buried treasure; some people/palaces did not have the time to do the mapping. The lucky people after the war had an easier time unearthing the mapped statues. The unlucky people of the unmapped treasures had to dig everywhere to find them. Big holes!!

Kuchumov spent many years travelling throughout Russia and adjoining countries following the trails of lost and stolen treasures.

Gatchina today does not get the tourists that the Catherine Palace etc. do but it is being meticulously restored inside and does have lovely gardens. The park is open to the public. The town itself is rather uninspiring. But one day it will be a huge treasure as well.

I do not know if it was Getsapo in the AP but I do know that hundreds of SS are buried in the driveway/garden directly in front of the AP. I do not think that the bodies were moved elsewhere so they may still be under the gravel.

I do not know if Lenin was even in Tsarskoe Selo.

After the war there was a decree that found tenants for the mansions and palaces (during restoration and after) who would keep the buildings in reasonable repair and for the most part not destroy anything that remained. For example, rest homes and orphanages. Eventually, military moved into many.

Some places were never repaired and are lost forever.

I just had to thank you for this wonderful post!

[Akira Takiguchi]

Hello from a new comer;  I am a long time collector of WWII germany related photographs from Japan ( my website: http://www.history.jp/wehrmacht/ ).

Last August I had a chance to visit St. Petersburg, Catherine Palace included.  Impressive.  Awesome.  Incredible.  What a tragedy that the palace and other great history was lost, in addition to the huge loss of human lives.

Back in Tokyo, I checked my Agfacolor part of my collection to find Catherine Palace photos, because my collection focus is Heeresgruppe Nord (German army's army group north) and I knew I had something...

Bingo!  I thought that I post to revive this old thread.

So here's the then and now image:

[Akira Takiguchi]

My image appears on the forum page in a shrinked size;  link is: http://www.history.jp/images/CatherinePalace.jpg

[Akira Takiguchi]

It is difficult to get the correct white balance from a 70-year old Agfacolor slide, so the blue hue may or may not be correct to the original.  Thank you for understanding.

[JamesAPrattIII]

The pictures taken by a german soldier in reply #6 need to put on the site Axishistoryforum where somebody help identify the vehicals and possibly locations ect.

Please note TS was just inside German lines from September 1941 to January 1944 so it would have been impossible for the town not to have received some damage from soviet artillery fire during this period.

[Akira Takiguchi]

I am a bit disappointed by the lack of interest to my photo.  It is a color photo from 1941 and not a manually colored one.

Now I will add another color photo from 1941, this time inside - the ball room.

Then

http://www.history.jp/images/Dia23.jpg

Now

http://www.history.jp/images/DP1M1130.jpg

[Akira Takiguchi]

More black/white photos are found in my archive.  Here is a good view of a room you might want to see :-)



http://www.history.jp/images/WalterRichter-pic01.jpg

[edubs31]

Good stuff Akira. Big and clear, and I was struck but the color in that 1941 photo. Always heartening to see the before and after photos of them palace being brought back to life.

[Akira Takiguchi]

Can anybody identify the room shown above?

[Katya_C]

Can anybody identify the room shown above?

I believe that is the Chinese Hall, Catherine Palace. You can view a watercolor image of the room at http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=9058.msg254809#msg254809. There is also a b/w image at: http://geglov2.narod.ru/jpg/Ekat_dvor_zdan/Komnati/Kitaysk_zal/ist/P1000595.jpg with the description of Number 167. "Chinese room". Catherine Palace, by S.S. Bronshteyn.

Thank you for your WWII photo.

Katya