Dresden Jewel Heist
On the night of November 25, 2019 a small fire was set on the Augustus Bridge in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. The outcome of that fire being set would be millions of euros in stolen treasures, a years long hunt for the culprits, and almost all of the items returned.
The Heist
At 4:00am on November 25, 2019 a fire was set on the Augustus Bridge close to The Green Vault (or Grünes Gewölbe) museum in Dresden Germany. That fire ended up destroying a power box which cut off power to surrounding street lights and security alarms, though CCTV continued to function.
An unknown (at that time) number of men approached The Green Vault and cut the window bars to access the museum’s jewel room. CCTV showed two thieves shimmy through the small window and use an axe to break glass displays and make off with three 18th century jewelry sets, containing 37 parts each. Not every single piece of each set was able to be stolen because some pieces were luckily sewn down to the display cases so they left those behind.
In total the items stolen were estimated to be worth “millions or even a billion dollars” (Brown, 2019). Among the items stolen was the Dresden White Diamond, a small sword with a hilt of 9 large and 770 smaller diamonds, a broach worn by Queen Amalie Auguste consisting of at least 660 stones, a jewelled Polish Order of the White Eagle, and so so so much more. Luckily one of the crown jewels (so to speak) of the collection, the Dresden Green Diamond, was on loan to the MET at the time so was safe.
Once they had their loot the thieves exited through the same window and screwed the bars back on in the hopes of delaying detection of how they came in. The robbery was detected by the security guards stationed at the museum at 4:56am, since they were unarmed they were instructed to not interact with the thieves and just call the police so that’s exactly what they did.
The Investigation
The police were on the scene within five minutes of the security guards calling them to the museum. They immediately got to work setting up road blocks around the outskirts of Dresden, hoping to catch the fleeing perpetrators but the museum is unfortunately close enough to the Autobahn that the police assume that the thieves used that to escape quickly.
Starting in December, 2019 after no suspects emerged, there were a flurry of reports in the German media around the police investigating a number of different suspects and following various leads. First it was an investigation into links to an Arab clan in Berlin, next the police revealed 7 people had been involved in the robbery, and then they looked into the security guards to see if it was an inside job.
Then in November 2020 thousands of police raided 18 properties in Berlin and arrested three suspects in connection with the heist, they later arrested two more men. All five perpetrators are from the Remmo Clan. “There are several "clans" in Germany; family networks with Arab roots responsible for major organised crime” (Hill, 2023).
One of these thieves was previously convicted of the theft of a giant gold coin, which weighed over 100kg, from Berlin’s Bode Museum in 2017. The coin has never been recovered and it’s believed it was broken up and melted down. A lot of people feared that the same thing had happened to the Green Vault jewels as well. “”There are people who steal artworks out of passion for art, but this was really the opposite," says Prof Marion Ackermann, general director of Dresden's State Art Collections. “They had no idea of what they had taken”” (Hill, 2023).
Legal Proceedings
In 2023 the five individuals finally stood trial for the heist. The trial lasted 47 days and more than 100 witnesses were called to testify. The final ruling found the men guilty of theft with weapons, damage to property, and arson and the sentences ranged from 4 to 6 years in prison.
As for the jewels, as part of a plea deal that saw 4 of the men confess to their involvement in the crime and the fifth one confess to helping with the break in, the location of some of the stolen items was disclosed. The Green Vault recovered 31 objects safely though some are still missing from the museum and who knows when/if they will ever be found.
Works Cited
Brown, Kate. “Thieves Stole Up To A Billion Dollars Worth of Jewels From Dresden’s Famed Treasure Museum”. ArtNet. 2019. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/green-vault-robbed-dresden-1713954
Hill, Jenny. “Dresden Jewel Theft: Five Men Convicted of Audacious 2019 Heist”. BBC. 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65601751
Tancred-Lawson, Jo. “The German Court has Convicted Five Men Over Their Involvement in the Shocking $119 Million Dresden Jewel Heist”. ArtNet. 2023. https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/a-german-court-has-convicted-five-men-over-their-involvement-in-the-shocking-119-million-dresden-jewel-heist-2302549