East German Art Heist
42 years ago there was a robbery at an East German castle. The perpetrators made off with a real bounty; five paintings done by masters or other notable artists. They got away free and clear and the paintings haven’t been seen since. That is, until this year.
The Heist
Around 2:00am on the night of December 14, 1979, thieves climbed down the drainpipe and the facade of the Friedenstein Castle from the roof. They used crampons to grip onto these surfaces before letting themselves into a window on the third floor. Not a lot is known about what happened that night but what we do know is that the alarm system had been installed but not yet activated at the time of the crime. Of course. The thieves made off with five paintings. Half-Length Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman with Hat and Gloves by Frans Hals, Country Road with Farmer's Wagons and Cows from the immediate vicinity of Jan Brueghel the Elder, Self-Portrait with Sunflower by Anthony van Dyck (copy; original is in the private collection of the Duke of Westminster), Old Man by Ferdinand Bol (copy after Rembrandt), and Saint Catherine by Hans Holbein the Elder.
The police at the time investigated the crime and they actually apparently interviewed over 1000 people in connection to it but they never convicted anyone. It was considered the biggest art heist in East German history. The police came to the conclusion that it was a premeditated robbery probably for an art collector or someone who had given them a wish list. This is because the paintings that were stolen, while valuable, weren’t the most valuable in the museum and the thieves collected four works from the Dutch Hall and then went all the way to another exhibit hall to grab the fifth. Why would they do this unless they had a shopping list?
Police also thought that the robbery could have been aided by a mole inside the museum. Who else would have known that the alarm system was installed but not yet activated? What a coincidence that the thieves took advantage of this short window of time. This was also not the first time that a robbery had been attempted. The first three attempts, all within a few months of each other in 1978, had been unsuccessful. The third attempt, in October of that year, was almost successful but a janitor noticed what was happening and called the police who captured the six perpetrators.
Going back to 1979, after the robbery, the five paintings were gone and despite the police work and interviews, the authorities had no sense of where they were or where they could have gone. They thought maybe they had been smuggled to West Germany but the trail was cold. At the time the paintings had a €4 million insurance value, now the paintings would be worth €50 million.
Fast Forward to 2018
Ok so I know I said the paintings weren’t seen again until this year but it actually does go back a little farther than that. In 2018, Knut Kreuch, mayor of Gotha (the city where Friedenstein Castle is) started receiving phone calls out of the blue from a lawyer claiming to have the paintings. Up to this point, there were only black and white photographs of the paintings available but the lawyer was able to provide colour photos for the first time. He asked for over €5 million for the paintings.
Thankfully Kreuch took this lawyer seriously and ended up negotiating with him and he requested that the paintings be brought to the research laboratory at the National Museum in Berlin to verify their authenticity. The Berlin authorities were contacted and they covertly watched a van driver drop off five bubble wrapped packages. ““We do not give money to thieves,” said Martin Hoernes, an art historian at the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation who aided Kreuch in the affair, at a press conference. The Siemens Art Foundation covered the legal costs, the research and the transport, which together came to less than €50,000” (The Value, 2020). So basically this guy never got the €5 million that he asked for, seems kind of dumb to not ask for that upfront tbh. And just like that they had five paintings back in their hands that they desperately hoped were originals.
In January 2020 the authenticity of these paintings was confirmed partly using the pre-1979 photographs and matching up a crack in the varnish from the photo to the painting. So yay! The paintings are back in the care of the museum, they are confirmed to be the originals, and they’re getting ready to go back on display in 2021. But there’s more to the story.
Undiscovered Rembrandt?
So when these paintings were returned to the museum they were restoring them and examining them and the restoration team and historians started to look more closely at one, in particular, Old Man by Ferdinand Bol. Bol is known to have been a student of Rembrandt and his signature is on the back of the painting but now the curator of the new exhibition, Timo Trümper, says that the signature could indicate that Bol had owned the painting instead of having painted it. He guesses that Bol could have acquired it after Rembrandt’s bankruptcy in 1656.
This painting is very similar to one at the Harvard Art Museum, that work does have Rembrandt’s signature but the attribution is also debated. Trümper says that the underpainting on the Gotha work (that was recently recovered) indicates that it is the original and that the Harvard painting is a later studio copy. “It’s a question of interpretation,” he says of the Gotha work. “We can be sure it originated in Rembrandt’s studio—the question is how much of it is Rembrandt and how much his pupils? We have already talked to a lot of colleagues. Half say: ‘No, it’s not Rembrandt, it’s one of his pupils.’ The other half say it’s an interesting theory and they can’t rule it out” (Hickley, 2021).
So it’s impossible to say for sure but it is definitely possible that this painting is an undiscovered Rembrandt that has flown under the radar for years.
Any Progress on the Case?
Since the paintings were recovered there hasn’t been a ton of movement on the case itself or figuring out who the original perpetrators are or what their motivations were. But there is a pretty interesting theory proposed by journalist Konstantin von Hammerstein in the catalogue for the upcoming exhibition. He says that the thief is Rudi Bernhardt, a “disillusioned East German train driver who smuggled the pictures to West Germany, with the help of West German accomplices—a couple who have since died and left the paintings to their children” (Hickley, 2021). Unfortunately, Bernhardt died in 2016 and took the secret to his grave with him. So, again, not a super satisfying answer but interesting to think that there’s even a theory after all this time. And actually, I take it back, getting to report that the paintings have been returned safe and sound should be satisfying enough.
Works Cited
Hickley, Catherine. “Painting Recovered 40 Years After its Theft in East Germany may be an Unknown Rembrandt”. The Art Newspaper. 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/03/recovered-painting-could-be-unknown-rembrandt
“Five Old Masters Paintings Stolen from Friedenstein Palace Return to Germany After 40 Years”. The Value. 2020. https://en.thevalue.com/articles/old-master-painting-theft-east-germany-gotha-friedenstein-palace