The Art Thief Who Loves Art
I know this title sounds obvious, but it isn’t always (read: almost never) the case that people stealing art are actually doing it because they’re compelled by their love for that specific piece. This love is what lead Stéphane Breitwieser to become one of the world’s most consistent art thieves.
The Thefts
We’re just going to get into it today, there are so many crimes to talk about I’m not even going to bother with a lot of background. Basically, all you need to know is that when Stéphane Breitwieser was 22 years old, and still living at home, his parents’ marriage ended abruptly and explosively. His whole life he had lived comfortably surrounded by antiques and beautiful things that his father had collected. After the divorce his father left, taking everything with him, and Breitwieser and his mother had to move to a less grand house and replace the fine furniture with Ikea.
Soon after this, Breitwieser met a woman, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus. She was also introverted and interested in art, objects, and museums just like Breitwieser and the two got along immediately. She soon moved into the attic suite where Breitwieser lived in the home he still shared with his mother.
A few months into their relationship they were in a museum in the French village of Thann (in the Alsace region of France near Germany and Switzerland, where Breitwieser lived). In the museum they spotted a beautiful antique pistol and Breitwieser’s first thought is that he should already own it. His father had collected weapons but this was much nicer than anything in his father’s collection. Since the museum was so small their security was very lax, they just had a single volunteer at the entrance booth, and Kleinklaus encouraged him to take it. He simply reaches into the case, removes the pistol and places it in his backpack then they leave the museum as though they have not a care in the world. This is where it all started, and Breitwieser’s urge to steal only seemed to grow from there.
Three years later, having amassed over 100 items in their attic apartment (which was always kept locked to prevent Breitwieser’s mother from uncovering their stash), Breitwieser and Kleinklaus have their methods and roles down pat. They’re always well dressed and friendly to staff, they make note of security cameras and whether or not they’re actually connected to wires or if they’re just deterrants. They note the type of flooring, with carpet being the worst and hardwood that creaks being the best for hearing anyone approaching. Their method is Kleinklaus acting as the lookout, coughing softly when someone is about to enter the room or notice him, while Breitwieser performs the theft.
One notable example of them employing this method is one day in The Rubens House in Antwerp, Belgium. The museum is the former home of the painter Peter Paul Rubens and many of the paintings inside are too big to fit under Breitwieser’s jacket or don’t stir him emotionally (that was his way of determining his targets). This time he had settled on an ivory carving of Adam and Eve created in 1627 by Georg Petel, a friend of Rubens, who had gifted the carving to him for his 50th birthday. The carving was secured under a plexiglass dome screwed into a base. Breitwieser noted that there was no guard permanently in the room, just one doing rounds every few minutes, and no cameras. When tourists were sufficiently distracted, or the room cleared, Breitwieser took out his Swiss army knife screwdriver and started to work on the screws. He would unscrew them a few turns at a time when he could, and it took about 20 minutes of doing this before the cover was removed. He quickly took the sculpture and wedged it into the waistband of his pants, at the small of his back, adjusted his coat to look natural and then he and Kleinklaus calmly left the museum and drove away. Crossing the border back into France was a little stressful but pretty low risk as they just presented as a stylish young couple out for a day trip and were never questioned.
Coming back to their attic apartment was always one of the best parts of a heist because they would open the door and enter a paradise of Renaissance paintings, antiques, sculptures, and other valuable objects. “There's a bustling peasant scene by Dutch master Adriaen van Ostade, an idyllic pastoral by French luminary François Boucher, an open-winged bat by German genius Albrecht Dürer. A resplendent 16th-century wedding portrait, the bride's dress threaded with pearls, by Lucas Cranach the Younger, may be worth more than all the houses on Breitwieser's block put together, times two” (Finkel, 2019).
If he wasn’t insatiable before the theft of the ivory sculpture, he certainly was after. The weekend after that theft they drive to Zurich for an art fair and steal a filagree and gold 16th century goblet. Then they drive to Holland for another fair and snatch a 1602 landscape of a pond with swans. At another booth he grabs a 17th century seascape painted on copper. A few weeks later they drive back to Belgium to visit a village museum with a single security guard (it’s easy to see why they preferred small museums) where they make off with a still life of butterflies and tulips by Flemish painter Jan van Kessel the Elder. This is followed by a trip to Paris, where, at the pre-sale show for an auction they manage to steal a painting from the school of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Then they return, again, to Belgium to take a tableau of a rural market, to Holland for a sweet painting of housecats and hedgehogs, then north to the French city of Lille for another Renaissance oil painting (his favourites), and finally, one more raid in Belgium for good measure. All that in just a couple of months.
I’m exhausted just typing all that so I have no idea how they actually pulled it off. In fairness, neither Breitwieser nor Kleinklaus had a job, they relied on Breitwieser’s mother to provide for them, and they were actually pretty broke despite having a treasure trove where the paintings alone were worth millions of dollars. But Breitwieser never stole in order to sell these treasures, he wanted to own them and he thought of himself as their protector. He saw himself as saving them from these museums and “giving them the love and attention they deserved” (Finkel, 2019).
Of course, through all this the police are after them, they don’t know who exactly they’re after, but they have been collecting reports from all these small museums and galleries or precious artworks and artefacts going missing. The police don’t seem to have any clue who to look for, especially since they’re watching out for any reports of someone attempting to sell the missing art, which of course Breitwieser never intended on doing.
Then in 2000, after six years of averaging a theft every two weeks and amassing a collection of over 300 stolen items, Breitwieser and Kleinklaus arrive at an art gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland. Kleinklaus sees many red flags with their visit that day, it’s warm so neither of them are wearing jackets where they could conceal something, they’re right across the street from the police station, and they’re the only visitors there at the time. She tells Breitwieser that they shouldn’t do anything but he spots a Willem van Aelst that is simply too tempting, so he takes it down off the wall, tucks it under his arm and attempts to casually leave the gallery. That goes just about as well as you’d expect. A gallery employee spots them and escorts them across the street to the police. Once there they tell the officers that it is their first time stealing and they’re very very sorry. Somehow that works and they are allowed to just walk out and go home with no punishment.
But then, when they’re both nearing 30 years old, everything starts to fall apart. Breitwieser starts getting bolder with his thefts, once stealing an enormous Madonna and Child painting from his local church weighing more than 150lbs. Kleinklaus starts to feel anxious about the future and how they can possibly lead a normal life or have a family with all of this stolen loot to keep a secret. This leads to fights between the two where Breitwieser tells her that he never plans to stop stealing, but he does promise to start wearing gloves since the police in Switzerland took their fingerprints.
Then one day Breitwieser returns to their attic with a new treasure that he stole from Switzerland (where the police know them) AND he wasn’t wearing gloves like he promised. Kleinklaus was furious and demanded that they drive back to the museum the next day so she can clean the site of the theft and wipe away any fingerprints that might lead the police to them. While she’s inside doing this, Breitwieser takes a walk around the grounds seeing no one except a man with a dog who gives him a weird look. Soon, Kleinklaus comes running out of the museum (which is odd because they never wanted to look like they were fleeing a scene). Suddenly a police car approaches and two officers handcuff Breitwieser, put him in the back of their car and take him away.
So That’s That?
No, not even close. Breitwieser is held in a cell for days. The police question him about the last thing he stole, a small bugle, and he admits to stealing it saying that he didn’t have a lot of money and wanted to get his mother something nice for Christmas. He wanted to avoid the police finding out who he was or searching his home in France. However, unbeknownst to him, the Swiss police have connected him to his prior brush with the law in Switzerland years before and are intrigued. They had initially thought he was just a small-time thief looking for a little money but now they wonder if he could be something more. So, they contacted authorities in France who got a search warrant for his mother’s house. They are finally allowed to search the house about four weeks after Breitwieser’s arrest. His mother is home at the time who says she knows nothing and when they enter the attic they find………….absolutely nothing. Bare walls surrounding a bed.
Early in 2002 Breitwieser is finally taken from his cell, where he has remained without a call or letter from his mother or Kleinklaus (who managed to escape being arrested that day in Switzerland). A police officer puts a photo of a medal that he had stolen a week before the bugle from another Swiss museum. In the photo the medal looks rusty and worn, not the way Breitwieser had been maintaining it so he wonders what happened. He soon confesses to stealing this. Then the officer produces another photo, this time of a golden snuffbox which also looks oxidized and worse for the wear. Breitwieser confesses to stealing this too. Finally, the officer puts a stack of 140 photos on the table, all things that Breitwieser had stolen going back almost eight years to the first thing he ever stole, the pistol from France. He confesses and provides details for each of the thefts.
Once they finish going through all the images Breitwieser says “what about the paintings” and it is only then that he starts to find out what happened.
What Happened
Just a little disclaimer before we start that Breitwieser’s mother and Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus have never spoken to the media about any of this so it remains a little bit of a mystery but we are able to piece together a lot through Breitwieser combining his insights with police findings and interviews and this is what they believe occurred.
After Breitwieser was arrested he believes that Kleinklaus drove back to their house from Switzerland. When she gets home she must have told his mother some or all of the truth and showed her the attic and its contents. They must have thought that because Breitwieser was in custody police would soon be coming for them. So, that evening they begin loading up the car with furniture, trinkets, sculptures, and artefacts until it is completely full. Then, in the dead of night they drive to the Rhone-Rhine Canal, not far from the house, and dump every piece into it. Some pieces aren’t thrown far enough from shore because passers-by notice them and this is where the police find them and photograph them for Breitwieser to confess to. And this also explains the wear to some of the items.
Back at the house, possibly the same night as the canal dump, the two women again load up the car with the larger items (such as the huge Madonna and Child) which they leave in various places and are eventually recovered.
Finally, the paintings. Breitwieser believes that this was their last step. They load up the car one last time and drive to a secluded spot in the woods where they stack all the canvasses into a huge pile, sixty-six paintings in total, and light them on fire. Hurts me to write. All of the paintings were reduced to ash.
Oof.
Anything Else?
Sure, after Breitwieser finds all of this out he’s completely devastated because he truly loved all the things he collected (stole), and at his heart he was a huge appreciator of art (he was even mad at whoever committed the Isabella Stewart Gardiner heist for cutting those paintings out of their frames). He was placed on suicide watch before his trial where he was sentenced to four years for his crimes.
His mother stood trial for her role in destroying the works and was found guilty but only spent a few months in jail. Finally, Kleinklaus also stands trial where she tells the court she had no idea her boyfriend was a thief and she just thought he had a lot of unusual objects in his room. Likely. Somehow, this works and she is never charged with the thefts or with destroying the works.
Breitwieser is released from jail in 2005, when he was 33. He works a few basic jobs and then finds himself at an art fair in Belgium and can’t stop himself. He steals a winter landscape that moves him. Of course, he ends up getting caught and goes back to jail. When he gets out again he’s 41 and tries to get museums to hire him as a security consultant (hilarious). One day in 2018 he sees a brochure for the Reubens House Museum saying that the Adam and Eve sculpture is back on display (the one he stole 21 years earlier). He decides to go and he is still completely enchanted by it. But this time he doesn’t make an attempt to steal anything, instead he goes outside and cries, reflecting on how stealing that was the peak of his life.
In the gift shop he sees a museum catalogue with the photo of the sculpture and the story of the theft. Having no money he discreetly picks up the book, tucks it in his jacket and calmly walks out of the museum.
Works Cited
Finkel, Michael. “The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Art Thief”. GQ. 2019. https://www.gq.com/story/secrets-of-the-worlds-greatest-art-thief