Five Old Master Paintings Stolen in East Germany’s Most Notorious Art Heist Are Recovered After 40 Years

When the mayor of a German city was shown a photograph last year
of a painting hanging on a living room wall he recognized the work
immediately. It was one of five Old Masters paintings stolen from
the Friedenstein palace in Gotha nearly 40 years ago in an
audacious theft that East Germany’s feared police failed to
solve.

Mayor Knut Kreuch has negotiated the paintings’ safe return,
negotiating through intermediaries acting on behalf of anonymous
sellers who were initially demanding millions of euros for the
paintings. In what has been described as a “masterstroke,” the
group was quietly returned last September, arriving in Berlin by
van, and no ransom was paid.

Last week, the five paintings were unveiled, and the operation
to recover them revealed. This week, they go on view in the Schloss
Friedenstein from which they were stolen in 1979.

The long lost paintings are a portrait by Frans Hals, a painting
by Hans Holbein the Elder, a work once thought to be by Jan
Lievens, and a landscape from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the
Elder. The fifth painting is a copy by an unknown artist of a
Van Dyck self-portrait. All the paintings date from the mid-16th
century to the 17th century. The Art Newspaper
reports their value to be around €4 million ($4.4 million).

It is unclear if the authorities are unwilling or rather unable
to say who they suspect stole the paintings beyond the fact that
they are German residents. It is believed they were smuggled into
West Germany in the 1980s, and so passed through the Iron
Curtain.

The so-called Gotha robbery was the largest single art heist
ever to take place in the former German Democratic
Republic. The country was left stunned when the works
disappeared early in the morning of December 14, 1979. Police
were unable to recover the paintings despite interrogating more
than 1,000 people, including the palace’s employees, and their
families.

Since their return in September, the paintings have been
authenticated by experts at Berlin State Museums’ Rathgen Research
Laboratory as the ones stolen from the castle.

Bodo Ramelow, the minister president of the Free State of
Thuringia, said the painting’s return filled “a painful gap in the
historic building,” referring to the early Baroque palace, which
dates from the 17th century.

The Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation provided around €50,000
($55,000) towards the costs of lawyers and logistics. Its general
secretary, Martin Hoernes, stressed: “No money goes to thieves. You
don’t do that,” the Sueddeutsches
Zeitung reports. The lawyer’s clients
initially demanded €5.25 million ($5.8 million), according to the
newspaper Der Spiegel.

The post Five Old Master Paintings Stolen in East Germany’s
Most Notorious Art Heist Are Recovered After 40 Years appeared
first on artnet News.