Berlin’s Stasi Museum Is Targeted by Thieves Just Days After Europe’s Biggest Jewel Heist in Dresden

Burglars broke into Berlin’s
Stasi Museum under cover of darkness on Saturday night. They
escaped with historic artifacts, including jewelry seized by the
communist regime from people who tried to flee to the West. The
museum is housed in the former headquarters of East Germany’s
notorious ministry of state security and its feared secret
police.

The theft comes a week after
after Europe’s biggest
jewel heist in Dresden’s
Green Vault, which prompted calls for a museum security task force
in Germany. It is not the first time that the Stasi Museum’s
security measures have been found wanting.

“It’s always painful when
there’s a break-in. The feeling of security is considerably
disturbed,” the Stasi Museum’s director, Jörg Drieselmann, told
Der
Tagesspiegel.  He told the newspaper: “We are a
historical museum, and don’t expect anyone to break into our
premises. We are not the Green Vault.” 

Stasi Museum staff discovered
the break-in on Sunday morning, December 1. The thieves climbed
onto the roof and entered the museum through a first-floor window.
They smashed display cases and stole medals and gold jewelry before
escaping undetected, according to police
reports.

A spokesman for the museum tells
Artnet News that it is urging its landlord, the Stasi Records
Agency, to improve the building’s security. The museum was last
robbed in 2008. 

Drieselmann
told Der
Tagesspiegel that the
full scale of the damage is still to be assessed. Losses
include gold jewelry, which have both historical significance and
material value. Items include rings, a watch, and a bracelet. They
are examples of the private property seized by the ruthless
security force from dissidents and those who tried to escape to
West Germany. Much of these items were returned to their original
owners after the fall of the Communist government, but some owners
were never found, and so the items were placed on permanent loan to
the museum by the German state.

Also missing are medals,
including: a gold Patriotic Order of Merit; East
Germany’s highest accolade, the Karl Marx Order; a Lenin
Order, and a Hero of the Soviet Union Order. The collectors’
items have sold at auction for thousands of euros in the past. In
2017, a Karl Marx Order belonging to the East German politician and
currency trader Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski fetched €8,000 (nearly $9,000) at auction in
Hamburg. The Stasi Museum’s director says that some of the
stolen items were replicas and not originals.

The museum is closed today but is due to reopen on Tuesday. The
building also houses a research center, which preserves
surveillance files and other documents that were saved from being
shredded. The centrepiece of the museum is the office of Erich
Mielke, the last GDR Minister for State Security, which is
preserved as he left it in 1989.

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After Europe’s Biggest Jewel Heist in Dresden appeared first on
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