Imagine a museum dedicated to science and technology who exhibits no artworks, but actually has a collection of hundreds of ‘often valuable’ paintings in storage.
This museum exists, in Germany, and was targeted by one of its former employees, who stole 4 works of art.
The worker at the Deutsches Museum, in Munich, stole paintings from the collection, and replaced them in storage with badly done forgeries.
He proceeded to sell these originals at auction, according to the court’s judgment, to finance a lavish lifestyle.
The New York Times reported:
“The worker, who is identified in court documents by the initials S.K., in keeping with German privacy law, was convicted of stealing four paintings by early-20th-century German artists from storerooms over nearly two years and avoiding detection by replacing the artworks with copies. He then sold three of the pieces at auction; the fourth failed to find a buyer.
Judge Erlacher of the district court in Munich sentenced the man to a commuted prison term of one year and nine months and ordered him to repay the roughly $63,000 he got from the sale. The thief’s evident remorse and willingness to work with the court were given as a reason for the lenient sentence.”
Hired as a technical employee of the museum, in 2016, he was employed there until 2018.
“‘The accused shamelessly exploited the access to the storage rooms in his employer’s buildings and sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off with it’, according to the written judgment.”
When a Museum in-house appraiser went to check one of the paintings, they noticed that the canvas was not a precise match with its catalog entry.
“’In the end it was pretty easy to recognize as a forgery’, Pelgjer said.”
The museum searched the art collection and found three other forged pieces. So far, it remains unclear whether the thief made the forgeries himself.
During the trial, the thief told the judge that ‘he was surprised how easy it had been to steal the paintings.
Artnet reported:
“The defendant allegedly used the money to pay debts and fund a luxury lifestyle, the court heard. “Among other things, he bought a new apartment, expensive wristwatches, and bought a Rolls-Royce,” read the verdict, noting that the man now showed remorse. “He stated that he had acted without thinking. He could no longer explain his behavior today.”
After replacing Franz Stuck’s Das Märchen vom Froschkönig (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) (1891) with a forgery, the man pretended the original was a family heirloom and it was sold at Ketterer Kunst auction house in May 2017 to a Swiss gallery for €70,000 ($74,000). After auction house fees, he received $49,127.40 ($52,000).”
The two other paintings stolen brought in an additional $12,700. He was not able to sell the fourth painting. He made $64,000 in total.
The Deutsches Museum is now in the process of trying to arrange for the return of the pictures.
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