Pictured: Der Thron des Großmoguls Aureng-Zeb, Johann Melchior Dinglinger, 1701-1708
Image credit by Artefakte, Wikipedia Commons
Germany’s Fort Knox equivalent has just been bereft of an estimated €1 billion in jewelry and diamonds in potentially the greatest art heist in decades.
On the chilly morning of November 25, at 5.00am in Dresden, capital of Saxony in Germany, the Green Vault was broken into. With the criminals still on the loose, Saxony mourns the ‘immeasurable worth’ lost, as quoted by state interior minister Rolan Woeller.
Once deemed the safest vault that would make Fort Knox in America quiver, the Green Vault’s grand opening in 2010 seemed impossible to perpetrate. However, this recent theft has left many Saxonians quivering in shock as historical state pieces left only their shadows on show at the state gallery.
Michael Kretschmer, Minister President of Saxony since December 2017, shares the sentiments of cultural loss:
You cannot understand the history of our country, or the free state of Saxony without the Green Vault and the state art collections of Saxony.
M. Kretschmer
German tabloid magazine Bild reports that the criminals firstly switched off the power supply in the early hours of the morning, allowing them to enter the building by breaking an iron grill from a small ground floor window and then breaking through the window – completely ridiculing the alleged ‘invisible’ security systems former museum director Martin Roth boasted about.
There are speculations that a fire set off at 4.00am at a local power junction box distributor was connected to the heist, disabling the security alarm units of the gallery.
The perpetrators allegedly ran off in a saloon car with multiple diamond sets packed up with them, containing rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires. Authorities hope that despite the electrical outage, the security cameras could have picked up an identifiable trait as of yet Saxony police have made no arrests, nor targeted any suspects.
Other valuables contained in the Vault are a 648-carat sapphire, royal gift from Tsar Peter the Great from Russia; and a priceless 3.8cm figurine of a Moor adorned with multiple emeralds.
These losses make it seem that the alleged €1bn value is true, making this officially the greatest art heist in the past 3 decades, since the Boston Gardner Museum suffered a $500 million burglary.
Image by Svens D, Wikipedia Commons
While we wait to discover who these mysterious criminal masterminds are, have a look at how one burglar got found out for their missing fur coat at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow after attempting to steal a $182K painting…
