Former German museum worker sentenced to prison for stealing and selling paintings

A former technical employee on the Deutsches Museum in Munich was sentenced to jail for stealing work from the depot and promoting them through an public sale home to purchase himself luxuries. In a single case, he changed a portray by Franz von Caught with a cast copy and auctioned off the unique.

A courtroom in Munich sentenced the thief, who’s 30 and can’t be named underneath German privateness legal guidelines, to a 12 months and 9 months in jail and ordered him to pay damages of greater than €60,000 on 11 September. He was discovered responsible of stealing 4 work in complete, and promoting three of them through a Munich public sale home—underneath the pretence they belonged to his household—whereas he was working on the museum from 2016 to 2018.

“The accused shamelessly exploited his entry to the depots in his employer’s premises and offered useful cultural property to safe himself an unique lifestyle and to boast about it,” the courtroom stated in an announcement. It added that he had acquired a brand new condo, costly watches and a Rolls Royce.

However the Munich district courtroom additionally stated the sentence was comparatively lenient as a result of the person had no prior prison report, had expressed remorse, and since his crimes had been a number of years in the past. “He stated he acted with out reflection,” the courtroom stated. “He may now not clarify his behaviour to himself.”

The Deutsches Museum is without doubt one of the greatest science and expertise museums on the earth. It has acquired its artwork assortment primarily by bequests from people and foundations and these are primarily saved within the depot, says Sabine Pelgjer, a spokeswoman for the museum.

The lack of the Caught portray, known as The Fairy Story of the Frog King, was found when a provenance researcher gained entry to it and seen that it was “fairly a careless copy,” regardless of being in the proper body, Pelgjer says. An extra inspection of the depots revealed that three different work had been additionally lacking. “Solely the frames had been left,” she says.

The previous museum worker offered two of those: Eduard von Grützner’s The Winetasting, for which he bought virtually €4,500, and Two Ladies Gathering Wooden within the Mountains by Franz von Defregger, which earned him €7,000. A 3rd work, Franz Defregger’s Dirndl, did not promote at one other Munich public sale home. The thief cashed in additional than €49,000 for the sale of the Caught portray, which was bought by a Swiss gallery.

“Entry to the depot could be very tightly regulated,” Pelgjer says. “Our employees are all very dependable, however there’s not a lot you are able to do if one worker harbours prison vitality. He had no earlier report and there was no approach of realizing he was able to this once we employed him.”