Stéphane Breitwieser
Stéphane Breitwieser ( born October 1, 1971 in Mulhouse, Haut-Rhin ) is a French art thief and author. Between 1995 and 2001 he stole, while he traveled through Europe and worked as a waiter, a total of 239 works of art valued at approximately 20 million euros. Breitwieser not stolen the works to sell them; he wanted to expand especially his private art collection including paintings from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
"I enjoy art. I love these works of art. I collected them and kept them at home. "
His first theft he committed in March 1995 during the visit of the medieval castle in Gruyères ( Switzerland ) with his girlfriend Anne- Catherine Klein Klauss. He stole a painting by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. He said about it:
"I was fascinated by the beauty of the scenic quality of the portrayed woman and of her eyes. I thought it was a Rembrandt imitation. "
While his girlfriend was watching, he took the picture from the frame and hid it under his jacket. The most valuable painting that he stole the image of Sybille of Cleves by Lucas Cranach the Elder was at the preview to a Sotheby's auction in Baden -Baden in 1995. It was worth about 7.3 million euros.
In 2001, he was finally arrested when he tried to destroy trace two days after a theft in Lucerne. In January 2005 he was sentenced to three years in Strasbourg, but had to serve only 26 months. Despite its peripheral collection Breitwieser may be represented at every piece that he has stolen, remember. So he interrupted during the collection of stolen works of art from him during the court hearing the speakers several times to supplement details. The day before the sentencing he tried to hang himself in his cell. Breitwieser girlfriend was sentenced to 18 months, but had to serve only six months. He had gathered in his mother's house in Mulhouse The stolen works of art. This they did after her son was arrested, cut by its own account and either thrown to the garbage or in a Rhone canal. This triggered one of the three failed suicide attempts Breitwieser. Due to the destruction of the works of art the mother was also sentenced to three years imprisonment, but was only 18 months imprisoned.
A total of 102 of the stolen works of art were rescued from the canal and returned to various museums. The remaining exhibits are destroyed or remained disappeared. The descriptions of these lost works found in the database of the Art Loss Register. In France Breitwieser is indeed on the loose and his thefts are also there as time-barred. He can not leave the country without risking an arrest abroad since he committed art thefts in seven other European countries and in this regard are different laws in each of these countries. In Germany, a study of the Cologne public prosecutor was in 2007, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung still pending against him.
Beginning of April 2011, the police searched his apartment and found again almost 30 stolen paintings and a number of other works of art. As a result, he was sentenced on July 3, 2013 to three years imprisonment by the District Court in Strasbourg.
Breitwieser wrote an autobiographical documentary in which he tells about his thefts, the first sentence and his motives. The book was published in 2006 in French under the title Confessions d'un Voleur d'art. 2007, it came under the title Confessions of an art thief also on the German market.
Works
- Confessions d'un Voleur d'art. Editions Anne Carrière, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-84337-410-3
- Confessions of an art thief. Bertelsmann, München 2007, ISBN 978-3-570-00992-5