‘Priceless’ Jewelry, Artifacts Stolen From German Museum

(Bloomberg) -- Thieves made off with jewelry and artifacts worth a reported $1.1 billion after an early-morning burglary at a German museum.

The robbers stole three sets of jewelry from Dresden’s Grunes Gewolbe -- or Green Vault -- after entering through a window just before 5 a.m. local time Monday, Joerg Kubiessa, the head of Dresden’s police, told reporters. The thieves escaped and remain at large.

Germany has had its share of heists in recent years. In 2017, burglars stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid gold coin worth $4 million from Berlin’s Bode Museum. The coin, which is as big as a car tire, is still missing.

The Grunes Gewolbe held 3,000 individual objects, including jewels and objects made of gold, crystal and diamonds collected by Augustus the Strong, a 17th-century ruler of the kingdom of Saxony, which included Dresden.

The stolen jewelry is “unique in Europe,” said Dirk Syndram, the director of the Grunes Gewolbe. “It’s a world cultural heritage.”

They include ensembles of diamonds that are of “priceless art-historic value,” said Marion Ackermann, the head of Dresden’s state art collection. She declined to give a financial value, saying that it was impossible to estimate.

Germany’s Bild newspaper reported that the antique jewelry was worth about 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) without saying where it got the estimate.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Stupples in London at bstupples@bloomberg.net;Stefan Nicola in Berlin at snicola2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill

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