crime
Millions in loot: porcelain stolen from Cologne museum
Police forensics at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne. photo
© Roberto Pfeil/dpa
Unknown people enter a Cologne museum at night. They steal porcelain worth millions from display cases. The perpetrators are on the run and the police search is ongoing.
The burglars must have made a targeted attack: unknown people stole something valuable from the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne Porcelain stolen. The total value of the loot is at least one million euros, said Stefan Charles, head of the cultural department. The stolen goods were nine Chinese vases, plates and bowls from the 16th to 19th centuries.
The market for such exhibits is very small. “There are only so many people who know about it,” Charles said. The great hope is that by publishing photos and publicizing the theft, the exhibits will ultimately not be able to be sold.
Police are looking for witnesses
According to previous police investigations, the perpetrators broke open a window on Wednesday night and stole the objects from their display cases. A museum employee heard loud noises at the front of the building around midnight and was alerted to the break-in. He saw two men, one of whom was said to be carrying a gray, square backpack. The perpetrators are on the run and the police are looking for witnesses.
Charles did not want to comment in more detail about the security measures in the museum. Just this much: “We will begin the process immediately and, of course, intensively examine how we can increase the security of the museum.”
Museum director: “Totally in shock”
Museum director Shao-Lan Hertel, who only took up her post two months ago, was still visibly shocked hours after the break-in. “I’m speechless and deeply horrified, I’m still in total shock,” she told journalists in the afternoon.
The Museum of East Asian Art was founded in 1913 and claims to be the first specialized museum of its kind in Europe. Accordingly, it houses – alongside the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin – the most important collection of art from China, Korea and Japan in the Federal Republic.
What hurts even more than the financial loss is that almost all of the stolen objects were part of the museum’s founding inventory, said Hertel. Among the exhibits are, for example, a yellow vase from the Qing Dynasty decorated with blue dragons and a yellow plate from the Ming Dynasty.
“Because the objects are well documented and recognizable, we have hope that one day they will surface and find their way back into our collection,” said Hertel. “That is my greatest wish and ultimate goal.”