An illegally excavated Corinthian bronze helmet, coins stolen from an Italian museum: Bavaria has returned valuable art and cultural objects to Italy. Years ago they were stolen from Italian museums or illegally dug up and smuggled to Bavaria. The Vice President of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, Guido Limmer, handed over the items to the authorities in Rome, as the LKA announced on Monday.
According to the information, among the returned objects were a Corinthian bronze helmet, probably illegally excavated in southern Italy, which a man had illegally brought to Bavaria and four Roman-Byzantine gold coins that were stolen from the National Archaeological Museum in Parma in 2009. The investigators discovered some of them in stores, others in private hands.
In addition, a more than 2,500-year-old bowl with motifs from Greek mythology, which was a Registered Italian Cultural Property, was returned. According to the LKA, the bowl had been illegally exported from Italy and was to be auctioned off in a Munich auction house. An Embriachi box carved from animal bones, stolen from Milan’s Castelo Sforzesco museum in 2006, was also handed over to Italian authorities when it was returned on Sunday. According to the LKA, the box was smuggled from Italy via Great Britain and Belgium to Germany and offered for sale there.
Christian Klein is something like the top art investigator in Bavaria and was present at the handover in Rome. For six years he has been in charge of subject area 622 “Special Investigations/Art/NSG” at the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. NSG means crimes from the time of National Socialism – because hardly any perpetrators are still alive, a branch that is becoming smaller.
On the other hand, a growing branch is the criminal business with art: hundreds of confiscated, allegedly forged pictures are stored in a special evidence room of the LKA near the Munich Olympic Park, which resembles a museum depot. The premises are air-conditioned in such a way that temperature differences are not felt outside and the less valuable forgeries, but above all the much more valuable, old archaeological finds, are not damaged there. “Most of them are ancient coins,” Klein says of the cultural assets stored in the evidence room.
Because the case that has now come to an end in Rome is not an isolated case. Every year, Klein and his team deal with dozens of crimes involving allegedly stolen cultural assets from other countries – and the trend is rising. “There is simply more and more knowledge in this area, better and better networks between countries and that’s why the number of cases is increasing,” he says German press agency.
Munich is considered a hotspot – not only because of its proximity to Italy
The judiciary has also been upgraded accordingly. Munich is considered a hotspot – not only because of its proximity to Italy, but also because there are so many auction houses where the cultural objects turn up from time to time. At the Munich I public prosecutor’s office, for example, prosecutor Stöckel mainly deals with stolen cultural assets from all over the world in addition to counterfeiting. On June 21, she will again represent the prosecutor in a case involving cultural treasures from Ukraine.
Until 2016, investigators were only able to investigate stolen goods in such cases, but since then they have had a somewhat sharper sword. In August 2016, the Cultural Property Protection Act came into force, criminalizing the illegal export and import of cultural property to and from Germany and illegal trade in it. According to the office of Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth (Greens), around 2,000 objects have been returned to EU member states since the regulation came into force. According to the information, there were three items in 2018, more than 1000 in 2019, 38 in 2020, 884 in total in 2021, 10 in 2020 and 15 so far this year. According to a spokesman, the numbers vary so much because 2019 and 2021 numerous coins were returned, which count individually.
The Corinthian bronze helmet, probably illegally excavated in southern Italy, which a man had illegally brought to Bavaria.
(Photo: Angelika Warmuth/dpa)
But even with the current legal regulation, problems remain. According to the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, since 2017 there have only been two judgments against people who have been prosecuted under the Cultural Property Protection Act. “The biggest difficulty is proving the origin of an object,” says Klein. The Roman Empire, for example, was fairly large – and finding out whether the object belongs in what is now Italy, Macedonia or Turkey is the greatest challenge. “Sometimes several countries make a claim.” But Italy is the country he and his team deal with most often, says Klein. There are some inquiries – in addition to other countries – mainly from Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey, Peru or Mexico.
Around 130 countries have joined the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of National Cultural Property. How much a country protects its cultural assets and whether, like Germany, it keeps a list of them varies greatly, says Klein. Criminals also took advantage of these differences, for example by disguising their travel routes via countries that did not attach so much importance to the protection of these goods. The return that has now taken place is one of his outstanding cases, says Klein. Authorities not only in Italy but also in Belgium and the Netherlands were involved. “International surveillance measures” were in place until the man who had smuggled a Corinthian bronze helmet to Munich, among other things, was caught red-handed at the train station. “It was one of the most spectacular, beautiful cases.”