Sometime between March 28th and 31st, 1943, the St. Jakob branch church in Unterschondorf am Ammersee was hit by thieves. They stole the important Romanesque crucifix that hung on the north side of the nave. The robbers had an easy time. The cross was attached to simple hooks without any further security. In addition, it was not customary to lock the churches during the war years. You could enter it at any time, even at night. The theft has not yet been solved; the work of art has now been missing for almost 81 years. In the local files of the State Office for Monument Preservation you can only read that residents heard a car driving particularly fast through the town at night – that was rather unusual in 1943.
Hardly anyone remembers the art theft today. Of course, he has not been forgotten by emeritus zoology professor Rudolf Alexander Steinbrecht, who came across his father’s old glass negatives while cleaning up at home. He was once based in Dießen as a photographer, and he documented the art treasures from the area as early as the 1920s. Among other things, in 1925 he captured the Romanesque cross in the branch church in Unterschondorf. The photography gave Steinbrecht the motivation to go on a search for clues and perhaps find out what happened to this Romanesque cross.
The state of Bavaria is by no means poor in Romanesque crucifixes. Connoisseurs like Steinbrecht refer, for example, to the Great God of Altenstadt, the Wessobrunn crucifix and the crucifixes of Engelschalking, Schaftlach and Schlehdorf. And even in St. Jakob there is another Romanesque crucifix hanging. But overall their number is very small compared to the works of art from later times. “The loss of the Unterschondorf crucifix is all the more painful,” says Steinbrecht.
This High Romanesque carving was recognized in the first collection of art monuments in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1895 and dated to the first half of the 13th century. It has stylistic elements characteristic of that time: the head is crowned as an expression of triumph over death. The crown is made from one piece with the head and decorated with lily petals at the top. The arms are stretched out almost horizontally and the feet are next to each other. A rarity is the human head on which these stand. According to Steinbrecht, he is interpreted as Adam, the personified original sin of mankind. The face shows features of quiet sadness, but Steinbrecht believes it is possible that the painting on the carving was changed at a later time.
As Steinbrecht discovered, years before the robbery, two men were seen working on the cross on an easel and when questioned answered that they had to measure the cross. But no suspicions were raised at the time. One from the art printing company Jos. The image of the crucifix, which was quickly obtained by C. Huber in Dießen, was distributed to art shops and antique dealers by the Augsburg criminal investigation office, but the work of art remained missing.
Steinbrecht says it cannot be ruled out that the cross burned during the bombing nights of the last years of the war. But if it survives this time, “sooner or later it will reappear on the art market.” So that the provenance from Unterschondorf can be clearly identified in this case, Steinbrecht has now reported the loss to the London “International Art Loss Register”. This global database has already found many missing works of art. Even if there is no legal right to repatriation, reacquisition can be attempted through negotiations, says Steinbrecht. “The only important thing is that the loss is not forgotten.”