Featured Dresden Green Vault Heist

Priceless 18th-century jewellery taken in Dresden Green Vault heist
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...riceless-treasures-dresden-green-vault-museum

Can anyone please explain the scale/significance of this loss? Seems to be one of the more significant heists in recent memory.

 

Apparently this is the showcase that was broken into. Not that I can see much, but the treasure is said to include at least three complete sets of spectacular 18th century diamond jewellery which once belonged to the powerful Electors of Saxony (filthy rich).
The diamonds can only be sold if they are removed from the jewellery and sold separately.

 

With stuff like this: if you don't consider it important, then it isn't. Billions of people have never heard of the green vaults and could care less. There are people who would point to any similar collection as an exemplar of excess. This was a collection amassed by royalty at a time when deprivation and abject poverty were norms for large percentages of any population. It's not difficult to make the argument that the money could have been better spent by rulers who were responsible for the well-being of their subjects.

But this was also the very best stuff being made. The materials can be exotic and one of a kind and the workmanship unsurpassed. Nobody can get stuff like that without trade and commerce, so it speaks to economic expansion and development, cultural exchanges and the spread of ideas. The techniques required to produce these items were state of the art and they advanced technology in general.

Aesthetically, they are magnificent. This is the best work from the finest craftsmen in the latest styles. There are few people who ever rise to such levels of artistic expression. This is the level of achievement that cannot be surpassed. These are the standards to which everyone else aspires.

A jewel is a gem in a setting, and gems are gems. If you are willing to discount the workmanship, what you've got are some rare and decorative stones and a bit of gold or silver. It's the workmanship that elevates them, but there's value in the pebbles, and that's the worry here. These things will disappear forever if someone just wants to strip them for parts.

Maybe that's just tough luck. Lots of stuff is lost forever through natural disasters, wars, misadventure. The world isn't going to change, but a bit of the beauty of which mankind is capable, the beauty that can exist even in the depths of want and deprivation, will be lost.

 

@moreotherstuff
Very nicely explained and written.

 

Confess I had never heard of the Green Vault until researching a cameo of mine & finding the unsigned work has a strong resemblance to an unsigned, but well documented, piece in their collection. They were very gracious & helpful when I requested more info.

Guess I'm looking at this more like crime fiction, but this was no smash & grab. They planned very well & executed that plan successfully to steal something very specific. I believe it was a theft to order & they only undertook it because they already have a buyer for the intact set. It will now disappear to some very private collection.

As for the museum's reaction, it is like a rape. Sure there was some tangible damage & loss, but that's not the point. It was a violation, of their honor, their sense of security, the respect they felt was due. The outrage is not solely about the material loss.

 

SUCH a Violation.....and loss of beauty....to the public and country.....to probably some damn greedy bastardo!!!!! And MOSS is right....probably never to be recovered.....at least not in our lifetimes......

 

The newspaper account mentions that some treasures, including the green diamond, are currently on loan to the Met. Since I was thinking of going there today, checked & see the exhibition starts today:

https://www.metmuseum.org/press/exhibitions/2019/making-marvels

There is no photo of the diamond, but here's some description of items on display:

Among the many exceptional loans will be silver furniture from the Esterházy Treasury; the largest flawless natural green diamond in the world, weighing 41 carats and in its original 18th-century setting; the alchemistic table bell of Emperor Rudolf II; a large wire-drawing bench made for Elector Augustus of Saxony; a rare example of an early equation clock by Jost Bürgi; and a reconstruction of a late 18th-century semi-automaton chess player, known as “The Turk,” that once famously caught Napoleon Bonaparte cheating.

Unlike other members of his department, & unlike the folks at the Green Vault, the curator of the exhibition was not gracious when I contacted him, even though the message was about an item I own that he had expressed an interest in after seeing it in a message sent to one of his colleagues. He did not reply at all.

 

NY Times has some additional details:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/world/europe/germany-museum-green-diamond.html

Here's that sense of violation:

“I don’t have to tell you how shocked we are by the brutality of this break-in,” Marion Ackermann, general director of the consortium of museums

 

Boys will be boys!

 

what I heard on my right ear this morning - where the telly is - the first numbers were 3 to over 10 millions. the police thinks it was probably a group of midgets.

 

Weird, this is the first i have heard about it

 

as the director just explained, it seems that the value is not in the material but that the parures are the only ones worldwide that survived as a whole from their eras.

 

I just saw an interview with a NY art theft expert, saying she thought it was a smash and grab.....and that the stones will be recut and sold off.

 

Told you I was looking at it like fiction. She would know what typically happens, but have to wonder if you would hit the museum when breaking it up, recutting, means losing historical value for collectors as well, some karat weight off the stones. Doubt they can have known just how good or not good the stones are. There are so many diamonds so many places. Why hit there? Sometimes thieves ask for ransom.

 

they have camera footage of two thieves...& she surmised they'd be caught.." sooner rather than later"
It was her impression that the crooks figured out how to exploit a security weakness...& get in and out fast...with a hand full......rather than taking time to fill a backpack !

 

I was thinking about that too, whether they have cased a number of institutions looking for this kind of electrical vulnerability or somehow had specific knowledge of this one before hatching the rest of the plan. Going to strike fear into many institutional hearts.

 

I don't think that a New York "expert" can see what historical value would get lost if the parures were destroyed. understandable somehow. when
Augustus II the Strong gave order in 1725 to build the new rooms or Preziosensäle for all the jewelry - NY was still a muddy Dutch smalltown of no importance culturalwise.

 

Doubt her expertise is limited to NY, which has done rather well for itself since the Dutch left. Her expertise is not history, it is the ways of thieves & her experience says thieves are no respecters of historical value. If the parure is vandalized, it won't be due to her lack of appreciation of its historical significance.

 

BASTARDS !!!! ... Joy.

 

She was asked about a theft of only certain pieces....going to one rich collector or another....she said that was extremely rare..as the very rich can afford to buy known artworks they can actually display..
She didn't seem to think that the thieves cared for the history...only gold and jewels.