The art thief Stefan Breitwieser and his amazing story

It is known that museum thieves are driven by a passion for profit and it is she who, in the end, destroys them. Most criminals specializing in works of art are caught precisely when trying to sell their unique and expensive loot. It was unselfishness, not typical for a thief, that helped Stefan Breitwieser to steal priceless masterpieces for many years and not to come to the attention of the police.

Breitwieser committed about 200 daring thefts from European museums, during which 250 works of art and historical artifacts became his prey. Stefan "worked" from 1995 to 2001, using a simple, but, as it turned out, very effective way.

Together with his girlfriend Anna-Catherine Kleinklaus, he came to a famous European museum or gallery in broad daylight and while the girl was watching the guards, he simply hid the thing under his clothes. After that, the couple left the crime scene, boarded the train and returned home.

Stefan Breitwieser was born in 1971 in Alsace, in northeastern France. His father worked for a Swiss commercial company, and his mother was a simple nurse. Despite the fact that no one in the family was connected with art, the Breitweathers loved antique and elegant things, preferring interior and decor items of the XVIII century. Stefan grew up among elegant antique furniture, paintings and rare books, which in many ways shaped him as a person.

When the guy turned 22, his parents' family broke up — his father threw them and their mother out of the house and they were forced to rent a small apartment with cheap standard furniture from IKEA. But the craving for the beautiful, laid down by his parents in childhood, did not leave Stefan, and in order to satisfy his need to admire exquisite things, he began to steal at flea markets, antique shops and museums.

At the same time, Breitwieser met Anna-Catherine Kleinklaus, who shared Stefan's passion for the beautiful. The couple began to live together, and the stolen exhibits together were dragged into their "family nest". The young criminals had their own strict principles — they never entered museums secretly and did not resort to violence, so they believed that their conscience was clear and the values were simply transferred to another place for storage.

Stefan and Anna-Catherine came to the museum closer to lunch, when the number of visitors is small. Young people bought tickets and behaved politely and correctly. Walking through the halls, the couple found out how the guards were placed, where the cameras were directed and how to leave the building as quickly as possible without arousing suspicion. During their activity, museum thieves have acquired invaluable criminal experience and worked clearly and harmoniously.

Later, during police interrogations, Stefan said that he especially liked museum halls with old parquet or plank floors that creaked under the weight of a person. Thanks to this sound, Brightweather and his partner could determine not only the direction from which the unwanted witness was approaching, but also the distance to him.

It also helped that during his student years, Breitwieser worked for a couple of months as a security guard in The Historical Museum of Mulhouse and well studied the representatives of this profession. According to him, most of the security staff absolutely do not pay attention to the protected values, but stare at visitors all day long. Thanks to this feature, the loss of the masterpiece was discovered too late, when the kidnappers were already far from the crime scene.

What made Breitwieser steal objects of great material and historical value, if not profit? Maybe Stefan and his girlfriend were kleptomaniacs? It turns out that the abduction was not an end in itself, but only a way to get the coveted object. The guy passionately wanted to possess great masterpieces and having received them, experienced incredible joy. According to the criminal, contemplating a picture or a statuette, he felt something like a heart attack from delight.

At the same time, Brightweather was extremely picky and did not take everything that "lay badly". The guy was attracted by objects of the XVII-XVIII centuries, which appeared before the industrial Revolution and were made by hand from beginning to end. Statuettes, tapestries, paintings, jewelry, dishes, books - it could be anything, but on one condition that Stefan and his girlfriend liked the thing.

In an interview, the thief told reporters that he had repeatedly had the opportunity to take possession of priceless paintings by Rubens, but did so because, according to him, the artist's paintings were large and religious.

This is how Breitwieser explained his passion for masterpieces to the press. In addition, Stefan puzzled everyone by admitting that when he brought home another prey from the museum, he felt as if he had taken an unfortunate animal from the shelter and surrounded it with care.

Brightwieser treats other thieves with deep contempt. He was outraged by the methods of abductions from museums, which were practiced by lovers of profit. Stefan claims that cutting pictures out of frames is barbarism, and rolling them into a roll is vandalism.

Stefan and Anna-Catherine lived in a small apartment owned by Breitwieser's mother in the small French village of Gerstheim, on the border with Germany. The young people called their room "Ali Baba's cave" and this joke was not far from the truth.

In the center of Stefan and Anna-Catherine's bedroom there was a double bed under an antique canopy of red and gold velour. There were shelves along the walls, on which there were rows of stolen valuables, among which were figurines, silver dishes, watches, books and much more. The couple considered the pearls of their "collection" a luxurious prayer book of the XV century and a golden snuffbox that once belonged to Napoleon. All the walls free of shelves were occupied by Renaissance paintings and engravings, works by Adrian van Ostade, Francois Boucher, Albrecht Durer.

Young people never brought friends home, so all this splendor was available only to their eyes. According to rough estimates, there were $1.4 billion worth of exhibits in the "cave" of noble thieves! But, despite caution, there was no escaping the denouement. It all started with the fact that Kleinklaus was tired of criminal activity and when Breitwieser once again called her "to work", the girl refused.

As a result, Stefan started stealing himself and each time he worked more rudely and audaciously. One day a guy took out a wooden figure of the Madonna he liked from a nearby church, and another time he stole an old horn from the Swiss Richard Wagner Museum, leaving his fingerprints on the stand.

The episode with the bugle was the last in the career of a successful museum thief. Anna-Catherine demanded that Breitwieser return to the museum and erase the prints. Stefan did not dare to go into the museum and his passion went to destroy the evidence. It happened on November 20, 2001, as always in the daytime. While Kleinklaus was bustling around in the museum hall, the owner of the prints wandered under the windows and looked inside. By doing this, he attracted the attention of vigilant passers-by, who reported the suspicious little cashier of the museum, and he recognized the man as a visitor who had come to the museum the day before when the bugle was stolen.

Of course, the police were immediately called, who detained the bewildered thief right outside the museum. Stefan did not deny it and immediately confessed to the theft of the forge, but at the same time said that he had arrived in Switzerland alone and that he had taken the antique object as a keepsake, unaware of its true value. In the confusion caused by the arrest of the thief, Kleinklaus was able to leave the museum unnoticed and go home to France.

The arrest turned out to be a serious blow for Stefan, but he took the news even more painfully that the items of incredible value that he kept in their Anna-Catherine's cozy room, suddenly discovered at the bottom of the Rhone—Rhine Canal. As it turned out, Breitwieser's mother, upon learning of his arrest, took out every single antique from the apartment and tried to get rid of them as quickly as possible. The woman burned the paintings, and threw all the items from the shelves into a dirty canal.

The works of art were discovered by random passers-by who noticed a strange shine in the water near the shore. Through incredible efforts, the police managed to fish out most of the valuables, while some of the items were seriously damaged by water. Paintings, including several world-famous paintings of the Renaissance, alas, were irretrievably lost.

Upon learning about the fate of his collection, Stefan almost went crazy. He fell into a stupor and hardly reacted to the world around him. In order to prevent the guy from taking his own life, the prison administration was forced to assign round-the-clock security to him.

Breitwieser, his mother and Kleinklaus were brought to trial and all three were found guilty. The woman who destroyed the masterpieces of the old masters received three years, of which she served only half behind bars. Stefan managed to convince the court that his mother was a simple poorly educated woman who did not know the true value of the stolen items and considered them junk from "flea markets".

Anna-Catherine was sentenced to 6 months in prison, as she stated that she did not participate in the thefts, and the things stored in the apartment, because of Stefan's passion for art, did not alert her. The lover supported the girlfriend's version, thanks to which she got off with a ridiculous punishment.

The court was also not particularly harsh on Stefan. Since the guy did not make a single euro cent from his thefts, he was pitied and for 200 thefts he received only 4 years. Investigators and judges had conflicting feelings about the thief — on the one hand, he was a criminal, and on the other, his obsession with art was admired. In 2005, Breitwieser was released from prison and returned to his "Ali Baba cave", where he was greeted by bare walls.

The man's life went awry after his imprisonment - Anna-Catherine went to another while he was serving time, the walls of the room, devoid of paintings, caused despair, and they did not take a normal job after serving time. Stefan had to work as a lumberjack, driver and cleaner, but the world of beauty never let him go.In 2006, he even wrote a book, thanks to which he was able to make ends meet and even be a celebrity for a while.

In February 2019, Stefan Breitwieser was arrested again: the police began to monitor the record-breaking thief back in 2016. During a search of his house, Roman coins from the archaeological museum and other items from French and German galleries were found.