On Tuesday, burglars stole 483 Celtic gold coins from a museum in Manching, Upper Bavaria. The act seems to have been meticulously planned – and is reminiscent of spectacular burglaries from the past.
The crime scene: the Celtic-Roman Museum in Manching.
They were the flagship of the Celtic-Roman Museum in Manching: 483 gold coins, weighing a total of 3.7 kilos, with a total value of 1.6 million euros. The treasure was stolen on Tuesday. In the early hours of the morning, burglars broke into the museum near Ingolstadt, broke open two showcases and stole the largest Celtic gold find of the 20th century.
Museum staff notified police at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday. At that time, about eight hours had passed since the burglary. According to the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office (LKA), the burglars pried open an external escape door at the museum at 1:26 am.
Pot of gold worth millions
The LKA fears that the thieves will melt down the coins, which are more than 2,000 years old, a spokesman said. Rupert Gebhard, the chief collections director of the Munich State Archaeological Collection, said on Wednesday that the current commercial value per coin is between 3,000 and 4,000 euros. The total value therefore amounts to around 1.6 million euros. However, the pure gold value only corresponds to around 250,000 euros. “The coins are so well documented that it can be determined at any time that they come from the hoard,” says Gebhard. A sale is therefore extremely difficult.
Gebhard therefore also fears that the coins will be melted down and is shocked. Of the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung” he said, “I could cry.” For him it felt like something had been stolen from him personally. The loss for science is immense. The Bavarian Minister of Art Markus Blume calls the theft “a catastrophe”.
The police formed a 20-strong special commission to investigate the case. The Bavarian officials are also in contact with their colleagues in Berlin and in Dresden. There had also been spectacular burglaries in museums there in recent years. Little is known about the exact course of events, but everything points to a film-ready plan.
Fiber optic cable cut
The theft was carried out “classically”, said a spokesman for the LKA. “As you would imagine in a bad film.” Although the museum and the exhibits are secured several times, no alarm was triggered during the crime.
Because that same night, there was another break-in not far from the museum: Nine minutes before the break-in into the museum, at 1:17 a.m., unknown persons broke into Telekom’s technical room in Manching and cut through several fiber optic cables. As a result, 13,000 private and corporate customers had no internet or telephone for hours. All of Manching was affected – and the sabotage probably paralyzed the alarm system. The Roman-Celtic Museum is also connected to the police by such cables.
It is not yet clear whether the burglary at Telekom is related to that in the museum. But the police think so. “It would be a very big coincidence if it wasn’t related to the robbery,” said a spokesman for the LKA on Tuesday evening “Munich Mercury”. The museum remained closed until Wednesday, as stated on the site communicated. It cannot be reached by phone or email.
The public prosecutor’s office in Ingolstadt is now investigating serious gang theft and property damage. Prosecutor Nicolas Kaczynski assumes that several perpetrators were involved in the burglary. The police have already taken footprints and fingerprints, and they have also tried to secure DNA. So far, there are no images from surveillance cameras. But the police have secured a server from the museum from which they expect surveillance images.
Not the first spectacular theft from a museum
Shortly after the fact became known, the Bavarian police officers contacted their colleagues in Dresden and Berlin. These two cities have also been the scene of major museum break-ins in the past. “There are possible parallels,” said Guido Limmer, Vice President of the LKA Bavaria, on Wednesday.
Criminal clans were involved in both cases in Dresden and Berlin. In 2017, perpetrators stole a gold coin weighing 100 kilograms from the Bode Museum in Berlin. The gold value was 3.75 million euros. The coin has not been found to date. The trail led to the Remmo family clan in Berlin, which was known to the police and came from Lebanon. Almost three years after the theft, several young men from the clan were convicted.
During the trial they were still at liberty, two of them are said to have been present at this time when the diamonds were stolen from the Dresden Green Vault Museum. There, in November 2019, burglars stole 21 pieces of jewelry with thousands of small diamonds and brilliants. The jewelry had an insurance value of 113 million euros. Six young men from the Berlin clan have been on trial for the crime for months.
Whether there are connections to the thefts in Berlin and Dresden is still completely unclear, said Guido Limmer from the LKA Bayern on Wednesday.