Picture taken on April 9, 2019 shows the White Silver Room (Weißsilberzimmer), one of the rooms in the historic Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) at the Royal Palace in Dresden, eastern Germany. The Green Vault, with one of the biggest collection of baroque treasures in Europe, has been robbed, police said November 25, 2019. At a press conference, the director of Dresden's state art collections Marion Ackermann told reporters that the items stolen included sets of diamonds which were "priceless". Sebastian Kahnert / dpa / AFP.
by Kit Holden
BERLIN (AFP).—
Robbers made off with priceless 18th century jewellery from a state museum in Dresden on Monday, police and museum directors said, in a major art heist that has shocked Germany.
The thieves at dawn broke into the Green Vault at Dresden's Royal Palace -- home to around 4,000 precious objects of ivory, gold, silver and jewels -- after a power cut deactivated the alarm.
The stolen items included brilliant-cut diamonds that belonged to a collection of jewellery of 18th-century Saxony ruler Augustus the Strong.
Museum directors had earlier feared much of three sets of diamond jewellery in the collection were snatched, but the loss turned out to be more limited than thought.
"The criminals didn't manage to take everything," the director of Dresden's state art collections Marion Ackermann told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday evening.
Nevertheless, the stolen items are "of inestimable art-historical and cultural-historical value," she said.
"We cannot put an exact value on them because they are priceless," said Ackermann, adding she was "shocked by the brutality of the break-in."
The thieves launched their brazen raid after having set off a fire at an electrical panel near the museum in the early hours of Monday, deactivating its alarm as well as street lighting, police said.
Despite the power cut, a surveillance camera kept working and filmed two men breaking in.
A video released by police showed one of the men, armed with a torch, using an axe to smash the display case.
"The whole act lasted only a few minutes," said police in a statement.
The suspects then fled in an Audi A6 and remain on the run.
The apparent getaway car was found on fire later elsewhere in the city, said police, adding that the vehicle was being examined for clues.
Bild daily said the heist was "probably the biggest art theft since World War Two".
'World heritage'
Dirk Syndram, director of the Green Vault itself, said the targeted jewellery sets amo...
Maqbool Fida Husain (17 September 1915 - 9 June 2011) commonly known as MF Husain, was an Indian painter. Husain was associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. A dashing, highly eccentric figure who dressed in impeccably tailored suits, he went barefoot and brandished an extra-long paintbrush as a slim cane. He never maintained a studio but he spread his canvases out on the floor of whatever hotel room he happened to be staying in and paying for damages when he checked out. In this image: M.F. Husain, India's most famous artist finishes off a canvas he painted together with Shah Rukh Khan, right, one of India's biggest movie stars, during a fund-raising auction in a central London's auction house, Thursday June 7, 2007. The pair, two of India's biggest cultural brands, painted the piece, that was to be sold in the auction along with other works by both established Indian masters and a newer generation of artists.
