An ax and a skateboard for a heist in solid gold at the Bode-Museum in Berlin
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On the CCTV images of the S-Bahn, Berlin’s famous red and yellow metro, three hooded scoundrels, all dressed in black, walk headlong on the deserted platform of the Hackescher-Markt station. They are about to commit a spectacular heist at the Bode-Museum. In the dark night, the imposing monument surmounted by a dome seems to cut through the waves of the Spree, at the bow of Museum Island. Just behind the building, perched on pillars several meters high, passes the skytrain. But, at 3 o’clock in the morning, all is silence.
Of course, thieves do not use the Monbijou bridge, as the public does during the day. They pass through the service window, that of the guards’ locker room, which overlooks the railway. One of them, hired a month earlier, Denis W., their interior accomplice, took charge of the scouting. One big ladder and you’re done – well, almost. The rest is René Allonge, the main commissioner in charge of art crimes, who tells it to the Worldin the premises of the Berlin police, on the Tempelhofer Damm. “Museum security called the police station around 4 a.m. One of the guards wanted to reactivate the alarm system after his rounds and realized that it was not working. This is how he discovered the disappearance…” At 7 a.m., this Monday, March 27, 2017, his brigade takes over, the technicians are there, the press comes, the atmosphere is electric.
Because a real attraction of the cabinet of medals, the Munzkabinettusually a cozy place for scholars and numismatic enthusiasts, has disappeared: a 100-kilo gold coin, adorned with the profile of the Queen of England on one side and a large maple leaf on the other, hence its small name, Big Maple Leaf. The Royal Canadian Mint, the Mint, created it in 2007 and made it a star. Its nominal value, written out in full, is one million dollars, its real value 3.75 million euros. It is made of 99.999% pure gold. “Why did we make the purest and largest gold coin in the world? Because we can”proclaims the Mint, which put five copies on sale, after it entered the Guinness World Records.
Lent by its owner
How did it arrive at the Bode-Museum, renowned for housing one of the finest collections of ancient sculptures in the world? The director of the cabinet of medals, Bernhard Weisser, more enthusiastic about the antique coins circulating before Jesus Christ than about this newly rich object, nevertheless followed its journey, symbolic of the upheavals of capitalism. A private investor buys the coin at the time of the global financial crisis of 2008 – the safe haven gold – then resells it at auction, after going bankrupt. It was then acquired by a Spanish gold merchant, who sold it to Boris Fuchsmann, a German national of Ukrainian origin. This successful businessman in the media sector lends it to the museum, where it arrives on 1er December 2010, after an exhibition in Vienna.
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