The Art Thief

Stéphane Breitwieser grows up in Alsace steeped in antiques, family lore about the painter Robert Breitwieser, and indulgent grandparents who encourage his fascination with objects. Anxious and isolated, he finds solace in museums and the tactile traces of handmade things. Early rationalizations—pocketing a lead fragment from a Roman coffin, then later shoplifting—coincide with family rupture when his father leaves, deepening Stéphane’s attachment to objects as steadfast companions. A brief stint as a museum guard teaches him how displays are assembled and supervised; after quitting, he steals a Merovingian belt buckle, disguising the loss. His credo forms: he is not a thief but an “art liberator.”

In 1991 he meets Anne‑Catherine Kleinklaus. Their bond fuses love and taste into a sealed world of whispered jokes and mutual attunement before paintings. In 1994, at Thann, a flintlock pistol ignites resentment of his absent collector father; when Anne‑Catherine murmurs “Go ahead,” their criminal partnership is born. Panic gives way to euphoria when weeks pass without consequence. By winter 1995, they drop a crossbow out a castle window and retrieve it unseen, then quickly escalate.

March 1995 brings their first painting: a small Dietrich portrait at Gruyères Castle. Their methods are minimalist—Swiss Army knife, paper bags, composure—and tailored to vulnerabilities: lunch‑hour guard gaps, misaligned cases, unlabeled cameras. A month later they lift a Saint Jerome icon in Solothurn and begin tracking press reports, finding no pattern recognized by police. Weekends become their operating rhythm; they improvise tools (even a nail clipper), sometimes attempt risky solo lifts, and build a scrapbook of clippings as the tally climbs into double digits.

Stéphane’s scholarship intensifies alongside the spree. He spends weekdays in libraries, compiles dossiers with dimensions, provenance, and sketches, and builds an art library of hundreds of volumes. After stealing Georg Petel’s ivory Adam and Eve from Antwerp’s Rubens House in February 1997—having unscrewed a plexiglass case during a guard rotation—he immerses himself in Petel’s life, cementing a self‑image as connoisseur‑thief. He and Anne‑Catherine refine their teamwork: she watches doorways, sets size limits, and reads rooms; he looks ordinary, moves slowly, and treats any risk to a work as a stop sign.

Audacity grows. In September 1995, at the University of Basel museum, he notices an unwatched monitoring booth, angles his back to the camera, and slides a Willem van Mieris out of its frame. On his 24th birthday in October, amid a Sotheby’s presale at Baden‑Baden’s New Castle, he slips Lucas Cranach the Younger’s portrait of Sibylle of Cleves into an auction catalog and walks out past suited guards. At TEFAF Maastricht, they exploit a security scrum to remove a Jan van Kessel from a dealer’s booth. He codifies techniques: slicing silicone seams to flex vitrines, working screws over multiple visits, and, later, stealing during guided tours while chatting up staff.

Investigators begin to notice. Swiss inspector Alexandre Von der Mühll links daylight thefts marked by precision and Flemish leanings; in France, OCBC’s Bernard Darties quietly compiles a memo tying fourteen cases. Still, the couple stays ahead by hopscotching countries and media. They even conquer a “screw nemesis” by removing thirty screws to free a Hannong platter near Geneva. In the Loire, they execute a seemingly impossible theft of Corneille de Lyon’s Madeleine at Blois by exploiting a guard huddle and a velcro‑mounted inner frame; earlier that day they had raided Chambord. Stéphane taunts police by leaving frames as “calling cards,” confident authorities will hunt for fences or ransom that do not exist, because he refuses to sell.

As their attic fills with hundreds of pieces—Old Masters floor to ceiling, ivories on the nightstand—Stéphane befriends framer Christian Meichler, learning to mount works and commissioning costly frames under false pretenses. A window display of a stolen icon jolts him into greater caution. At home, he and Anne‑Catherine cultivate secrecy; even his mother, Mireille Stengel, averts her eyes. A Christmas 1995 video captures Stéphane vowing to keep stealing art worth millions while she turns up the music.

Cracks appear. Court‑mandated evaluations later describe Stéphane’s narcissistic and antisocial traits: he knows right from wrong, believes beauty entitles him, and minimizes harm. Anne‑Catherine, assessed as fragile and suggestible, grows weary. After a 1997 Brussels raid on Augsburg silver—pulled off across three visits by popping a lock cylinder and dining in the museum café to defuse suspicion—he is arrested in Lucerne for taking a van Aelst from a gallery near the police station. With Mireille’s help, both receive suspended sentences and a Swiss ban. Shaken, Anne‑Catherine wants an exit; unbeknownst to Stéphane, she has had a secret abortion facilitated by Mireille. They reconcile on strict terms—gloves, fewer risks, no Switzerland—but he resumes stealing and ultimately assaults her when he discovers the abortion. She leaves.

They later reunite with boundaries: she will not participate. Stéphane returns to solo thefts, now including churches—cherubs, a Christ bust, a Magdalene bas‑relief—and, once his Swiss ban expires, he lands a high‑paying waiter job across the border. The restraint collapses. He sets a one‑day record at a museum, hauls a tapestry out of Gruyères, and, using Anne‑Catherine’s car without consent, unbolts a 150‑pound sixteenth‑century Virgin from a chapel. The attic devolves from curated sanctuary into hoard; careless handling warps panels he “repairs” with Super Glue and shatters a ceramic platter.

The turning point arrives with a historic bugle stolen from Lucerne’s Richard Wagner Museum. He broke Anne‑Catherine’s two rules—no Switzerland, wear gloves—so she insists on wiping his prints. When they return, police handcuff Stéphane outside while she goes unnoticed. Inspector Roland Meier bluffs about evidence; Stéphane recognizes the ploy and, classified high‑security, is denied phone calls that might have prompted an anonymous return. Meier secures a warrant to search Mireille’s house. The attic—once crammed with works—is empty.

Meier then produces photographs of items recovered from the Rhône‑Rhine Canal: silver, ivories, a copper painting, the first flintlock pistol. Piece by piece, Stéphane admits 107 thefts. Transferred near Geneva, he meets Von der Mühll, who builds rapport and elicits extensive confessions spanning seven countries. When asked about the missing paintings, Stéphane says he last saw sixty‑nine Renaissance oils in the attic, and is stunned to learn the room was cleared. Under immunity, Mireille denies knowledge in court, then privately whispers, “Don’t mention the paintings.”

The truth emerges in fragments. After the Wagner arrest, Anne‑Catherine informed Mireille, who erupted and emptied the attic. She dumped bags of silver, ivories, and coppers into the canal; abandoned a tapestry in a ditch and a heavy Virgin at a church; and left copper paintings in a forest where a woodsman used them to patch a henhouse before they were recovered. Ten silver items surface in the pond of her partner, painter Jean‑Pierre Fritsch. Finally, she loaded more than sixty oil paintings on wood into a car, drove to the forest, and burned them, later telling police she meant to punish her son.

In Swiss court in 2003, Stéphane’s lawyer pushes a “borrowing” defense; friends and his father portray him as a passionate, nonviolent collector. Prosecutors document widespread harm and missing works; a museum director weeps over a Napoleon‑commissioned tobacco box. He receives four years for simple theft. Extradited to France in 2004, he tries to shield Anne‑Catherine by retracting admissions. At Strasbourg in 2005, she reveals she has a nineteen‑month‑old son; she largely avoids punishment, and Mireille is convicted of handling stolen goods and destroying public property but serves little time. Stéphane gets two years, studies and works in custody, reconciles with his mother, and then violates probation by contacting Anne‑Catherine, earning fifteen days back in jail.

Post‑release, he seeks redemption through a new partner, Stéphanie Mangin, and a memoir he hopes will launch an art‑security career. An impulsive shoplifting at Orly in 2006 collapses those plans; his father withdraws, framer Christian Meichler ends their friendship, and public ridicule follows. In 2009 he relapses, stealing a Brueghel the Younger; Stéphanie photographs it and alerts police, and he is arrested.

By 2015 he is off probation, broke, and supported by Mireille. He avoids museums, pores over auction catalogs for the roughly eighty missing pieces, and resists contacting Anne‑Catherine. In 2016 he resumes thefts for cash—small objects fenced online—until a cautious buyer triggers surveillance and a 2019 arrest. Shortly before, he revisits the Rubens House, sees the recovered Adam and Eve under tight security, and weeps in the courtyard. On his way out, he pockets a gift‑shop booklet—a small act that starkly measures what remains of a once grand, ruinous compulsion.