Three famous paintings were stolen from the Kunsthalle Schirn

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

The Schirn Kunsthalle is Frankfurt's active exhibition space located in the heart of the old city next to the Dom , exhibiting both modern and contemporary art. Exhibitions in recent years included retrospectives of Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo, Alberto Giacometti, Bill Viola, and...

 in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 in 1994. This case of art theft

Art theft

Art theft is usually for the purpose of resale or for ransom . Stolen art is sometimes used by criminals to secure loans.. One must realize that only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. This means that little is known about the scope and characteristics of...

 is unique in that the paintings were recovered by buying them back from the thieves; the people responsible for the theft were never brought to justice.

The theft took place on 28 July 1994 in the Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt. The thieves had themselves locked into the museum at night and then overpowered a security guard. The stolen paintings were Light and Colour and Shade and Darkness, a sequence by J. M. W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...

 and on loan from the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and Nebelschwaden by Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich

Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning...

, on loan from the Kunsthalle Hamburg

Kunsthalle Hamburg

The Hamburger Kunsthalle is an art museum in Hamburg, Germany. The art museum focuses on painting in Hamburg in the 14th century, paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists of the 16th and 17th centuries, French and German paintings of the 19th century, modern, and contemporary art...

. Two of the thieves and a dealer were apprehended quickly, but they refused to reveal the location of the paintings and the identity of the people who had ordered the theft. In 1999 they received sentences of up to 11 years. Police were unable to recover the paintings. Insurance companies paid about 40 million euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s to the paintings' owners.

The central suspect, a major figure of the Yugoslavian Mafia in Frankfurt known as "Stevo", tried to sell the paintings to an underworld figure of Marbella

Marbella

Marbella is a town in Andalusia, Spain. It is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, in the province of Málaga, beneath the La Concha mountain. In 2000 the city had 98,823 inhabitants, in 2004, 116,234, in 2010 approximately 135,000....

. The two could not agree on a price, and undercover agents from the German police then joined the negotiations in 1995. A new deal for purchase of the paintings was set up, but it broke down in the last minute when Stevo's negotiator demanded a doubling of the advance payment. Stevo was arrested, but the evidence was deemed insufficient for prosecution; he was represented by the attorney Edgar Liebrucks who had defended several Mafia figures before. The German prosecutors then all but gave up on the case.

In 1998, the Tate Gallery paid 8 million pounds

Pound sterling

The pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...

 to the insurance company Hiscox

Hiscox

Hiscox Ltd. is a Bermuda-incorporated insurance provider, listed on the London Stock Exchange. An underwriter at Lloyd's of London, the company largely specialises in niche areas of the market, offering property and casualty insurance aimed at companies and high net worth individuals, as well as...

 in return for ownership of the paintings, should they ever resurface. Tate had previously received 24 million pounds from the insurance company as compensation for the loss. Sir Nicholas Serota

Nicholas Serota

Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...

, director of Tate, after having received green light from his supervisory board and justice officials, went ahead with a secret plan to buy back the paintings, known as "Operation Cobalt". An undercover agent from Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...

 contacted Edgar Liebrucks, and in late 1999 the lawyer began to negotiate with the Mafia on behalf of Tate. The two sides agreed on a purchase price of 5 million Deutsche Marks per painting. Stevo again increased the demanded advance payment from 1 million to 2 million Marks, and Liebrucks took out a personal loan to cover this payment. The deal for the first painting went through, Liebrucks received about 320,000 euros as compensation by Tate, and Shade and Darkness returned to London in July 2000. Further negotiations then halted; Stevo apparently had lost interest.

In Fall 2002 two men contacted Liebrucks; they indicated that they had possession of the two remaining paintings and were willing to sell. Apparently, Stevo had stored the paintings with them, and possibly they were now acting on their own behalf, trying to hoodwink Stevo. The Tate Gallery then bought the remaining Turner painting for 2 million euro

Euro

The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...

s; it returned to London around Christmas 2002. The two men took a six month vacation in Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

.

Considering that the Tate Gallery received more from the insurers than it paid to the thieves, it profited to the tune of some 20 million euros. Responding to a BBC documentary on the case, officials of the Tate Gallery insisted that all payments were cleared ahead of times with German and British authorities, and the millions were not paid to criminals as ransom, but for "information that lead to the recovery of the paintings".

The Kunsthalle Hamburg then authorized Liebrucks to recover the Friedrich painting. When the two men returned from their vacation, Liebrucks was able to lower the price from initially 1.5 million euros to 250,000 euros. Confident that he would be recompensated later, the lawyer paid with his own money and returned the painting in August 2003 to the Kunsthalle. The two men left for Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

. When the Kunsthalle refused to pay Liebrucks, he sued in 2005 and prevailed in June 2006, receiving the 250,000 euros plus a fee of 20,000 euros.