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German church seeks return of €1 million in stolen art

German church officials are demanding the return of two pieces of Reformation-era altar art worth an estimated €1 million and stolen out of a village church almost 30 years ago.

Published: 9 April 2008 16:59 CEST

German church seeks return of €1 million in stolen art

The stolen altar art by Lucas Cranach. Photo:DPA

The two altar wings by Lucas Cranach, a contemporary of Martin Luther, turned up in a Bamberg antique shop last year after being stolen 28 years ago from a church in Klieken, a small town near Wittenberg.

Wolfgang Philipps, a senior official at the regional Protestant church in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, told MDR Info news radio on Wednesday the church would negotiate with the antique dealer to get the pictures back.

Philipps said church officials would be willing to compensate the dealer – but declined to say how much. Though valued by police in Bavaria at €1 million, the works were priced in the shop at €100,000.

“I don’t think it the art dealer would be particularly comfortable advertising a picture labeled as ‘stolen from the Klieken Church,’” Philipps said.

The regional daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung quoted Bamberg’s senior prosecutor as saying the statute of limitations had expired on the original theft and that it would be impossible to prove the dealer had concealed stolen goods. The works had been passed down from the antique shop’s previous owner.

German police swoop on gang of foreign dating scammers

The Black Axe gang was involved internationally in “multiple areas of criminal activity”, with a focus in Germany on romance scams and money-laundering, Bavarian police said in a statement.

The dating trick was a “modern form of marriage fraud”, police said.

“Using false identities, the fraudsters for example signalled their intention to marry and in the course of further contact repeatedly demand money under various pretexts,” police said.

The money was subsequently transferred to Black Axe in Nigeria “via financial agents”, authorities said.

In the process, the gang used a “commodity-based money laundering” scheme where products, often with a seeming “charitable purpose” were bought and delivered to Nigeria.

Some 450 cases of romance scamming had been reported in the region of Bavaria in 2023 alone, with the damages rising to 5.3 million euros ($5.7 million), police said.

The suspects, who all held Nigerian citizenship and were aged between 29 and 53, were arrested in nationwide raids on Tuesday.

Law enforcement swooped on 19 properties, including both homes and asylum shelters, police said.

The Black Axe gang had “strict hierarchical structures under leadership in Nigeria” operating different territorial units, police said.

The group had a “significant influence” on politics and public administrations, in particular in Nigeria.

Globally, the gang’s main areas of operation were “human-trafficking, fraud, money-laundering, prostitution and drug-trafficking”.

Black Axe operated under the cover of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, an ostensibly charitable organisation used as “camouflage” for the gang’s structures.

The action against Black Axe was the first of its kind in Germany, police said.

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