Tensions have arisen between Romania and the Netherlands after the theft of four objects thought to be worth almost €6 million from a Dutch museum.
At around 3.45am local time on Saturday morning, thieves blew up a side door of the Drents Museum in Assen and stole three golden armbands and the golden helmet of Coțofenești—“priceless” treasures from the lost Dacian civilisation which date to around 450BC.
The objects had been part of a collection of 670 pieces on loan from the Romanian National History Museum in Bucharest, where the shock has had political repercussions.
Dutch television channel RTV Drenthe reported threats of legal action from the Romanian museum and the Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp announced on Monday that he had spoken to his Romanian counterpart Emil Hurezeanu in Brussels and pledged to do all he could to retrieve “extraordinary works of art from a very special period”.
According to Dutch police, thieves used explosives to blast their way into the museum, smashed a case containing the objects, and fled in a stolen Volkswagen Golf car. Its burnt-out shell was discovered shortly after the heist and police found the hammer they used in a ditch outside the museum on Monday afternoon.
The importance of the golden helmet, which weighs a kilo and is thought to be worth some €80,000 in gold value alone, to Romania has been likened to the value ascribed to Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in the Netherlands. The object was, according to the archaeological expert Hendrik Spiering, discovered by playing children after a small landslide and was at first used as a sheep’s watering trough, before its significance was realised.
The art and antique specialist Bianca Frölich, from Frölich Kunst & Antiek, told a Dutch television show that the helmet’s large eyes could signify spiritual insight or keeping evil away. “For me, this feels like a kind of cultural terrorism that has happened,” she said of the theft. “The Dacians didn’t leave any written texts behind—only the Greeks and the Romans wrote about them. The only thing we know about this civilisation are these objects.”
“We are deeply shocked by this event,” said the Drents Museum in a statement. “We feel intensely for our colleagues at the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest, who loaned the stolen artworks. We hope they will soon be returned in their original state, given their great cultural and emotional value to many people.”
Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, the director of the National History Museum of Romania, told Dutch broadcaster NOS that he hoped for the return of the works undamaged. “They are so important that it is impossible to sell them,” he said.
A Dutch businessman in Bucharest has reportedly offered €100,000 for a tip that leads to the objects’ return.
