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Mother of accused French art thief says she smashed stolen objects
STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The mother of an accused French art thief told a court Thursday how she used a hammer to destroy works of art and force them into trashbags upon learning of her son's arrest.
Mireille Breitwieser testified on the opening day of the trial of her son, Stephane Breitwieser, 33, who is charged with stealing art from museums across Europe during a seven-year rampage that stunned the art world.
His most valuable haul was Lucas Cranach the Elder's Sybille, Princess of Cleves, valued at the equivalent of about $10 million Cdn and taken from a museum in Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1995, experts said.
The Art Loss Register in Britain said the masterpiece is among those believed destroyed.
Prosecutors said upon learning of her son's arrest, she rushed into his bedroom and chopped up paintings. She allegedly forced treasures down the waste-disposal and threw others into the Rhine-Rhone canal near the Swiss border. She also hid some religious works in a chapel, officials said.
"I blew a fuse," Mireille Breitwieser, who also faces charges, told the court Thursday.
"I put everything into trash bags, the metalwork, the ancient porcelains, the ivories, paintings...I hit them with a hammer to push them down."
She said she believed her son had bought the works at flea markets.
"She is naive and knows nothing of the value of things," Breitwieser said of his mother.
She faces charges of concealment and destruction of stolen goods, and risks five years in prison if convicted by the court in Strasbourg. Anne-Catherine Kleinklauss, the son's ex-girlfriend who acted as a lookout, is accused of receiving stolen items.
Breitwieser, a former waiter who once told a Swiss court his desire to acquire art "became a compulsion," said he had been visiting museums alone since he was 10 and had a passion for works from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
Of his mother, he said: "She threw my life into the trash can."
Defence lawyer Joseph Moser said Stephane Breitwieser was motivated solely by a love of art.
"This is truly passion in its purest form," he said.
"There was no desire for cupidity, no desire for lucre," Moser said outside the courtroom.
"He never resold, or sought to resell, a work of art."
Prosecutors in France have estimated the value of the haul at up to the equivalent of $1.6 billion. But others have offered significantly lower estimates and Swiss authorities have also said it is unclear how much the stolen art was worth.
Bernard Dastries, an official from a French government office for combatting trafficking in cultural relics, said Thursday the haul was worth an estimated $20 million.
Breitwieser, from a well-to-do family in the eastern French region Alsace, could face up to three years in jail for allegedly stealing 23 works in France, plus two in Denmark and one in Austria.
Officials said he stole paintings, tapestries, silver and ivory pieces, and books from 140 museums in Europe starting in 1995. Swiss police arrested him in November 2001 when he returned to a museum to wipe away his fingerprints after stealing a hunting horn.
In the Swiss court, Breitwieser confessed to stealing 239 paintings and museum works, including thefts in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. His hauls included works by Flemish artist Peter Bruegel and French painters Francois Boucher and Antoine Watteau.
Swiss authorities sentenced him to four years in prison and banned him from the country for 15 years. They extradited him to France in July 2004.
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