Museums are a prison for art. When a masterpiece is right in front of you—one that takes your breath away and makes tears well up in your eyes—what’s more natural than wanting to admire it endlessly, tracing with your fingers the precise movements of the engraver or the painter’s brush? Of course, it’s all easier to do in silence and solitude, settled into your favorite chair.
As a boy, Stefan Brightwiser often went to museums, wandering alone there for an entire day—it’s hard to imagine a nicer hobby for a teenager. By the early 2000s, Stefan Brightwiser was completely happy: he had found his calling, love, and with tenderness remembered the day when Anna-Katrin said yes to his hesitant question. “Take him,” she simply said, and Brightwiser committed his first museum theft—taking an exhibit he had been eagerly drawn to right out of the display case.
By 2002, Stefan Brightwiser had gained what he never wanted: loud, European fame. The press endlessly counted the enormous damage the audacious thief had done to museums. The astonishing method of stealing, the long list of masterpieces taken, the heartbreaking denouement, and the subsequent global rethink of museum security requirements unmistakably proved that Stefan Brightwiser’s name—the serial thief who never used violence and never sold a single stolen item—was now destined to top any ratings of the loudest art crimes.