Four men suspected of stealing a hoard of Celtic gold coins from a museum north of Munich last year have been arrested, Bavarian police officials have said.
The men, aged 42 to 50, were found around the northern German town of Schwerin and Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia, and arrested during a police search on Tuesday of 28 residential premises, business premises, a boathouse and vehicles, police said.
One of the men was found with pieces of gold of the same composition as the coins in a plastic bag, according to a police statement. This suggests the suspects melted down at least some of the treasure stolen from the Kelten Römer museum in Manching in November 2022, Bavarian Police Vice President Guido Limmer said today at a press conference.
“Seventy of these pieces have been irretrievably lost,” said Markus Blume, the Bavarian Minister of Arts. “There is still hope of finding the rest.”
The hoard consisted of 483 gold coins in total and is believed to have originated in Bohemia and brought to Manching via trade links. It was discovered by an archaeological team in 1999 and was the largest Celtic gold find of the 20th century, testifying to the importance of Manching, near Ingolstadt, in the first and second centuries BC.
Police said the material value of the gold was around 250,000 euros, but Blume stressed that as a cultural treasure it is irreplaceable. Investigators are still searching for premises in the Schwerin area and are using metal detectors to search large properties with land where the remaining pieces could have been buried, Limmer said.
DNA traces link three of the suspects to eight other burglaries dating back to 2014 in Germany and Austria, involving supermarkets, a casino, petrol stations and an ATM. It’s possible the same team was responsible for many more crimes dating back to the 1990s, officials said. “We are dealing with professional burglars,” said Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian Interior Minister.
In Manching and several of the other crimes, the fiber optic cables were cut so that the alarm systems could not alert the police to burglaries by telephone. One of the arrested suspects is employed as a telecommunications engineer, said Nicolas Kaczynski, the Ingolstadt prosecutor.
The gold had been on display at the Manching Museum since 2006. Blume said his theft raised awareness in Bavaria of the need for increased security to protect museums.
