On the night between September 12 and 13, 2023, unknown persons broke into the Museum for East Asian Art Cologne (MOK) and stole nine Chinese porcelain objects. Security personnel on site remained uninjured and immediately notified the police. The museum director and further museum staff were able to examine the damage in situ on the same night. All of the stolen pieces (listed in a PDF linked below), dating from the 16th to 19th centuries, were produced in imperial context.

The staff members of the Museum for East Asian Art are shocked and deeply consternated by the burglary. More than a financial and material damage, the museum mourns a loss of intangible nature: the large majority of the stolen objects belonged to MOK’s initial collection holdings, which the museum founders Adolf and Frieda Fischer acquired for the institution in China between 1906 and 1911, documenting the acquisitions in detail in their purchase diary. Among the stolen objects, further, was a Ming-dynasty yellow-glazed dish, which only recently entered the museum collection as a gift donated by the Circle of Friends of the Museum for East Asian Art in 2015. The imperial porcelains, which saw a technical and stylistic heyday during the corresponding eras of their manufacture, were generally produced in series; today, individual pieces are often only rarely seen. The nine pieces stolen from the MOK possess an iconic quality, each one in its own way; their unique collection history is fundamentally coalesced with the museum’s identity. Art- and culture-historically, they are of inestimable value.

The crime incident is preceded this year by a burglary with failed attempt at theft in January, and an attempted burglary in June. Following the January event, security precautions at the MOK were massively heightened: architectonically, with regard to security systems, and in terms of security personnel. The break-in on September 13 was carried out with great effort and violence. The thereupon implemented security measures were decided in close consultation with the museum’s security advisor, local criminal police, and Department for Art and Culture of the City of Cologne. While the investigation is underway, the museum is collaborating with the authorities involved to assess how security measures at the MOK can be further expanded.

The German Federal Criminal Police Office is involved in the current investigation; its case has been registered at Interpol. The international dimension of the investigation corresponds to the cultural significance and financial value of the stolen property. The objects are very well documented and therefore clearly identifiable, and so it is hoped that they will eventually find their way back into the museum collection. The Museum for East Asian Art Cologne, which sees itself under new directorship as of July 2023, seeks to make meaningful and sustainable use of the unfortunate incident, for itself and for the museum world. Addressing the art theft publicly, whether in the form of a designated separate space on the museum website or a specially dedicated area in the exhibition halls, plays an important role in initially dealing with the loss, in order to draw attention to and raise awareness for the targeted, professionalized criminal activities that have become manifest throughout Europe in recent years through museum burglaries in many places. In the long run, the grave significance of systematic art theft as a currently widespread phenomenon must be made more visible: the current burglary at the Museum for East Asian Art serves as a wake-up call, not only in Cologne, but also countrywide and worldwide.

For strategical reasons concerning the investigation, further information on the burglary cannot be published at this time.

For insurance-related reasons, further information on the value of the stolen collection items cannot be provided at this time.

Shao-Lan Hertel

Scientific Director
Museum for East Asian Art Cologne
September 22, 2023

List of stolen objects (pdf)