Arseen Goedertier
Arseen Goedertier (born December 23, 1876 in Lede ; † November 25, 1934 ) was probably an art thief and blackmailer. He is linked to one of the most spectacular art thefts in Belgium .
Life
Arseen Goedertier was one of twelve children of the married couple Maria and Emile Goedertier. He had health problems in his youth and therefore had to leave school early. Perhaps the lack of money in his family also played a role after Goedertier's father had given up a well-paid church office for reasons of conviction. Arseen Goedertier moved to St. Niklaas in 1913 and married Julienne Minne in 1915, who came from Paris . Goedertier was interested in science. Among other things, he designed an aircraft that he offered to the owner of the Breguet aircraft factory . The draft was rejected because the device was airworthy but slow. Goedertier was active as a businessman and stockbroker and at times taught at a business school. He was also a member of the parish council of St. Baaf Cathedral in Ghent .
At a political meeting, which was probably held in Dendermonde , he apparently suffered a heart attack, from which he died a little later.
Theft
On the night of April 10-11, 1934, two altar panels with paintings by Hubert and Jan van Eyck were stolen from the Sint-Baafs Cathedral in Ghent, the Just Judges and John the Baptist . The oak panel with the Just Judges was 149 cm high and 55 cm wide.
A large ransom was requested in a letter from the Bishop of Ghent for the works of art. In order to prove that he was in possession of both tablets, the kidnapper deposited the less valuable painting of John the Baptist in the luggage storage of Brussels North Station. For the Just Judges on the other board, however, he demanded a ransom of one million Belgian francs so high that the diocese refused to pay. Instead, the bishop tried to reduce the demand to 225,000 francs, whereupon a letter threatened that the picture could be destroyed. The case is thus one of the earliest known examples of artnapping (although this term was not yet common at the time).
Soon after the theft, Scotland Yard stepped in . On May 1, 1934, the first ransom note was received by the Bishop of Ghent, Monsignor Coppieters . A million francs was demanded for the return of both tablets, the letter was signed with "DUA". To prove that both tablets were in the power of the letter writer, the less valuable picture from the outside of the altar should be given to the bishop. He was supposed to announce his consent in a newspaper advertisement, which then happened. Thereupon Coppieters received a luggage storage ticket from the Brussels North Railway Station and was able to have John the Baptist secured. The picture was wrapped in black oilcloth and brown paper. Another correspondence followed in which the church refused to pay the large ransom on the instructions of the authorities. Then Pastor Meulepas in Antwerp received the fourth ransom note . On July 14, 1934, Meulepas handed a taxi driver a parcel containing 25,000 francs and a letter. His caretaker could see someone wearing glasses in the departing taxi. Further letters, the content of which was not known to the public, followed, until on October 1, 1934, the thirteenth of the fourteen letters received was again received by Bishop Coppieters.
Since 1945 there has been a copy of the original painting on the altar in Ghent. There are suspicions that the missing plaque is hidden in the cathedral. The art theft was thematized in 1956 by Albert Camus in his novella The Case .
After Goedertier's death, copies of the ransom letters were found in his office by the lawyer Georges De Vos. De Vos passed the documents on to the local court, which decided to keep the case secret. Arseen Goedertier suddenly collapsed at a meeting and was carried into his apartment. On his deathbed he had still confessed to having committed the Ghent art theft or to knowing where the painting was. In the last moments of his life he tried to reveal the hiding place of the altar panel, but all he could say was that the picture was in a place accessible to everyone. Years of searches of all structures in which Goedertier could have stayed brought no results. Even a German monument commission that looked for the picture during World War II was unsuccessful.
Investigations after Goedertier's death
Shortly after Goedertier's death, his youngest brother Valère arrived, who had wanted to meet with him in Dendermonde and had apparently already wanted to research the thief of the Van Eyck pictures while his brother was alive, but Arseen Goedertier had refused him. Goedertier's widow always asserted that her husband, who was night blind due to an eye disorder, had nothing to do with the art theft, and his younger brother Valère was of the opinion that he knew where the picture was kept and perhaps also the perpetrator was not involved in the theft. However, during the search of Arseen Goedertier's apartment, carbon copies of the thirteen ransom letters that had been sent and one that had not yet been sent were found. Goedertier had rented the typewriter under the code name Arseen van Damme - the initials in Latin capital letters form an anagram of the letters DUA with which the letters were signed. The typewriter was not thoroughly examined at the time, but was eventually thrown away.
Assuming that Arseen Goedertier did not carry out the theft alone, two people were suspected of being accomplices: Achille de Swaef, Goedertier's cousin, and Oscar François Joseph Lievens, who was once married to his sister Julie de Swaef. De Swaef died five days after Arseen Goedertier, Lievens in March 1935. Valère Goedertier only found out shortly before Lievens death that his relatives were suspected of theft. The case occupied him until his death. In the summer of 1942, in an interview lasting several hours, he recorded his memories and his view of what had happened:
Valère Goedertier, like his brother, moved to St. Niklaas in 1913. At that time the two brothers had already lost many siblings to illness. The day after the art theft, Arseen Goedertier told his brother that the stolen picture was probably still in the cathedral and that he would probably find it himself within eight days. When Valère Goedertier offered his help, he declined. According to Valère Goedertier's memory, shortly before the theft, an exchange agent who lived near the church of St. Niklaas went bankrupt. Valère Goedertier suspected this bankruptcy just like the priesthood.
Valère Goedertier voiced another suspicion: after the art theft, his apartment had been searched by two officers named Luysterborgh and Aerens, who had said they were investigating only unofficially. Arseen Goedertier had already mistaken this Aerens for one of the perpetrators, because a glove had been found at the scene of the crime in the cathedral, like the one Aerens used to wear on one of his hands that were unusable.
In Valère Goedertier's opinion, Arseen Goedertier did not steal the picture himself, but identified the perpetrators and possibly also hidden the recovered picture.
According to his brother, Arseen Goedertier had already cleared up art thefts in churches in the past, for example in the church in Wetteren and in the Michaelskirche.
Whether the ransom letters were written by Arseen Goedertier remained a point of contention between Valère and Julienne Goedertier, who, however, were not able to inspect the documents immediately after Arseen's death, but only saw parts of copies. While Valère assumed that Arseen had written the letters, the stockbroker's widow dwelt on the many spelling errors that were not typical of her husband's spelling. It was only during the 1942 interview that Valère Goedertier was able to read the ransom letters. The passage that it was not possible to use the picture “zonder de publieke aandacht op de trekken” was particularly interesting. Valère Goedertier concluded from these words that the board was in a publicly accessible place. His assumption that the picture was at “Het Pand” in Ghent had already been proven wrong.
Valère Goedertier was also unable to clarify the connection to the other possibly involved: Pastor Meulepas, who had received one of the letters, lived in an area where the Goedertiers' eldest brother had once lived. However, this Edmond Goedertier had already died in 1913, so that the spatial relationship to the family was actually invalid. Achille de Swaef was viewed by Arseen Goedertier as extremely unreliable and therefore, in Valère Goedertier's opinion, would never have been used by him for a risky task.
The search for the picture has not yielded any result until today. In 1990 a bridge was demolished because it was assumed that the plaque could have been walled into it. The war memorial in Melle was also dismantled, the paneling behind the altar of the Church of St. Gertrude in Wetteren was removed, a dowser was hired, but the Just Judges remained missing.
A parallel to the real event seems to be evident in the plot of the novel The Hollow Needle or the Competitors of Arsène Lupine by Maurice Leblanc . There, too, it is about an art theft in a church. A secret code is used in the novel, like the one Arseen Goedertier once used in a note found in his desk. Later, in a Ghent antiquarian bookshop, a book was discovered entitled The Just Judges , the pages of which were blank, but which had a note in the same code on the last page. It read: “Under the cathedral - short day - meeting point for bird and cow”.
literature
- Jos Cels, Meneer Arseen en de Rechtvaardige Rechters. Geschiedenis van de opzienbarende kunstroof in de Sint-Baafskathedraal te Gent , Brussels 1963
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Summary of the events on ask1.org ( Memento of the original from October 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Presentation of the case on catholicculture.org
- ↑ a b Inflamed love , in: Der Spiegel 29, 1964
- ^ Report on the art theft on meyer-riegger.de
- ↑ So the representation in the mirror , after the summary of the events on ask1.org Goedertier is said to have spoken of his "study" - perhaps more of a studio -, a key and a cupboard.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Goedertier, Arseen |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Goedertier, Arsène |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian art thief and blackmailer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 23, 1876 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lede |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 25, 1934 |