经济学人下载:易北河上的瞒天过海--德累斯顿绿穹珍宝馆被盗(1)

Books & arts
来源于《图书与艺术》版块

Dresden’s Green Vault
德累斯顿绿穹珍宝馆

Ocean’s Eight on the Elbe
易北河上的瞒天过海

BERLIN
柏林

Thieves make off with bejewelled treasures from a storied collection
小偷偷走了一个有传奇色彩的收藏品中的珠宝

In the 18th century Augustus the Strong competed with Louis XIV, France’s “Sun King”, to assemble Europe’s most extravagant jewellery collection. The elector of Saxony, who ruled over Poland and Lithuania, probably triumphed in the end: he gathered multiple sets of exquisite artefacts, made of diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, a haul that was supplemented by his successors. The collection represents “a kind of world heritage”, reckons Dirk Syndram, director of the Green Vault treasury in Dresden, a baroque city on the Elbe, which houses all the gems.
18世纪，奥古斯都与法国的“太阳王”路易十四竞争，收集欧洲最奢华的珠宝。统治着波兰和立陶宛的萨克森选帝者很可能在最后取得了胜利：他收集了多套精美的手工制品，由钻石、红宝石、蓝宝石和祖母绿制成。德累斯顿是易北河上一座巴洛克风格的城市，所有的宝石都收藏在这里。

Or, it did until recently. In a swift predawn raid on November 25th at least two (presumably diminutive) thieves entered the Green Vault’s jewel room through a small hole they had made in the iron grille of a ground-floor window. They had apparently disabled the museum’s alarm system by setting fire to a nearby electrical-distribution hub. Inside, they smashed a glass showcase with an axe and grabbed roughly 100 pieces from three of the jewellery sets, including several diamond brooches, a string of pearls, a duelling sword with a diamond- encrusted hilt and the Star of the Polish White Eagle Order.
或者说，曾经是，现在不是。在11月25日拂晓前的一次突然袭击中，至少有两名(可能是身材矮小的)窃贼通过他们在一楼窗户的铁格栅上凿出的一个小洞进入了绿穹珍宝馆的珠宝室。他们在附近的一个配电中心放火，明显是为了使博物馆的警报系统失灵。在里面，他们用斧头砸碎了一个玻璃橱窗，从三套珠宝中抢了大约100件，包括几枚钻石胸针、一串珍珠、一把镶有钻石柄的决斗剑和波兰白鹰勋章。

Security guards alerted the police, but by the time they arrived, the thieves had fled; the presumed getaway car was found burned out in a nearby underground garage. One of the collection’s greatest treasures, the 41-carat Dresden Green Diamond, is safely on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for an exhibition about the splendour of European courts. But the missing pieces could be worth many millions of euros. “We are devastated to hear of this theft,” said Max Hollein, the Met’s director.
保安人员通知了警察，但当他们到达时，小偷已经逃走了。人们在附近的一个地下车库发现了一辆被烧毁的汽车。这枚41克拉的德累斯顿绿钻是藏品中最珍贵的珍宝之一，它被安全地借给了纽约大都会艺术博物馆，用于一场关于欧洲宫廷辉煌的展览。但丢失的碎片可能价值数百万欧元。“听到这个消息我们都很震惊，”大都会博物馆馆长马克斯·霍林说。