Massive Plundering of Early Christian Art Exposed
Goldfinger
Massive Plundering of Early Christian Art Exposed
By JUDITH MILLER and STEPHEN KINZER
New York Times 1/4/98
KALOGREA, Cyprus -- Nestled among rugged hills overlooking the sea near
this ancient village, the Monastery of Antiphonitis once held some of
the world's finest Orthodox frescoes and icons. But today the monastery
is deserted, and there is no trace of the masterpieces that once graced
its walls.
To the northeast, at the Church of the Virgin of Kanakaria in the
village of Lythrangomi, the scene is even more stark. Almost every
window has been broken, and as a result rain and dust have poured into a
building that once possessed some of the most important and beautiful
works of early Christian art. Pigeons and rodents now make their homes
where the faithful worshiped for centuries amid works of mystic beauty.
These scenes reflect what European police investigators now say is one
of the most systematic art-looting operations since the Nazis plundered
the countries they occupied during World War II. The looting of Greek
Orthodox churches in northern Cyprus, since the region was placed under
Turkish military occupation in 1974, has brought hundreds of magnificent
artworks onto the international art market and, in recent months,
resulted in a series of spectacular raids by the police in Germany.
For years, the whereabouts of many stolen artifacts from northern Cyprus
has been a subject of rumor and speculation. The answer to some of these
mysteries may now be found in a locked room behind the antique statuary
and Renaissance paintings that fill the salons of the Bayerischer
Landesmuseum in Munich.
That room holds one of the world's most impressive collections of stolen
Greek Orthodox icons. Some are less than a foot square, while others are
nearly life-size images of Jesus, the apostles, saints and other holy
figures. All reflect the spiritual beauty that has made such pieces
treasured not only by the Orthodox clergy and faithful, but also by art
collectors around the world.
This collection was recovered in October by the Bavarian police in the
course of arresting Aydin Dikman, a 60-year-old Turkish citizen who has
lived in Germany since 1961. German authorities say he is one of
Europe's most prolific art thieves. The trove includes more than 140
icons, as well as 10 fragments of Byzantine frescoes depicting Jesus'
disciples, carved wooden portals, silver crosses, prayer books and 250
other treasures from Orthodox churches on Cyprus.
The Munich collection, which the German police showed to a reporter, is
part of a hoard of art treasures that officers found when they closed in
on Dikman, who is accused of systematically plundering the churches'
heritage. Appraisers have told the police that the fresco fragments
alone would bring several million dollars each on the open market. The
icon collection has been appraised at $3 million.
"This is the most spectacular case we have seen in Germany or perhaps
all of Europe in many years," said Peter Kitschler, chief of the
art-theft unit of the Bavarian police.
The Conquered Island: Disputes Wrapped in Ancient Hatreds
Although Dikman, who is in prison, refused to be interviewed by
reporters for The New York Times who conducted a monthlong investigation
of the Cypriot art thefts, the case being built against him by the
German police sheds new light on the lucrative trade. It may also have
effects beyond the art world, straining the already tense relations
between Greece and Turkey and their respective allies on Cyprus. Greek
Cypriots accuse Turkish Cypriot officials who rule the north of aiding
and abetting Dikman's thefts.
"The Turks are waging a war against our cultural patrimony," said
Demetrio Michaelides, associate professor of the University of Cyprus
and head of its archaeological research unit. "They are trying to erase
Greek and Christian heritage from the now largely Turkish, Muslim
north."
Turkish Cypriots deny such charges and accuse Greek Cypriots of working
to deprive them of the resources needed to protect their mutual cultural
heritage.
Since time immemorial, Cyprus has been a prize sought by contesting
nations, empires and religions. It was a center of early Christianity,
and Ottoman Turks captured it from the Venetians in 1572 after a series
of bloody sieges and mass killings.
Later Cyprus became a British colony and remained so until 1960. When
the British left, they turned it over to what proved to be an unstable
Greek-Turkish partnership. Since then it has been caught in the age-old
conflict between those two nations, which is also a conflict between
Islam and Orthodox Christianity.
After Turkish soldiers landed on northern Cyprus in 1974, following a
coup engineered by the military junta then ruling Greece, Greek
clergymen and custodians of Orthodox holy sites fled southward. A
process of "ethnic cleansing" began on both sides of the border, with
the southern two-thirds becoming almost completely Greek and the
northern third nearly all-Turkish.
Turkish Cypriots evidently felt little obligation to preserve Orthodox
churches, which many viewed as remnants of rulers who had oppressed
them. Some churches were converted into mosques and others to
nonreligious uses. Still others were allowed to decay; most were left
unguarded. In the next 10 years, Greek Cypriot officials say, the
churches were looted of more than 20,000 religious artifacts.
The Remorseful Client: Guiding Officers to Their Quarry
The trail of the artifacts in which Dikman dealt stretches through
Europe and the United States. It may extend to the Museum of Beaux Arts
in Antwerp, Belgium, which may have unwittingly displayed several
Byzantine icons stolen by Dikman.
That assertion came from Michel van Rijn, a central figure in the
unfolding drama, who says he was once Dikman's principal client. Since
he fell out with Dikman, van Rijn, 47, a burly Dutch art dealer, has
been trying to help the Orthodox and Greek Cypriot authorities reclaim
some of the plundered items he helped sell to art dealers throughout the
world.
One of the dealers with whom van Rijn says he worked is Serafim
Dritsoulas, a Greek citizen who lives in Munich. In a raid on
Dritsoulas' home several weeks ago, the German police found what they
believe to be several more stolen icons from Dikman's collection.
Dritsoulas, who did not respond to several requests for comment, was a
member of the "expert committee" that helped organize the Antwerp
exhibition. Museum officials there, citing Belgian privacy laws, refused
to say whether he had lent any of the allegedly stolen icons they
displayed. Police investigators said they expected to charge Dritsoulas
with possessing stolen art.
In a series of interviews, van Rijn said that he never stole any Cypriot
artifacts himself, but that he did help Dikman sell icons and frescoes
that police said Dikman systematically plundered from Cypriot churches
and monasteries.
Van Rijn said some Turkish military officers and local officials knew
what Dikman was doing. With their knowledge, he said, Dikman hired and
trained a team of sophisticated thieves; sent the team into northern
Cyprus soon after the 1974 Turkish intervention with lists of precious
frescoes and mosaics to be removed from church and monastery walls;
stored his loot in Kyrenia Castle, a popular tourist site in the
northern Cypriot port of Kyrenia, and finally sent it to Munich.
The Growing Evidence: Artworks Return to Loving Hands
In 1988, van Rijn and Dikman sold four mosaics that had been stolen from
the sixth-century Church of Kanakaria in Lythrangomi, one of the most
heavily looted churches in northern Cyprus. The buyer, Peg Goldberg, an
Indianapolis art dealer, paid $1.2 million for the mosaics and then
tried to sell them for $20 million to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. A
curator there recognized them and called the police. In 1989 an
Indianapolis court, ruling that Ms. Goldberg had not tried hard enough
to determine whether the mosaics were stolen, ordered their return to
Greek-controlled Cyprus.
After that deal, a stint in a Spanish prison on fraud charges that van
Rijn said were later dropped, and further quarrels with Dikman, van Rijn
said, he decided to abandon his world of art theft and work to recover
the objects he had helped fence. Last fall, he approached Tasoula
Georgiou-Hadjitofi, the honorary Greek Cypriot consul in The Hague, and
offered to recover three mosaics stolen from the Kanakaria church plus
some 40 frescoes also in Dikman's possession. The Cypriot government
raised $500,000 from private sources and bought the items from
intermediaries working for Dikman.
"I wept with joy when I recognized them," said Athanasios Papageorgiou,
a former director of antiquities for Cyprus who flew from Nicosia to
identify the objects.
Van Rijn's bodyguard videotaped this and several similar transactions
and turned his tapes over to the German police. In October, police teams
raided the apartment where Dikman lived and two others he used as
warehouses.
Within secret compartments behind walls, under ceilings and in
basements, Kitschler of the German police said, were more than 4,000
objects from an array of ancient civilizations. It is that dazzling
collection -- including Hellenic pottery, Roman coins, Mayan objects,
ceramics from east Africa and a Coptic prayer shawl from Egypt -- that
now sits locked in the Bayerischer Landesmuseum.
The police also found albums of photographs that appear to show how
Dikman obtained some of the Cypriot treasures. Photos show workers
standing on scaffolding and removing frescoes from walls.
There are also drawings of elaborate frescoes that disappeared from
northern Cypriot churches during the 1970s and '80s. The drawings are
bisected with lines that the police say showed workers where to cut the
frescoes to preserve the faces of apostles and other figures.
The albums will be critical evidence in Dikman's trial later this year.
Prosecutors said they planned to charge him with possession and
attempted sale of stolen goods, which carries a penalty of up to 10
years in prison.
"This was professional work," Kitschler said. "It involved making
sketches, erecting scaffolding and bringing in specialized equipment.
This kind of thing must have taken days to complete. It wasn't a matter
of slipping into a church at night and sneaking out with something under
your coat."
The Enduring Hostility: Progress Mired in Political Strife
From his stronghold in Nicosia, Europe's last divided city, the
president of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,
which is recognized only by Turkey, denied that his government had in
any way encouraged or tolerated looting of Orthodox sites.
"We only learned about Dikman's activities after his arrest," said the
president, Rauf Denktash. "He's not a part of us; he has nothing to do
with us."
Denktash said that his government was eager to protect Greek Cypriot
monuments and churches, and was doing its best, "given our limited
resources." He complained that foreign governments refused to provide
aid for preservation work because they did not recognize his authority.
"They told us to apply through the Greek Cypriot government," he said,
"which is unacceptable to us."'
Two days of visits to Greek Cypriot monuments and Orthodox churches in
the north confirmed that the Denktash government has taken some steps to
preserve religious sites. It has spent thousands of dollars turning the
Monastery of St. Baranabas near Famagusta into an exquisite icon museum,
and has handsomely restored the giant gothic Cathedral of St. Nicholas
also in Famagusta, which has been known to Turkish Cypriots since 1571
as the Lala Mustapha Pasha Mosque.
But the Turkish military barred a reporter from visiting two revered
sites that were reported to be heavily looted, the monasteries of
Chrystosomos and of Akhiropietos. And visits to the normally closed
churches of Antiphonitis and Kanakaria revealed empty, dilapidated
structures that no longer contained a single icon and were in desperate
need of repair.
Several figures in the case agreed in interviews that hostility between
the Greek and Turkish Cypriot authorities, and their desire to use
charges and countercharges for political purposes, helped make the
thefts possible and now complicated efforts to protect remaining
treasures.
"We could work together to protect our cultural patrimony were it not
for politics," a Cypriot cultural official complained. "But if you quote
me by name, I'll lose my job."
Turkeys Respect for Religion