Abstract
Germany has experienced a number of prominent art crime cases ranging from forgeries to the discovery of Nazi-looted art in the past decade. Art crime has therefore been more prominent in the German media and on the policing agendas than ever before. This chapter first addresses the legal development of art fraud as a crime in Germany and internationally. It then gives an overview of the major forgery cases in modern German history, focusing on the most prominent ones, such as Beltracchi, the ‘Count of Waldstein’, and the case of the forged ‘Russian Avant-garde’. All cases portrayed here caused, to greater or lesser extent, damage to buyers, experts, galleries and the reputation of the art market more generally. The chapter concludes by addressing how these cases might have impacted the future prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of art crime in Germany and beyond.
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Hufnagel, S. (2019). Case Study 1: Beltracchi and the History of Art Fraud in Germany. In: Hufnagel, S., Chappell, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54405-6_16
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