Imagine finding an ordinary cardboard box in the attic of your house in Amsterdam. You don’t know what it is, but it has been gathering dust and cobwebs in a dark corner for 10 years. The time comes when you have to do your spring cleaning, and with a guilty conscience you open the box to see if you can throw it away or donate it to charity. What looked like a brown cardboard box that was going to contain family memories or old clothes ended up containing a priceless treasure: no less than 25 historical documents that had been lost for years.
The forgotten box contained scrolls and books that are considered important archives of UNESCO’s world heritage. But how did they get there? Well, this incredible find solves a mystery that has been going on for more than 10 years in the Netherlands. The story involves a thief archivist, a debt that was never paid, and the country’s largest cultural institution. The mystery was solved largely thanks to Arthur Brand, a famous detective known as the “Indiana Jones of the art world.”
The Bizarre Crime: Historical Collateral
It all starts with an employee of the Dutch National Archives, who is on leave, who decided to carry out an unusual and rather unethical plan. It was 2015, and the man quietly removed 25 priceless documents. He had no intention of selling them on the black market to collectors, but rather to use them as collateral for a private loan to a friend. The thing is, the archives in The Hague are so absurdly large that this person knew the documents would not be missed. They were valuable, but they were not properly recorded and cataloged, so it would take many years to realize they were missing.
We all have friends who are always in need of money and offer random items as collateral, but we cannot imagine the expression on the lender’s face when they arrived with a box full of documents that were obviously several centuries old. However, fate got in the thief’s way, and the borrower died before he could pay off his debt and claim the box. Some of us suspect that he never thought of getting it back, but that’s the lender’s problem now.
Years passed, and this poor man found himself at a crossroads; he had in his possession documents that incriminated him in a robbery of a public agency, and furthermore, he had not been reimbursed for the money —nor would he ever be. He left the box in a corner of the attic.
Years later, the moneylender’s relatives, while cleaning the man’s house—who, as we understand it, was ill and required care—came across a box full of documents that had nothing to do with the family lineage. The moment they saw the stamps of the Dutch East India Company, they knew something was wrong. That’s when they called detective Arthur Brandt, attaching photos of the papers. This detective, who has made a name for himself thanks to his real and sometimes even comical exploits, immediately identified the crest on the official documents and knew they were a treasure trove.
This is not the only historical heritage recovery Mr. Brand has made in recent years: in 2023, Brand recovered a stolen Van Gogh painting that was delivered to him in an Ikea bag! He is also known for having recovered bronze sculptures known as “Hitler’s horses.” His role is to act as a silent mediator between the art world and the criminal underworld; he asks no questions, he only retrieves the pieces of art and takes them back to their rightful owner.
The National Archives’ Logistical Nightmare
When the news broke, it sparked a somewhat embarrassing controversy among historians: how is it possible that 25 items of national heritage could go missing without anyone noticing? The fact is that modern archiving is completely overwhelmed.
A spokesperson explained: “We manage more than 90 miles of archives, more than 15 million photographs…” With such a volume, it is “impossible to have a complete inventory of all the documents.”The institution knew that some documents were “missing,” but assumed they had been accidentally returned to the wrong shelf.
For now, the documents have been returned to the archive. Despite their 10-year stint in an uncontrolled environment, the documents were in perfect condition. The treasure has returned to its original archive… But now the thieves know that they can take home whatever they want, because no one will miss it either.