Stolen Historic Documents Surface in Attic—Ten Years After an Employee Used Them as Collateral to Borrow Money
The thief likely took the trove when he worked for the Dutch National Archives in 2015. Recently, someone found them in storage and contacted art detective Arthur Brand
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The box given to Brand contained records from the Dutch East India Company.
Arthur Brand
A decade ago, an employee stole 25 priceless documents from the Netherlands’ National Archives in the Hague. The trove included 16th-century records of clandestine government affairs, a 15th-century letter from a knight and documents from the Dutch East India Company.
Officials weren’t aware the documents had been stolen until recently, when they were returned by the Amsterdam police and art detective Arthur Brand, who is known for recovering lost and stolen artworks and artifacts.
Fun facts: Arthur Brand’s art sleuthing career
- The art detective made a name for himself in 2015, when he found pieces of Adolf Hitler’s art collection.
- In 2023, he recovered a stolen Vincent van Gogh that had been delivered to his door in an Ikea bag.
Recently, Brand received an email from someone who had found a strange box of old documents while clearing out a relative’s attic, he tells the Art Newspaper’s Sarvy Geranpayeh.
“They sent me some pictures, and I saw immediately that this was a treasure,” he says. After viewing the box’s contents in person, he agreed to help find out where they belonged and contacted the National Archives.
Officials at the archives knew that the documents were missing, but they assumed they had simply been misplaced. “We manage more than [90 miles] of archives, over 15 million photographs and 300,000 maps and drawings,” a spokesperson for the National Archives tells NL Times. “With such numbers, it is impossible to have a complete inventory of all the documents.”
The art detective (right) pictured with Frits de Ruyter de Wildt, a descendant of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, whose ship log was in the trove. Arthur Brand/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/f5/83/f58332c6-87c1-45cd-b230-d92040a562f0/gvy53ljwsaesoqx.jpeg)
The box’s contents “offer fascinating insights into events in Europe, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Latin America,” Brand writes in a statement posted on Facebook. “They include accounts of naval wars, negotiations at imperial courts, distant voyages to barely explored regions and tales of knights.”
One of the documents was a record of the first meeting of the Dutch East India Company featuring its famous logo: “VOC,” short for its Dutch name, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Founded in 1602, the company became a powerful force in the international spice and textile trade, enabling the Netherlands to grow into a colonial empire. According to UNESCO, the archives of the VOC “make up the most complete and extensive source on early modern world history anywhere.”
The box also contained a report of the VOC’s 1700 journey to meet with the Mughal emperor in India, a book recording secret meetings conducted by Dutch officials between 1592 and 1604, a 1445 letter from a knight measuring more than 13 feet, and a ship’s log written by the Dutch admiral Michiel de Ruyter between 1640 and 1642.
“In my career, I have been able to return fantastic stolen art, from Picassos to a van Gogh,” Brand tells Agence France-Presse. “Yet this find is one of the highlights of my career.”
Police think a former employee of the archives stole the documents in 2015, Brand explains to the Art Newspaper. This individual then borrowed money from a friend and used the trove as collateral. The friend stored the documents in their attic, but the debtor died before retrieving them. “So there the investigation stops,” Brand adds.
