Imagine you are a waiter. It’s been a long day of schlepping trays, sweet-talking customers, and bending over backwards for people who can’t be bothered to clean up the messes they make. You are dead tired and want to chill. By the way, you’re still living with your mom. What do you do to unwind? Grab a bag of chips and veg out in front of the TV? Play some video games? Chill with some friends? Celebrate the fact that as a waiter in France you have the right to wear a mustache?

Not if your name is Stéphane Breitwieser. After a hard day of waiting tables, he didn’t just flop onto a couch and turn into a slob. Instead, he went back to his mom’s house, scampered up the narrow wooden staircase his bedroom, and refreshed his spirit by viewing as much as two billion dollars worth of some of the greatest art that has ever been produced. His room had a finer collection of art than most of the world’s museums, and it was all there for his personal enjoyment.

No, Breitwieser hadn’t inherited this fine collection, and he certainly didn’t earn enough as a waiter to purchase the items. Although Stéphane Breitwieser may have been a very fine waiter, the career in which he truly excelled was as the world’s most successful art thief.

Stéphane’s fascinating story is told in Michael Finkel’s book The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession. He recounts how Stéphane and his girlfriend/partner-in-crime Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus started their sticky-fingered spree when they were both in their early 20s. Between 1994 and 2001, they admitted to swiping 239 works of art from 172 museums — an average of one every fifteen days. All of this, while Stéphane was holding down a job as a waiter.

The two lovebirds started their sticky-fingered spree in the mid-90s. Breitwieser and Kleinklaus made museums, galleries, and churches across France and central Europe into their personal shopping malls.

Their haul was jaw-dropping: from Renaissance masterpieces like Sibylle of Cleves by Lucas Cranach the Younger to intricate sculptures by Georg Petel. Experts estimate their loot at a cool $2 billion. Their secret stash was tucked away in “the most modest house in the suburbs of a really kind of rough-and-tumble French town.”

The contrast between the value of the art and the thief’s humble accommodations can only be understood if we know his motivation. Finkel says Breitwieser was never in it for the money; he stole for love. Love for art, to be specific. He never sold his stolen goods; he just wanted to be surrounded by beauty. In fact, he took offense at being called an art thief. He preferred “art collector” – with an unconventional acquisition method, of course.

Breitwieser grew up in Alsace, surrounded by beautiful art and antiques thanks to his dad’s side of the family. But a bitter parental breakup in his teens cut him off from his father and the art he loved. So, what’s a guy to do? Naturally, he had to replace it. His first heist was an antique pistol from the 1600s, swiped from the Museum of the Friends of Thann, which he proudly declared was “nicer than anything his father had owned.” Emboldened by his success, he added to his collection in February 1995, by taking a medieval crossbow from a museum in the Alsatian mountains.

One month later, Breitwieser’s girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, joined in the escapades. While the rest of the world was busy being bedazzled by the dawn of the internet or arguing whether “Friends” was better than “Seinfeld,” the dynamic duo of Breitwieser and Kleinklaus (which sounds to us like the name of a law firm that specializes in the law of German food and beverages) perfected their skills.

The team focused their attention on a painting in the medieval castle at Gruyères, Switzerland. The piece that captured their interest was by 18th-century German artist Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich. It was a stunning portrayal of a woman that had our boy Stéphane practically swooning. “She’s got Rembrandt vibes,” he mused, utterly captivated by her beauty and those soul-piercing eyes.

With Anne-Catherine standing guard like the Bonnie to his Clyde, Stéphane got to work. He delicately pried the painting from its frame, slipping it under his jacket with the finesse of a magician. Voilà! Another masterpiece for his burgeoning collection.

The team was just getting started. They toured small collections and regional museums, where security was more of a suggestion than a rule. Anne-Catherine kept watch while Stéphane, equipped with stealth and perhaps a Swiss Army knife, liberated piece after piece. It was a romance and crime spree for the ages, though probably not the kind of thing you’d find on a Valentine’s Day card.

Breitwieser’s and Kleinklaus’s heists were more synchronized than a Broadway musical. While Breitwieser focused on the loot, Kleinklaus played lookout. They dressed in second-hand designer clothes to blend in and struck during lunch hours when museum staff were taking a break. They communicated through hand signals and the occasional cough, with Breitwieser often slipping the stolen items under his coat, into the waistband of his trousers.

On one memorable occasion, Breitwieser unscrewed 30 screws to open a display case, leaping away whenever Kleinklaus warned him of approaching danger. His stint as a security guard after high school taught him that art fades into the background for staff. Tourists, not treasures, were their main concern. “He just always tried to have his body motion and his facial expressions look as innocuous and innocent as possible,” Finkel writes. They stole like ghosts, invisible and untraceable.

The crown jewel of their heists was “Sybille, Princess of Cleves” by Lucas Cranach the Elder. They stole this painting out of its frame during a Sotheby’s auction. It was estimated to fetch £5 million at auction in 2003 — nearly €10 million today when adjusted for inflation.

But here’s the kicker: Breitwieser wasn’t in it for the money — at least not at first. He fancied himself the wealthiest man in Europe simply because of his private collection. He gloried in his pure, unadulterated obsession. His treasures, primarily stored in his room at his mother’s house, were protected from fading by keeping his room in semi-darkness. Countless people walked past the nondescript house, never suspecting their proximity to these priceless treasures.

Even the local framer, who helped reframe these pilfered pieces, had no clue he was handling some of Europe’s finest art. And dear old Mom, Mireille Breitwieser (née Stengel), thought these masterpieces were legit purchases from auctions. It was only much later that she started to suspect her son wasn’t acquiring his art through strictly conventional means.

As their collection grew, so did Kleinklaus’ paranoia. She insisted on erasing all traces of their presence, including fingerprints. This obsession ultimately led to their downfall. In November 2001, Breitwieser returned to a museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, to remove fingerprints from a stolen bugle. A security guard recognized him, and he was arrested. Their streak of good luck was broken.

In 2005, Breitwieser was sentenced to three years in prison but served only 26 months. Kleinklaus got six months, with another 12 months suspended. His mother, Mireille Stengel, faced trial for destroying some of the stolen art upon his arrest. She claimed ignorance, thinking her son bought them at auctions and flea markets. But a lot of the priceless collection was never recovered, having been buried, burned, or tossed into a canal.

Even after his release, Breitwieser couldn’t resist the allure of art theft. Between 2016 and 2019, he returned to his old ways, this time trying to sell stolen items. In March, he was sentenced to 34 months under house arrest. Breitwieser confessed to Finkel that he couldn’t resist the temptation. “He finds himself driving by a museum. He finds himself parking the car, he finds himself walking inside, and then it’s just going to be trouble from there.”

The next time you are sitting in a restaurant, wondering why your waiter doesn’t seem to be very focused on his job, perhaps it is because he has his mind on another vocation. We’re not saying every waiter is secretly a world-class art thief. Then again, you never know.

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