Stefan Gerike has been described as the kingpin of antiquities – Arrested five times, escaped and it is unknown when (or if) he died
It was November 8, 1963 and the Swiss aircraft was ready to depart from Hellinikon airport for Munich. The last passengers were climbing the stairs. One of them felt a tap on the shoulder and at the same time another hand was sinking into the pocket of his wool jacket. He took out a dirty handkerchief and on the ground fell an all-gold necklace from the 4th AD. century and some rings of the 6th century BC. and 1st century BC, all products of poachers that would be exported and sold abroad.
At the airport customs, the then 32-year-old man tried to remove the handcuffs and threatened the police that he would send them… to the Great Wall, as he was – as he said – a relative of the Kaiser and Queen Frederick.
In a search of his house, in New Philadelphia, 70 bracelets, gold jewelry, a large number of coins were found, all of incalculable archaeological value.
This was the first meeting with the Greek Gendarmerie of Stefan Gericke (Stefan Martin Gericke), the German archaeologist who has been characterized as “the country’s greatest antiquarian”, as “the dean of antiquarianism”, who ransacked archaeological sites and picked up sacks of rare and valuable archaeological treasures. A real ghost who grabbed antiquities from Evros to Corfu, Messolonghi and Crete, while he even had his eye on the icon of Panagia Ekatontapyliani in Paros.
As noted in a voria.gr report, Stefan Gerike crossed paths with the police 5 times, was imprisoned as many times and escaped half of them, with his traces mysteriously disappearing at the end of the 1990s or the beginning of the 2000s, without anyone being able to to officially say when (and if) he has passed away.
He was born in 1931 in Indonesia to German parents and studied archeology at the University of Munich, where he also did his doctoral thesis on prehistoric archaeology. During his studies he was fascinated by ancient Greek history, he learned Greek fluently and as soon as he completed his studies he came to Greece not to work as an archaeologist, but to indulge in the hunt for ancient treasures.
After his arrest at the Greek airport in 1963, he was brought to justice on a serious charge of smuggling antiquities, but he managed to convince the court that the jewelry he had on him and what was found in his house, were imitations. So he was released….and continued the clandestine excavations.
In June 1968 he fell again into the hands of the Gendarmerie, this time in Thessaloniki, with a lot of antiquities in his hands. He and 12 of his accomplices were sentenced to 12 months in prison and all the objects were handed over to the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.
The then 37-year-old Gerike appeared unrepentant before the authorities, apologized in perfect Greek and tried to convince the judges that the items were fake. Four months later and while he was in the prisons of Thessaloniki, the prosecutor requested that he be transferred to Athens and during his transfer, under very strange circumstances, he escaped. And of course he’s back to his old ways. He formed a new spiral of antiquities and, loaded with a large number of ancient objects, attempted to leave the Greco-Yugoslav border at night by road. He had fake papers, fake ID, wore a wig and a moustache.
It was November 1969 when he was arrested and at the court, which took place at the beginning of 1970, Stefan Gerike fought to stay in the prisons of Thessaloniki. He was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison and sent to the prisons of Corfu. He served a small part of his sentence and was released relatively soon due to…good behavior with the condition of being banned from entering Greece.
He was ruthless, unsmiling, brilliant and a buffoon and he always knew where to aim. In the voluminous file he had with the Gendarmerie at the time, it was written that he ransacked archaeological sites all over Greece and had sold an unknown – but very large – number of vases, jewels, coins, figurines, dating from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages.
His excellent knowledge of archeology and the systematic study of ancient Greek history led him to the most unlikely places and he was often ahead of the archaeologists. They were mainly interested in gold jewelry, coins, figurines, vases, busts. Small volume items it could export more easily.
He went in and out like a gentleman in Greece, always with fake papers and disguises. He wore wigs, grew a mustache or a beard, was sometimes well-dressed and sometimes scruffy, did not provoke and did not socialize, except with people of the underworld, whom he paid in money, since the archaeological finds were managed by him.
In the mid-1970s Gerike turned to Byzantine icons and ecclesiastical treasures. In the summer of 1979 he raised the entire wooden iconostasis of the Holy Trinity of Meteora, with all the rare icons, cutting it into 30 pieces. He had as an accomplice a 37-year-old contractor from Athens, with whom they transported the 30 pieces and sold them abroad, where they have not been found to this day.
A few months later he was arrested again, this time after a crime. Two of his accomplices killed and threw a third of the coil into a 163-meter-deep well in the Lavrio mines to “eat his meat”, as revealed during the interrogation. A total of 32 people were arrested, with most claiming to have supplied Gerike with antiquities. The German antiquarian did not admit anything, while regarding the antiquities found in his possession, he said that some were gifts from his archaeologist friends and others that he found them in… castles in the Greek countryside, where he used to go on excursions and walks.
As it emerged from the police investigation, he had dug with his accomplices at the archaeological site of Amphipolis Serres, using dynamite stolen from a lignite mine in Serres. They had ravaged the wider area and seized archaeological finds of untold value, most of which have never been found, since he had managed to sell them abroad, where he had set up an extensive network of suppliers.
He was remanded in custody, but was released after serving 18 months without trial – which happened 5 years later – and disappeared.
For a decade the “rector of antiquities” was also a “ghost” for the Greek police. Information about his illegal activity rained down on him, but he himself was nowhere to be found.
Until he made the fatal mistake. On the day of the anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising, November 17, 1990, he filled an entire caravan – bearing German plates – with ancient objects and set off from the center of Athens for an unknown destination.
He believed that the police would be busy with the events and march for the anniversary and thus he would go unnoticed. However, how unnoticed can a caravan pass in the center of Athens, on a day when restrictions and traffic bans apply? Information from the time reported that the police had been on his trail for ten days and that he had been “nailed” by his old partner, even giving precise information about his movements. The policemen who checked lost count and the archaeologists said that he was carrying… half a museum, as the newspaper “Eleftherotypia” wrote in its report on November 20, 1990.
Inside the caravan were found dozens of ancient objects from prehistoric times to the Byzantine era, which were impossible to identify from where they had been stolen. What was even more impressive was that Gerike had rented and lived for a long time in an apartment at 26 Deligianni Street in Exarchia, right next to the Archaeological Museum!
The police described him as “the biggest antiquities thief who ever passed through Greece” and archaeologists said that the ancient objects he extracted in his many years of activity could fill an entire museum. He himself posed in front of the findings, in the presence of the ELAS leadership, as he was captured by the camera of “Eleftherotypias” (first from the right) calm and cool…but always speechless.
The court sentenced him to 15 years and 9 months in prison and he was transferred to the prisons of Halicarnassus, Crete. He was 60 years old and looked tired. He was alone and did not give rights, nor did he open a conversation with his fellow prisoners. Once again he managed to fool everyone.
On October 18, 1994, he complained of severe abdominal pain and was taken to the university hospital of Heraklion, accompanied by a strong police force. The doctors kept him for tests. In the early hours of October 22 and while he had been fast asleep for hours, the police guard left his cell to get a coffee. By the time he returned, Stefan Gerike had gone up in smoke. An alarm was raised and although his absence was noticed within 15 minutes, he was not found.
In January 1995, ELAS was informed that he had been arrested in Switzerland, as he was negotiating the sale of antiquities that had been stolen from Greece. He was extradited to our country and taken to Korydallos prisons. He was released a short time later under unclear circumstances. And his traces were lost forever. Some information says that he returned to Germany, where he died in 1997, some others say that he was spotted in Greece in 2000 doing the same illegal activity, wanting to get rid of as many of the ancient objects he had left.
Bronze and gold jewelry, clay vases and figurines, sculptures, bronze coins but also Mycenaean vases, five Cycladic marble figurines, a clay Minoan (YM III) urn, Cretan jars, as well as 51 bone kyphoid seals (imitating Proto-Minoan ones) were handed over to the Archaeological Thessaloniki Museum in 1968, after the arrest of the German antiquarian. As, in fact, characteristically stated by the then antiquities curator Fotis Petsas, “with these new acquisitions”, some of which “seem exotic in the Macedonian environment of the Museum of Thessaloniki”, the Museum “becomes representative not only of the northern Greek area, but and of Greek in general”.
Part of these objects that are now kept in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki are presented in the new periodical exhibition “60 Years/60 Moments”, which hosts 60 emblematic moments of the historical journey of the largest and oldest Archaeological Museum in northern Greece.
Presenting, a few years ago, the 5 Cycladic marble figurines of the “Gehrige Collection”, the late director of the Museum, Liana Stefani, said that “they are included in the material of one of the museum’s largest confiscations, that of the German antiquarian and archaeologist, Stefan Gehrige”. And she closed her speech by saying: “the “Gehrige figurines”, silent witnesses of the past, can be renamed Cycladic figurines of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki”.
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