 |
| Carola of Vasa, the last Queen of Saxony (source) |
London, August 12 — The Saxon crown jewels [1], including a pearl necklace valued at £39,000, were contained in the two packages dropped last week near Malmö, Sweden, from an airplane and taken charge of by the police of Malmö, says The Mail‘s Copenhagen correspondent.
 |
| Queen Carola of Saxony wearing a tiara that belonged to her grandmother, Stephanie de Beauharnais (source) |
In the packages were also gold heirlooms and securities worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, making it the biggest customs haul on record.
 |
| Queen Carola of Saxony, ca. 1902 (source) |
“Two Germans who picked up the packages and claimed the valuables as their own were arrested and taken to Stockholm,” says the correspondent. “One is a countess and the other was formerly a court official at Dresden. The German minister at Stockholm claims that the jewels are not liable to confiscation, as they are ‘royal property.'” [2]
NOTES
1. Saxony, which is today a state in Germany, was ruled by a line of dukes, electors, and kings. The remaining Saxon crown jewels, including the famous “Saxon White” (a diamond weighing more than 49 carats), are held in the Grünes Gewölbe, a museum in Dresden.
2. Note the date of the article; the jewels were dropped from the airplane only a few months after the end of World War I, a time when Germany was forced to pay billions of dollars in reparations.
Leave a Reply