Per­so­nal sta­te­ment Ernest Ober­län­der

Honourable Court, 

My name is Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu. I am a historian, archaeologist and numismatist by training, a graduate of the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest, and I hold a PhD in history. I have served the National History Museum of Romania since 1980, first as curator and senior researcher, later as Head of the Coin Room and the Historical Treasure Department, and, from 2010 until my dismissal in January 2025, as General Director of the Museum. I also served as Director of the Museums and Collections Directorate within the Romanian Ministry of Culture, chaired the National Commission of Museums and Collections for many years, curated or co-curated dozens of exhibitions in Romania and abroad, and published extensively in my field. Over the course of my career, I devoted more than four decades to the study, conservation, protection and international promotion of Romania’s movable cultural heritage. 

This opportunity to speak about how the theft affected me and my colleagues is of particular importance, as since the day of the theft, I and the Romanian colleagues involved in the organization of the exhibition have been subjected to intense public scrutiny and, at times, unjust attribution of responsibility, without having had an appropriate setting in which to present our position. 

The organization of the exhibition at the Drents Museum in Assen represented a moment of genuine professional pride. It was conceived as a major cultural undertaking, intended to present exceptional artefacts of Romanian heritage, among them the Coțofenești Gold Helmet and the Dacian gold bracelets, to an international audience. We had full confidence in the value and significance of this initiative, as well as in its potential to foster cultural dialogue and shared understanding. The exhibition was met with strong appreciation from the cultural press and specialists alike, and I wish to underline the exemplary professionalism of our colleagues at the Drents Museum, as well as the enthusiasm shown by the Dutch public and media, all of which filled me and my colleagues with a deep sense of honour. 

The theft of these artefacts has had far-reaching and deeply disruptive consequences. Beyond the immediate loss, as director of the National History Museum of Romanian at the moment of the robbery, I can affirm that the incident has significantly affected the museum’s institutional activity, particularly in relation to international cooperation. At the time of the theft, the museum was actively engaged in the preparation of four major international exhibitions, all of which were subsequently cancelled. The Romania–Poland Cultural Season was a major official bilateral framework in 2024–2025, and the museum’s broader international cooperation had every reason to continue after Assen. The cancellations of two important exhibition organized by the 

National History Museum of Romania in Poland resulted not only in significant financial losses for the museums involved, which remain unrecovered, but also in diplomatic strain, as the initial response of the Romanian authorities led to the indefinite suspension of international loans of cultural goods and to regulatory changes intended to make such loans more difficult to implement; a development inconsistent with the spirit of the European Union’s framework, which seeks to encourage and facilitate cultural exchange. 

This decision had repercussions across numerous European museum institutions, many of which had established collaborative projects with Romanian museums. These partnerships, founded on mutual trust and a shared commitment to the promotion of cultural heritage, were abruptly interrupted, affecting the work of museum professionals across Europe and limiting valuable opportunities for international cultural exchange. It is important to underline, that among the partnerships that were discontinued were projects with the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, whose specialists had already begun preparatory work following a visit to the exhibition in Assen, as well as collaborations with the Moesgaard Museum in Denmark and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. These initiatives were intended to continue the presentation of Romanian heritage within a broader European context and to contribute to the dissemination of cultural knowledge. 

Equally significant, and perhaps most difficult to quantify, has been the human impact of these events. Since 25 January 2025, the staff of the National History Museum of Romania have faced sustained public pressure, including media criticism and, in some cases, personal attacks. Museum professionals, whose role is to preserve, research, and present cultural heritage, have been subjected to accusations and suspicions for an act in which they had no involvement. This situation has created a climate of distress and has required our colleagues to defend, both professionally and personally, the legitimacy of their work. 

It is more easy to explain the extreme harshness of this situation from my direct experience. From the first hours after the theft, I became the object of intense and often severe public accusation. I was publicly treated not merely as the director of the lending institution, but as a person supposedly answerable for the theft itself. I stated at the time that I felt turned into a scapegoat, and I used that word deliberately. I was accused, in effect, of having failed to protect the national heritage, although the break-in had been carried out with explosives against a reinforced museum building in another state. 

What made this especially painful is that my professional life had been inseparable from the very heritage whose loss the public believed I had somehow caused. I had worked at the National History Museum of Romania since 1980. Before becoming General Director, I led precisely the departments responsible for numismatics and the Historical Treasure. My professional activity included work on the protection of cultural goods, the fight against illicit trafficking, international scholarly cooperation and major exhibition projects. Publicly available biographical records demonstrate the scale of this work, one notable example being the recovery and repatriation for the Romanian state, in the late 2000s, of the very bracelets that had been stolen from the Drents Museum. To have such a career reduced overnight, in public discourse, to the image of a negligent or incompetent official was devastating.

The consequences were not only reputational. They were human. In February 2025, after my dismissal, I stated publicly that I had received many threats, including threats directed at my family, and that I intended to seek police protection. I even received a message in which I was described as a “German spy”. That fact alone shows the atmosphere in which I was forced to live and work after the theft. The strain did not end with dismissal. It entered my family life, my sense of safety, and my mental balance. I cannot honestly describe this period in mild terms: it caused me severe emotional distress, a profound sense of humiliation, and a serious deterioration in my physical and psychological well-being. It also altered me as a professional. Nearly a year later, speaking publicly, I said that I was no longer the same person and that I would think twice before ever allowing certain objects to leave Romania again. That was not rhetoric. It was the truth. 

It is also significant that, when the Dutch Public Prosecution Service announced the return of the helmet and two bracelets in April 2026, it stated that, based on the criminal investigation, it had no evidence that anyone other than the three suspects was involved in the theft. I do not say this to diminish the tragedy of what occurred, but to underline the injustice of the moral and political burden that had been placed upon me in the public sphere long before the criminal process had run its course. I was publicly judged long before the facts had been fully established. 

What was destroyed was not merely my position. It was a career built over forty-five years, my standing in the profession, and a sense of trust painstakingly earned through scholarship, museum work, heritage recovery and international cultural diplomacy. I had spent my working life trying to protect Romanian heritage, including through the international visibility of that heritage. After the theft, I was publicly cast as the person from whom that same heritage needed protection. That reversal has been profoundly painful, professionally ruinous, and personally traumatic. 

At the same time, I wish to place on record, clearly and without reservation, my profound respect for the people and culture of the Netherlands. Nothing that happened has diminished my regard for Dutch civilization, for the seriousness of Dutch public life, or for the long tradition of museum professionalism and cultural openness that I have always associated with the Netherlands. 

I also wish to record my gratitude toward the Dutch public and the Dutch press. In a period of profound pain and vulnerability, I encountered in the Netherlands not hostility, but seriousness, attention and, often, human decency. The Dutch public understood that this theft was not only a Romanian tragedy, but also a wound inflicted on a shared European cultural space. The Dutch press, in my experience, maintained an open and honest relationship with me, allowing me to speak at moments when in Romania the public climate was often accusatory, overheated and unfair. For this, I remain sincerely grateful. 

My appreciation extends equally, and very personally, to my colleagues at the Drents Museum. Before the theft, I had spoken publicly of the Drents Museum as a modern and dynamic institution, with strong experience in archaeology exhibitions and high standards of display and conservation. That professional regard has not disappeared. On the contrary, it remains important for me to say that I retain genuine personal and professional esteem for the colleagues with whom I worked in Assen. They received Romanian heritage with commitment and enthusiasm, helped present it to an international audience with intelligence and care, and they too became victims of a criminal act that neither they nor we could have imagined in such a form. The exhibition itself was a meaningful and honourable undertaking, and I continue to believe that the spirit in which it was organized was a good one.

What happened on 25 January 2025 was not only the theft of irreplaceable cultural objects. It was also the beginning of a chain of consequences that disfigured lives, institutions, projects and professional destinies. In my own case, it brought about fear, distress, public blame, loss of office, damage to health, and the near-destruction of a lifetime’s career. Even after the recovery of the helmet and two bracelets, the effects did not simply disappear. Recovery of objects does not automatically repair injury to reputation, to institutional trust, or to the inner lives of those who have endured the aftermath. 

I therefore respectfully ask the Court to understand that this case concerns not only heritage crime in the strict sense, but also the far-reaching human consequences of such a crime. In my own life, those consequences have been grave, enduring and transformative. I remain proud of the work to which I devoted my life, and I remain committed, in spite of everything, to the idea that cultural heritage must continue to unite peoples rather than divide them. But I cannot deny that the theft from Assen marked me deeply, personally and professionally, and that I will carry the effects of that event for the rest of my life. 

Dr. Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu