This is just an insane story. None of this sounds real, but I swear it is. Honestly, this feels more like a "Florida man" story than it sounds like something from New York. Not only is the heist itself insane, but the history behind the paintings in question deserves a movie of its own!

Bard Student Caught Stealing Paintings Smuggled From Nazis [VIDEO]

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Early morning Saturday, October 26th, police reported that a young man broke into the Blithewood Mansion on the campus of Bard College, took two painting, and left the scene on foot. Before fleeing the scene, he tripped a security alarm, prompting the Dutchess County Sheriff's Office to dispatch a thermal imaging drone. We have the video from the drone below.

History Behind the Art Involved in the Amateur Art Heist

The paintings in question include “Forest” by G. Sheriff, an English landscape painter, and “Harbour Scene” by Ludovico Marchetti, an Italian-born painter who spent most of his life in France and specialized in historical scenes. Both paintings were imparted to the college’s Hessel Museum of Art by Dr. Edith Spitzer Neumann, a prominent Austrian microbiologist and the daughter of a Viennese art collector named Alfred Spitzer.

Edith and her husband Frederick Neumann spent much of the 1930s trying to avoid arrest following the rise of Adolf Hitler, living in northern Italy, Paris and London before eventually settling in Haifa in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1939. Edith's sister, Hanna Spitzer, arranged to ship 11 containers of paintings out of Austria after it had fallen to the Nazis. One of those deliveries was sent to the Neumanns in Haifa.

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In 1948, the Neumanns moved to the United States and settled in New York. Edith worked as a bacteriologist at the Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn and then as a microbiologist at Maimonides Hospital, where she stayed for 20 years, according to employment records at the Leo Baeck Institute. After her husband’s death in 1967, she became a medical director at the Jetti Katz Clinical Laboratory, where she stayed until her retirement at 80.

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When she died in 2002, she bequeathed 92 paintings and drawings from the Collection of Dr. Alfred Spitzer — including G. Sheriff’s “Forest” and Ludovico Marchetti’s “Harbour Scene” — to Bard College. Before she past, she received an Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art First Class in 1998. There was a book published in 2004 called "Memory and History: The Legacy of Alfred Spitzer and Edith Neumann" by Leo Botstein contains 96 pages with black and white and some color illustrations from the Spitzer's art collection.

Thermal Imaging Helps to Capture Bard Art Thief

The drone spotted a man hiding in the woods only about 500 feet from Blithewood Mansion. Using the information from the drone, deputy sheriffs were able to find the suspect and take him into custody.

The identity of the suspect has not be released; however, it is known that he is a Bard College senior, a biology major, and was set to graduate this winter. He was charged with one count of third-degree burglary, a Class D felony punishable by up to 7 years in prison, and released with an appearance ticket, according to the Sheriff’s Office. He is now banned from campus but will be allowed to finish his coursework remotely. The oil paintings are still in police custody but will be returned to the college shortly.

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