An antiquities thief in Germany was ordered by court to return a large stone from the approximately 5,000-year-old megalithic grave Immekath I near Klötze in the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel. The judgment of the Gardelegen District Court was delivered on February 25, 2025, according to Die Zeit.
The theft took place in May 2024. Until then, the so-called Hünengrab (giant grave) in the Altmark region consisted of four standing stones and one capstone; after the theft, the large megalith stone was missing. The stolen stone is approximately 1.25 meters high, 75 centimeters wide, and weighs 500 kilograms.
In addition to the seized stone from the megalithic grave, investigators discovered on the property of the convicted individual eight other stones arranged in a circle. The origin of these eight stones was not determined, according to Die Welt.
"The thief may have first attempted to remove one stone and failed. When removing a less deeply anchored stone, the overlying capstone shifted and slid into the grave interior. In the process, the remaining standing stones were damaged," said Susanne Friederich, head of the Department of Archaeological Heritage Preservation at the State Office for Heritage Preservation and Archaeology, according to Die Zeit.
"From a photograph from 1890, there were six standing stones in addition to the one capstone," said archaeologist Dominik Petzold during the inventory assessment, according to Die Zeit. He added, "Earlier, there must have been even more stones; probably there were three capstones." "Between 2010 and 2012, two stones were demonstrably stolen. To this day, there is no trace of them," Petzold further stated.
The stone from Immekath I was located with the help of citizens and members of the Young Archaeologists Association, reported Die Zeit.
The megalithic grave Immekath I is four meters long and 1.5 meters wide. Once, there were six megalithic graves in Immekath, a district of Klötze. Now only two megalithic graves remain. In Saxony-Anhalt, there are still about 150 megalithic graves.
Farmers of the Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture around 5,000 years ago pulled the boulders of the last Ice Age from the ground with oxen. With these stones, they built their large graves and placed several dead in them as collective burials. Originally, the megalithic grave was covered with earth, reported Süddeutsche Zeitung..
The case is reminiscent of the most notable instance of grave robbery in the region: the Nebra Sky Disk, which was secured in Switzerland in 2002, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. In early July 1999, the Nebra Sky Disk was discovered by two grave robbers using metal detectors in the forested area of Mittelberg near Nebra in the Burgenlandkreis.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
