AUSTRIAN CROWN JEWELS

Evening Star, Issue 20255, 16 August 1929, Page 5

AUSTRIAN CROWN JEWELS

DISCOVERED IN MOROCCO VALUED AT £3,000,000. Valued at £3,000,000, a collection of Crown jewels, once the property of the late Emperor Karl and the Empress Zita of Austria-Hungary, is. states a message from Casablanca (Morocco), reported to have been discovered by a French police inspector at Safi, a small town' on the coast of Southern Morocco. ' French police are satisfied as to the identity of the jewels, and their possessor, an Italian named Maida, together with his wife, has been arrested. "When forced to leave Hungary _ on the outbreak of the 1918 revolution, the Imperial couple were able to collect most of their jewels, including the Crown jewels which had been inherited by the Emperor Karl as head of the house of Hapsburg. Among them was the famous diamond known as "The Florentine ” and a beautiful diamond necklace made in the eighteenth century for the Empress Maria Theresa. Signor and Signora Maida, a middleaged pair, arrived at Safi about _ a week ago, and entered into negotiations with local Moorish jewellers. When Maida opened his attache case and exhibited the gems their splendour astonished the Moors.

Rumours quickly spread, and reached the ears of Inspector Columeau, of the French police in that region. Culling on the Italians at their hotel, the inspector failed to get a satisfactory account of how the jewels came into the couple’s possession. _ So he seized the collection, detaining its would-be vendors. When searched, the Italian was found to bo in possession of a photograph which had been taken of a painting of Anno of Austria wearing the Crown jewels. On examining the photograph, the inspector noticed that some of the jewels in the possession of Maida resembled those in the photograph. Further questioned , the Italian eventually confessed that his attache case did contain part of the Austrian Crown jewels—which had been stolen.

The Austrian Crown jewels mysteriously disappeared in 1921. A wellknown English detective was then engaged to seek them. _ The jewels had been exhibited at a dinner party to a number of guests by a London lawyer, to whom they had been entrusted; and when the dinner party ended they wero placed in a safe. When the safe was opened, on the following day, the collection had vanished. One. of the guests at the dinner party had already gone off to Paris' and the English detective followed him to the French capital, when the man was _ arrested. Some, if not all, of the jewels were recovered and restored to the ex-Emperor Karl. It is believed, however, that some of the Crown jewels again disappeared when the ex-Emperor entrusted them to some of his retainers to negotiate a loan to finance his abortive attempt to regain the throne of Hungary.