In ear­ly March 1995, still rid­ing the high of their pre­vi­ous cross­bow theft, Bre­itwieser and his com­pan­ion Anne-Cather­ine embark on a ski­ing get­away, fund­ed by his grand­par­ents. Along their jour­ney, they stop at Gruyères Cas­tle, a his­toric fortress trans­formed into a muse­um, where they casu­al­ly pay for entry, con­ceal­ing their true intent. Though Bre­itwieser claims they are mere­ly sight­seers, this is a psy­cho­log­i­cal strat­e­gy to ease their anx­i­ety and avoid rais­ing sus­pi­cion.

Bre­itwieser, an art enthu­si­ast, habit­u­al­ly col­lects muse­um brochures, immers­ing him­self in art lit­er­a­ture and often remem­ber­ing com­pelling pieces from his child­hood vis­its. His trip plan­ning revolves around visu­al cues and spon­ta­neous dis­cov­ery rather than metic­u­lous coor­di­na­tion, lead­ing to impromp­tu muse­um vis­its based on curios­i­ty and the thrill of poten­tial theft. Despite his infa­mous rep­u­ta­tion for steal­ing, he admits that many vis­its yield noth­ing sub­stan­tial due to the pres­ence of guards or lack­lus­ter art­work.

In the cas­tle, he becomes enthralled by a small oil por­trait of an elder­ly woman by Chris­t­ian Wil­helm Ernst Diet­rich, feel­ing a rush akin to Stend­hal syndrome—where view­ers expe­ri­ence over­whelm­ing emo­tions in front of art. He has stud­ied this phe­nom­e­non, iden­ti­fy­ing it in him­self and feel­ing less iso­lat­ed because of it. While art serves as his drug of choice, crit­ics dis­miss his claims, label­ing him mere­ly a thief rather than rec­og­niz­ing his deep appre­ci­a­tion for art.

Fol­low­ing a psy­cho­log­i­cal assess­ment by Michel Schmidt, who sees Bre­itwieser as a men­ace but acknowl­edges his selec­tive nature regard­ing stolen items, it becomes clear that Bre­itwieser believes his actions stem from a gen­uine love for art, not klep­to­ma­nia. Defi­ant­ly, he argues that the author­i­ties don’t com­pre­hend the emo­tion­al weight of art as he does.

In the tur­ret of the cas­tle, a lone Diet­rich por­trait cap­ti­vates him. Real­iz­ing the secu­ri­ty is lax, he shares a know­ing glance with Anne-Cather­ine, who sup­ports his deci­sion to steal. Using a car key along­side his Swiss Army knife, he deft­ly extracts the art­work, con­ceal­ing it beneath his jack­et. After a brief, tri­umphant exit, the cou­ple trans­ports their prize in a suit­case before head­ing off to ski, mark­ing their first art theft togeth­er and deep­en­ing their bond through shared illic­it thrills.