The 1727 ‘General Dupont’, ’Grumiaux’ Stradivarius, formerly played by Jennifer Koh, was returned to the woman by police

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An American woman in her 20s accidentally left her Stradivarius violin, worth $2.6m, in the luggage rack of a train in western Germany, Reuters have reported. The 1727 instrument in question was the ‘General Dupont’, ’Grumiaux’ Stradivarius (pictured), which was sold to an anonymous collector in China for an undisclosed sum in December 2014 – the first Stradivarius to be owned by a private individual based on the Chinese mainland.

The woman, who was travelling from Mannheim to Saarbrücken on Tuesday, realised she had left the instrument in the carriage after alighting the train and alerted the police. One minute before the train was due to return to Mannheim, authorities managed to retrieve the violin. The woman was ‘more than relieved’, according to police.

The Stradivarius was formerly owned by a businessman and philanthropist based in Cleveland, Ohio, and was for several years on loan to the US violinist Jennifer Koh.

UPDATE: The Chinese owner of the 1727 ‘General Dupont’, ’Grumiaux’ Stradivarius has come forward to clarify that the misplaced instrument has been wrongly identified. His violin 'is currently not in Germany, nor on loan to the unnamed American violinist who misplaced her violin on a German train'.

 

Read: Insurance worked convicted of stealing £300,000 viola from a London train

Photos: Ziv Arazi/Rare Violins of New York