Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond: The Centuries-Old Blue Diamond With a Royal Past

The Disappearance and Mystery (1931-1962)

The Wittelsbach Diamond’s history takes a strange and partly mysterious turn in the 20th century.

The 1931 Christie’s Auction

After World War I, the Wittelsbach family faced severe financial difficulties. The German government permitted them to sell 13 of the Crown Jewels, including the Wittelsbach Blue. In 1931, Christie’s London listed the diamond at auction.

The bidding reached only £5,400, and the stone reportedly failed to meet its reserve. According to some accounts, the actual diamond disappeared before the auction and was replaced by a worthless piece of cut blue glass.

The 30+ Year Disappearance

For more than three decades after the 1931 auction, the Wittelsbach Diamond’s whereabouts were unknown to the public. The actual stone reportedly resurfaced in Belgium in 1951 but remained unattributed.

In 1958, an unidentified blue diamond was exhibited at the World Expo in Brussels. Few visitors realized they were looking at the long-lost Wittelsbach Blue.

1962: Joseph Komkommer’s Recognition

The Wittelsbach Diamond was correctly identified in 1962 by Belgian jeweler Joseph Komkommer. According to multiple historical accounts, Komkommer was asked to evaluate a “mystery diamond” for potential recutting by the Goldmuntz family, who had acquired the stone.

When Komkommer opened the package, he immediately recognized the historical significance of the Wittelsbach Diamond. Concerned that recutting would destroy its historical value, he refused to perform the work. Instead, he organized a group of dealers to purchase the stone collectively to preserve it.

In our market observations, Joseph Komkommer’s recognition of the stone in 1962 may be the single most important act of historical preservation in 20th century diamond history. Without his refusal to recut and his coordinated purchase, the original Wittelsbach Diamond would likely have been lost to history decades earlier.

1964-2008: The Horten Years

In 1964, German businessman Helmut Horten purchased the Wittelsbach Diamond and presented it to his wife Heidi as a wedding gift. The diamond remained in the Horten family’s private collection for over four decades, rarely seen by the public.

After Helmut Horten’s death, the diamond was eventually consigned to Christie’s London for the 2008 auction that would transform its modern history.

The 2008 Auction and Laurence Graff

The Wittelsbach Diamond’s December 2008 sale was one of the most consequential single-jewel auctions of the 21st century.

Pre-Auction Context

Christie’s experts meticulously verified the diamond’s provenance, tracing it back to 1664 through royal inventories from the Spanish, Austrian, and Bavarian courts. The diamond was offered as the highlight of Christie’s December 10, 2008 “Jewels: The London Sale.”

Industry experts expected the diamond to sell for approximately $15 million, in the range of other major historic stones at the time.

The Sale

On December 10, 2008, the hammer fell at $24,262,008 USD (£16.4 million) including buyer’s premium, far exceeding pre-sale estimates and setting a world record for any diamond sold at auction at that time.

The buyer was British jeweler Laurence Graff of Graff Diamonds, who would later describe the purchase as “the pinnacle of his career.”

Henri Barguirdjian, then-president and CEO of Graff Diamonds USA, captured what made the diamond special: “The provenance of a gem is important in ways that are not true of other things. With the Wittelsbach blue, you knew how it came into existence and in a rather exciting way. You know who has worn it, what kinds of historical events it has gone through and what social upheavals it was present for.”

A key insight often overlooked: the 2008 sale at $24.3 million held the world record for “most expensive diamond sold at auction” until 2010, when it was surpassed by the Graff Pink at $46.2 million, also purchased by Laurence Graff.

The Controversial Recut

After acquiring the Wittelsbach in 2008, Laurence Graff made the most controversial decision in modern diamond history: he ordered the historic stone to be recut.

Graff’s Rationale

In January 2010, Graff revealed that he had commissioned three master diamond cutters to remove flaws from the historic stone. The recut sacrificed:

• 4.45 carats (890 mg) of weight (from 35.56 to 31.06 carats)
• Some surface bruises and chips accumulated over centuries
• The original 82-facet cutting pattern

Graff defended his decision: “I decided that to create beauty, or acts of beauty, is not a sin. All we did was remove the blemishes and now it’s true perfection.”

The Results

The recut transformed the stone:

• Weight: 35.56 → 31.06 carats (4.45 carat sacrifice)
• Color: Fancy Deep Grayish-Blue → Fancy Deep Blue (cleaner, more vivid)
• Clarity: VS2 → Internally Flawless (highest clarity grade)
• GIA designation: largest Internally Flawless Fancy Deep Blue ever graded

By technical grading metrics, the recut Wittelsbach-Graff is now objectively a finer diamond than the original Wittelsbach.

The Backlash

The recount sparked intense criticism from gemologists, historians, and the German cultural establishment.

Notable critics included:

• Gabriel Tolkowsky (legendary diamond cutter): called the recut “the end of culture”
• Professor Hans Ottomeyer (director of Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin): compared the recut to “the overpainting of a painting by Rembrandt”
• Scott Sucher (American gem cutter): noted that “in the case of the Wittelsbach, what’s at stake is at minimum over 350 years of history, as every nick, chip, and scratch has a story to tell”
• General German cultural opinion: viewed the alteration as destruction of national heritage

In our professional assessment, the Wittelsbach-Graff recut represents one of the most genuine ethical debates in modern gemology. Both perspectives have merit. The recut undeniably created a more visually stunning diamond. It also destroyed irreplaceable historical context that had survived for 350+ years.

The Smithsonian Exhibition

In 2010, after the recut, Laurence Graff loaned the Wittelsbach-Graff to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for a six-month exhibition (January 28 – August 1, 2010).

The diamond was displayed alongside the Hope Diamond, marking the first time these two legendary blue diamonds had been shown together publicly. Both stones share remarkable similarities:

• Both originated from India’s Golconda mines
• Both are Type IIb diamonds (boron-induced blue)
• Both exhibit rare red phosphorescence under UV light
• Both have spent centuries in royal collections

The Smithsonian Scientific Investigation

During the Wittelsbach-Graff’s residence at the Smithsonian, researchers conducted detailed analysis to determine whether the two diamonds shared a common crystal origin.

The Smithsonian’s findings:

• Both diamonds share remarkable similarities in chemistry and properties
• Both formed in similar geological conditions in India
• However, they did NOT originate from the same crystal
• Small but significant differences were observed in their red phosphorescence (the Wittelsbach-Graff’s is slightly longer and more intense)
• Different luminescence patterns were observed under DiamondView analysis

A key insight often overlooked: the Smithsonian’s confirmation that these are two separate diamonds (rather than fragments of the same original crystal) is one of the most important scientific findings in modern gemological research.