Where is Quedlinburg?
The town of Quedlinburg exists since the early 9th century, or longer, and is one of the largest and best-preserved medieval towns in Europe. Located north of the Harz Mountains in Germany, the central part of the city is home to 2,000 half-timbered houses from at least five different centuries. The city’s outer fringes showcase 19th and 20th-century Art Nouveau buildings. In 1994, Quedlinburg’s castle, oldtown, and its abbey church, St. Servatius, were added to the Unesco World Heritage List.
The church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg houses priceless art treasures. Photo courtesy of Barbara Dondrup, Pixabay. www.walled-in-berlin.com
Quedlingburg’s Art Treasures
St. Servatius is one of the best-preserved 12th-century buildings in Germany and houses Quedlinburg’s extraordinary art treasures. This collection of 65 art objects dates from the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. It includes golden chests, unique textiles, religious manuscripts, crystal bottles, ivory combs, and swords. Many of the items are covered with jewels. The collection also includes the alleged remains of martyrs of the Middle Ages. Some of the pieces were assembled by King Henry the Fowler, and his wife Mathilde, who died in 936 and 968 respectively.
The Quedlinburg Art Treasures were Stolen at the End of WWII
In 1938, Nazi leader, Heinrich Himmler, started to convert St. Servatius into a National Socialist devotional site. To make room for Nazi memorabilia, the treasures were first moved to a bank in the center of town and then, in 1942, to the Altenburg Caves, southwest of the city. On 19 April 1945, the American Army occupied Quedlinburg and was tasked with guarding the entrance to the caves. City officials, afraid that mold may damage the art objects, asked that the collection be brought to the front of the cave, where ventilation was better, making the thousand-year-old relics more accessible. One month later, a Quedlinburg official discovered that 12 of the most valuable pieces were missing. The U.S. Army launched an investigation. But since the Americans pulled out of the region in July 1945, and the new occupying power, the Soviet Union, never continued the search, the theft remained a mystery.
Who Committed the Theft?
Many years later, it came to light that a first lieutenant, serving with the U.S. 87th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, had brazenly stolen priceless pieces of the collection during the short time the American Army occupied Quedlinburg. His name was Joe Tom Meador. Fellow soldiers saw him repeatedly emerging from the cave with his jacket bulging. In fact, Meador sent several packages through military mail to his parents in his hometown of Whitewright, Texas. He attached a note, “Don’t ask me where I got it, but it could possibly be very, very valuable.” After the war, Meador kept the treasures in his closet and later in a safe in the hardware store he took over from his father. He displayed them proudly to visitors and told them that he had “liberated the pieces from Germany.”
Recovery of the Quedlinburg Art Treasures
In 1988, a “Quedlinburg gospel book” was offered for sale to the state library in West Berlin for $8 million. A married couple from the U.S. claimed to be the book’s owners. In reality, the couple were Meador’s brother and sister, Jack and Jane. Meador had passed away eight years earlier, and they had inherited the item. But the transaction could not be completed because Quedlinburg was located in East Germany, and the East German regime did not have the cash to purchase the treasure.
Only in Texas
In Texas, the statute of limitations for the appropriation of stolen goods is just two years. Quedlinburg authorities would have had to lodge a complaint by 1982, within two years after Meador’s death. But they did not know who had absconded with the treasures at that time. Undoubtedly, the Meador heirs felt safe from the law when they put the gospel book on the market in Germany in 1988, eight years after their brother’s death. In 1993, the art pieces reacquired by the St. Servatius parish and are on display again, except for two pieces that remain missing.
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: Historic or current events, people, places or food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall, and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
