treasure hunt
By LYNN H. NICHOLAS
How a journalist helped crack the case of the missing medieval loot
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TREASURE
HUNT |
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a blistering hot day a lone figure walks down the long, narrow street of a
semi-ghost town in Texas. From the ticket booth of the abandoned movie theater
a whitened cow’s skull watches. Farther long, three tough-looking characters
stand across the path. In the nick of time the loner finds refuge in the local
newspaper office. Scene from a Clint Eastwood movie? Not at all. It is from the
fascinating account by William H. Honan, a cultural reporter for The New York
Times, of the recovery of priceless medieval treasures stolen at the end of
World War II by a kleptomaniac soldier, who in later life would sometimes sport
a woman’s pink wig. And it’s a true story. The church treasures of Quedlinburg,
an ancient storybook town in Germany’s Harz Mountains, included delicate
reliquaries of rock crystal and gold (in which tiny bits of cloth and wood,
said to be from the Virgin’s robe and the true Cross, may still be seen), an
elaborately carved ivory comb and two manuscripts in jeweled covers, one of
which, the ninth-century Samuhel Gospel, written entirely in gold ink, is
beyond price. The objects had accumulated at Quedlinburg as gifts to the church
from a Saxon king, Heinrich I (876?-936), and his successors, Otto I and Otto
II. Heinrich was especially revered as a founder of Germany, Honan says, and
the church became a national shrine. Through the ages some of the objects were
stolen, or hidden from the likes of Napoleon, but they had always returned.
In the Nazi era
Heinrich Himmler, who secretly regarded himself as the reincarnation of
Heinrich I, turned Quedlinburg into a “Germanic sanctuary” in which Christian
ritual was replaced by torch-lighted SS ceremonials featuring, on one occasion,
the magical appearance of the Reichsfuhrer SS himself from a secret compartment
in the church floor. In 1943, to protect them from both the SS and whatever
conqueror might next arrive, local officials removed their treasures to a
mushroom cave outside the town. While American troops occupied the area in
1945, 12 of the most precious objects disappeared. There was little doubt that
they had been looted by soldiers, but investigation by the Army was hampered
when Quedlinburg became part of the Soviet Zone, and the case was dropped.
Nothing more was heard
of the treasure until 1983, when rumors of the availability of a magnificent
bejeweled manuscript began to be heard in the tiny world of medieval
specialists. From the descriptions it could not be other than the Samuhel
Gospel. The word soon got to the West German Government, which had an agency
dedicated to recovering looted national treasures. Enter Willi Korte, art
sleuth extraordinary, as hired gun to track down the Quedlinburg works. Wise to
the ways of America, he immediately called Honan. The search was on.
The Quedlinburg case
is a classic example of the fate of war loot. An object is stolen and hidden by
the thief for years. The thief dies, and his heirs, at first ignorant of what
they have, try to sell the piece. When enlightened as to its value, they are
overwhelmed by greed, and a minuet with middlemen begins. One of Honan’s great
accomplishments in “Treasure Hunt” is his revelation of the virtually total
absence of conscience in the art world; museums, dealers and auction houses
desperately tried to think of a way to acquire or profit from these treasures,
which they knew to be stolen. Here the art trade, the greatest unregulated
industry in the world, is revealed in all its elegant corruption.
Equally fascinating is
Honan’s portrait of the thief, Joe Tom Meador, the totally misplaced esthete
who, all during his wartime service as a forward observer for an artillery unit
(one of the most dangerous jobs in the Army), stole and stole, explaining to
buddies that he “needed” the objects. His obsession with them would be their
salvation. For Meador the treasures were not things to be sold but objects of
delight, which he used after the war to impress people and to lure sexual
partners. The backdrops of his life were surreal in their contrast. On
weekdays, Meador, in baggy overalls, presided over a moribund hardware store in
the tiny Texas town of Whitewright and lived with a family straight out of “The
Simpsons.” On weekends he repaired to the gay community of Dallas and a modern
apartment decorated with his gleaming medieval collection.
But in this book the
chase is the thing, and Honan, despite occasional lapses into bad dime-novel
style, gives us a very good read, full of suspense, plus a chronicle of the
methods of the investigative reporter. After much research and consultation
with lawyers, dealers and specialists in the looting and recovery of art
(including this reviewer), he found the lead that took him to Texas. He
relentlessly searched obscure files in even more obscure courthouses in the
Texas hinterlands. With determination and considerable charm, he elicited vital
evidence from a highly colorful array of characters (some of them downright
nasty) and soon discovered the identity of the thief and his heirs. Speed was
of the essence, for it was known that the owners were deep in negotiation with
a number of interested buyers, and should the objects be sold to a private
collector they could vanish forever.
In the end, all but
two of the works, which are still unaccounted for, would be bought back from
Meador’s relatives by the German Cultural Foundation. Before Honan’s
investigations were completed, the Samuhel Gospel was marketed through a dealer
in Switzerland. The rest of the hoard, location and owners now known to all the
world, were sequestered by a Texas judge after frantic legal maneuvering by
Willi Korte and a Washington lawyer, Thomas Kline, whose adventuresome
investigative paths constantly crisscross those of Honan in the course of the
narrative. The Meadors settled. Their total take approached $3 million, but it
is unlikely that they will be able to keep it all. They face possible tax
penalties of some $50 million and criminal prosecution by the Justice
Department.
Whitewright, besieged
for weeks by reporters and television crews, is quiet again, and the treasures
glow in their cases in Germany. But we can relive the whole story in this
exciting and often rather touching book, written in an easygoing style. Take it
to the beach—and hope for the movie.
Lynn H. Nicholas is
the author of “The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third
Reich and the Second World War.”