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German church sues for return of art treasures
On this day in 1990, a civil action was filed in United States District
Court in Dallas on behalf of a German church seeking the return of a
number of medieval objets d'art that had disappeared at the end of
World War II. During the war, the Lutheran Church of St. Servatius in
Quedlinburg, Germany, had placed the objects in a mineshaft for
safekeeping, but reported their loss in June 1945. After one of the
objects appeared on the market in Europe in 1987, a German investigator
traced the remaining pieces to Whitewright, Texas, where a former U.S.
Army lieutenant named Joe Meador had settled. In 1945 Meador had served in
the occupation of Quedlinburg. Fellow soldiers reported seeing him
carrying mysterious bundles out of the mine. Meador was discharged from
the army in 1946; after his death in 1980, his brother and sister began
trying to sell the objects. The suit was settled in 1991, when the Germans
announced that they would pay the Meador family $2.75 million for the
return of the treasures. In 1998, however, the Internal Revenue Service
announced it was seeking more than $50 million in federal taxes,
penalties, and interest from the estate. The Meadors settled the case two
years later by agreeing to pay $135,000.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- QUEDLINBURG ART AFFAIR
- WHITEWRIGHT, TX
- WORLD WAR II, TEXANS IN
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
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