Treasure Hunt: A New York Times Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg Hoard
A kleptomaniacal American soldier with a taste for high art, a relentless German sleuth hot on the trail of missing German treasures, and a priceless 9th-century gospel about to disappear forever into the shadowy world of private art collectors--the stuff of fiction? Hardly. InTreasure HuntWilliam H. Honan, a reporter for theNew York Times, chronicles the amazing true story of the Quedlinburg Hoard, a cache of medieval treasures stolen from its hiding place in Germany's Harz Mountains at the end of World War II, only to resurface 40 years later in a small Texas town. How it got there and how the German government retrieved it is at the heart of Honan's tale.Like the story itself, the people involved in the Quedlinburg heist are larger than life; take Joe Tom Meador, an American G.I. who "liberated" 12 of Quedlinburg's most precious artifacts and smuggled them back to Texas, where he led a strange and secret life. For every Moriarty there must be a Holmes, and in Honan's tale it is Willi Korte, hired by the German government to find and recover the treasure. In the best thriller tradition, Korte is in a race against time: Meador's heirs are planning to sell the loot on the private market, and once the objects have vanished into private collections, the chance of recovering them is almost nil. Honan rightly relays this jewel of a tale in fine dramatic style, making the factualTreasure Huntread like the best fiction.