Theft of medieval art from Quedlinburg

The theft of medieval art from Quedlinburg was perpetrated by United States Army Lieutenant Joe T. Meador in the days prior to the end of World War II in Europe.

The most famous illuminated manuscript associated with the town, the 5th-century Quedlinburg Itala fragment, once in the church, had been moved to a museum in Berlin and was not stolen.

William Honan, an author and journalist working for The New York Times, published in 1997 an account of the theft and how he traced it to the Meador family.

[2] Quedlinburg Abbey was founded as a proprietary church of the Ottonian Imperial family by Emperor Otto the Great in 936, as a memorial to his father.

[2] Before the war, in 1938, Meador had received a bachelor's degree from North Texas State University, majoring in art,[2] so he would have had a better appreciation than most of the value of the find.

On January 4, 1996, Jack Meador, Jane Cook, and their lawyer, John Torigian, were indicted for "conspiring to receive, possess, conceal, store, barter, sell and dispose of stolen goods and for receiving, possessing, concealing, storing, bartering, selling and disposing of stolen goods.