Sweden – Illis quorum (Illis quorum meruere labores) Raoul Wallenberg.
Description
Illis quorum (Illis quorum meruere labores) “For Those Whose Labors Have Deserved It“, is a Swedish gold medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to Swedish culture, science or society.
The award was introduced in 1784 by King Gustav III, and was first awarded in 1785. Prior to 1975, the medal was awarded by the King of Sweden. Illis quorum is now awarded by the Government of Sweden, and it is currently the highest award that can be conferred upon an individual Swedish citizen by the Government.
The medal is awarded, on average, to seven people per year.
Today’s object in Our calendar is not really the original medal, but a Proof Strike medal stuck by the Swedish mint for the 1952 award, to the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945) was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings he declared as Swedish territory.
On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared. In 1957, 12 years after his disappearance, he was reported by Soviet authorities to have died of a suspected myocardial infarction on 17 July 1947 while imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the prison at the headquarters of the NKVD secret police in Moscow. However, the cause and date of death have been disputed ever since.
In 2016, the Swedish Tax Agency declared him dead in absentia, with the pro forma date of death noted as 31 July 1952.
This medal is a Proof Strike medal, not the original medal awarded to Raoul Wallenberg in absentia 1952. A Proof Strike is the highest quality type of strike that the mint uses. Production workers pay special attention when they are handling the blanks and planchets to minimize scrapes, scratches, and other damage that can affect the quality of the Proof medal.
This is a really unique piece of Swedish phaleristic history and a real one-off piece.
