19.07.2024
Ethnologisches Museum
On 18 July 2024, in the presence of the Ambassador of the Republic of Guatemala, H.E. Jorge Alfredo Lemcke Arevalo, two replicas were formally handed over to the Guatemalan Museo Comunitarío Yalambojoch in the Gipsformerei of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The plaster casts of objects from the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum, which were handcrafted by the Gipsformerei, will be used in years to come to impart local Indigenous knowledge.
The handover of the two replicas forms part of a long-term cooperation project between the Ethnologisches Museum and the Associación Awum Te, the organisation that is responsible for the local community centre in Yalambojoch, Guatemala. The organisation operates the community centre, which emerged as the result of an Indigenous community initiative in 2018, as a cultural forum for local communities. The Associación Awum Te is currently drafting a concept for a museum that will be situated inside the community centre and is intended to merge the transfer of knowledge regarding local history with museum-based educational activities on regional culture.
The replicas in question are plaster casts of two sandstone artefacts that date back to around 800–900 CE: a sun stone from what is commonly known as the Temple of the Sun and an ancestral figure adorned with decorative neckwear. While on location in Guatemala, Eduard Georg Seler, scholar of pre-Columbian America and former director of the American Department of the Berliner Museum für Völkerkunde (now the Ethnologisches Museum), made “paper casts” – negative moulds made out of paper – of the two stone objects, from which plaster casts were later created in Berlin. Using these casts as a basis, the Gipsformerei produced long-lasting plaster moulds that are still used to create replicas in the workshop today. The artefacts cast by Seler were first officially presented for sale in 1900, but are part of the Gipsformerei’s relatively lesser known subcollections. Given that both of the stone artefacts in question are today considered lost, the historical moulds serve as a “back-up” in plaster. The solar disc was executed by Seler in the original, but has been considered a wartime loss since 1944; the stone figure was not executed, but is also presumed lost. The handover of the two replicas is one of the first “restitutions” carried out by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin to involve plaster casts, thereby illustrating their immense significance within the broader context of our shared cultural heritage.
In addition to the provision of replicas, the cooperation project between the Ethnologisches Museum and the Associación Awum Te also comprises the implementation of an exhibition concept for the museum in Yalambojoch that will incorporate conservational expertise from Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum. The goal of the partnership is to foster exchange regarding cultural traditions in Yalambojoch and the wider region, for example by involving the local school in a corresponding museum programme for education and outreach, the framework of which will draw upon findings from Eduard Seler’s research.
Today, Yalambojoch is a village inhabited by roughly 2,000 people, located in the municipality of Nenton in the department of Huehuetenango. It is located in the Guatemalan inland, approximately 200 kilometres northwest of Guatemala City on the border with Mexico. The population of the village is comprised mainly of Indigenous people, with the majority speaking the Mayan language Chuj.
In 1896, historian and scholar of pre-Columbian America Eduard Seler and his wife Caecilie Seler-Sachs visited the region that is today Guatemala. They also travelled through the Chaculá region and the village of Yalambojoch and, with the permission of Gustavo Kanter, a German-born finca owner with extensive estates, carried out archaeological surveys and excavations. With over 600 objects, including 25 plaster casts, the Ethnologisches Museum’s collection of pre-Hispanic cultural artefacts from the Chaculá region, which dates back to when these excavations were conducted, is one of the most important of its kind in the world.