Maler, Teobert (1842-1917)
Teobert Maler, an architect by training, first traveled to Mexico in 1865 in the entourage of Emperor Maximilian. He traveled through southern Mexico between 1865 and 1877 as well as between 1884 and 1894 and took trips through Guatemala between 1895 and 1905. Maler is considered a pioneer in the research of Mayan ruins. He produced a large number of excellent drawings and photographs and drew up lists of words from the Totonacan and Zapotec languages. The Ibero-American Institute is in possession of many of Maler’s photographs, sketches, plans, newspaper clippings and architectural drawings of Mayan ruins. The objects also include an account of a trip to Veracruz (1902-03), notebooks filled with sketches and diary-like entries (1886-95), a recently published three-volume manuscript containing archaeological descriptions of ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as manuscripts detailing Mayan ruins in the Petén region of northern Guatemala and the Usumacinta region of southern Mexico. Scope: twelve notebooks, approx. ninety large-format folders of photographs, nine boxes of photographs and six A4 folders of photographs.