Teobert Maler negatives and prints

Teobert Maler was born in Rome in January 1842. Even though he was of German/Austrian descent, his father's occupation as a representative of the Grand Duchy of Baden to the Holy See and Pope in Rome explains his Italian birthplace. When he was two, he lost his mother to a sudden illness, and his father's uneasy and depressed temperament contributed to a difficult upbringing that would later reflect in his own personality.

Teobert Maler left home at twenty years of age and moved to Austria where he became an official citizen and worked as an architect's draftsmen. After traveling to Paris and London, he enlisted in an Austrian military corps to accompany Archduke Maximillian in Mexico. He spent the next three years mostly in combat in Mexico until the demise of Maximillian. For another eleven years, Maler stayed in Mexico trekking all over, even to Palenque where he made the false discovery of the Temple of the Foliated Cross.

Upon his father's death, the Prussian government seized his inheritance forcing Teobert Maler to return home. As he awaited the case to be settled, he visited Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains. Eventually, the case settled in 1885 and he moved to the Yucatan and established a home at Tikal. Over the next ten years, he explored the Yucatan peninsula taking photographs of the ruins and creating measured plans of them. His collection of these photographs and plans would later be published in 1997 as Peninsula Yucatan.

In 1895, Maler went south to Tikal, then down the Rió Pasión, took the Usumacinta River to Tenosique, and then returned to the Yucatan. On this journey, he visited Motul de San José, Seibal, and Piedras Negras, and he took the first photographs of the sculptures at these locations. Before he could publish his Gran Atlas de Antigüedades de Mexico y de la América Central, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology sent him a proposal to explore the Lacandón forest. Maler accepted their offer and set off in 1898. Even though he visited the Lacandóns at Laguna Petha, his work was not productive. He relocated to Yucatan capital of Merida, and spent four months in Piedras Negras and three months in Yaxchilán. Already in his sixties, Maler went on expeditions to Tikal, Yaxha, Naranjo, Cancun, and Seibal. Five years before he passed away, he traveled to Europe one last time, returning to Merida.

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