2023-08-22 22:02:14
At least 77 pre-Columbian pieces from the Tairona, San Agustín, Guane, Calima and Quimbaya communities were recovered by the Colombian government, after more than four decades in the hands of private collectors in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
The aboriginal objects were acquired in Colombia in 1974 by a German family and returned to the country, after the mediation of the ambassador in Berlin, Yadir Salazar Mejía, with the support of the Martini-Mogg-Vogt law firm.
Lennin Gell Hernández, Consul General in Frankfurt, who traveled to the town of Sankt Johann, district of Mayen-Koblenz, in Rhineland-Palatinate, was in charge of collecting the pieces and signing the delivery act with those who until now were their holders.
Archaeologists from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICAHN) evaluated the photographic records of a total of 81 returned pieces and determined that 77 were part of the “archaeological heritage of the Nation”, so that they were subject to local regulations on the possession of goods of this type.
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The artifacts and archaeological figures were packed and transferred under chain of custody from the place of reception to the General Consulate of Colombia in Frankfurt am Main and await repatriation, the Foreign Ministry explained.
Only two months ago, Germany returned to Colombia two ritual pre-Hispanic masks of the Kogui people, which remained in the possession of the Ethnological Museum of Berlin for 108 years.
With these 77 recovered pieces, the total number of artifacts and figures of the Archaeological and Cultural Heritage of the Nation, which were found in Germany, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, increased to 539 during the first year of the government of Gustavo Petro.
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