For many years, Mexico has unsuccessfully sought the return of Moctezuma’s Sixteenth-century feather headdress, at the moment housed on the Weltmuseum in Vienna. Now an Austrian presidential hopeful, the economist Gunther Fehlinger-Jahn, has pledged to return the headdress to Mexico if he’s elected in 2028. The contested Aztec object is again within the highlight in what could also be its first inclusion in an Austrian politician’s broader repatriation agenda.
“Austria and Mexico ought to negotiate a bilateral answer primarily based on friendship reasonably than confrontation,” Fehlinger-Jahn, whose impartial candidacy stays unconfirmed, tells The Artwork Newspaper. “The unique penacho ought to in the end belong to Mexico.”
The one identified surviving instance of its form, the headdress reveals the Indigenous mastery of featherwork. The closely modified 1.3m-high, 1.75m-wide quetzalapanecayotl (Quetzal headdress) initially featured 4 zones of emerald-green, crimson, brown and blue feathers, together with gold ornaments.
How precisely the headdress arrived in Europe stays unsure. One concept means that Moctezuma, the final Aztec ruler, gave it to the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés; it might have been included amongst objects that Cortés despatched to Charles V. But consultants largely agree that Moctezuma by no means wore it. “The headdress’s origin is unsure, and its affiliation with Moctezuma got here a lot later,” the Mexican historian Federico Navarrete tells The Artwork Newspaper.
The headdress’s first documented European reference dates to 1596, within the stock of Ambras Fortress in Innsbruck, the place it was described as “a Moorish hat” (a generic time period describing unique objects). Rediscovered in disrepair within the nineteenth century, it was recognized as Indigenous Mexican and restored. In 1888, it went on view at Vienna’s Pure Historical past Museum and later entered what’s now the Weltmuseum, which holds quite a few objects from former European colonies.
Restitution efforts started within the 1860s, when Mexico’s Habsburg emperor Maximilian requested its return. “The headdress was a logo of energy which Maximilian would embody, exhibiting historic continuity,” says Miruna Achim, a researcher at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Cuajimalpa in Mexico Metropolis.
Efforts continued from the Eighties. “The headdress is probably the most symbolic artifact that Mexico has been attempting to repatriate for many years,” says Pierre Losson, the creator of the ebook The Return of Cultural Heritage to Latin America (2022). He provides that, just like the Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon Marbles, Moctezuma’s headdress retains resurfacing in repatriation debates.
In 2020, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, the spouse of then-Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, travelled to Austria to request the headdress’s mortgage for a 2021 exhibition marking 500 years since Tenochtitlán’s fall. Mexico provided Habsburg-era objects in alternate, together with Maximilian and Carlota’s gilded carriage. Austria denied the request, inflicting diplomatic tensions.
Austria cites the headdress’s fragility as the rationale for rejecting its mortgage. A 2010-12 joint research between Mexico and Austria deemed it too fragile to move, as vibrations may destroy it. But some consultants dispute this evaluation. Activists, together with the Mexican dancer Xokonoschtletl Gómora, proceed to advocate for the headdress’s return.
“If transport stays unsafe,” Fehlinger-Jahn says, “possession may very well be transferred whereas consultants set up a joint conservation and stewardship association till it turns into potential.” However his total strategy has been very uncommon.
“Governments are more and more coping with repatriation, however it’s uncommon for somebody to take this place in an election context,” Losson says. “Even when elected, an Austrian president can not resolve unilaterally on restitution.” In Austria, new laws enabling the restitution of colonial-era objects stays pending.
The state of affairs surrounding Moctezuma’s headdress displays a bigger international debate. “This pledge is a part of a wider repatriation wave, by which the position of museums as custodians of common artwork is being questioned,” Achim says. Staring with López Obrador’s administration, Mexico has prioritised returning pre-Hispanic heritage, which is carefully tied to its nationwide id. In July, president Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration introduced that it had recovered a complete of three,716 cultural objects.
