Sapper Family
Several members of this Swabian family established themselves in Guatemala in the late nineteenth century and prospered as coffee planters and leading members of the German immigrant community.
While managing his brother Richard’s estate, Karl Theodor Sapper collected scientific data in the Alta Verapaz region and continued his geographical, geological, and anthropological investigations during several extended journeys through Mexico and Guatemala in the 1890s. After his return to Germany he taught geography at several universities and published numerous scientific and popular books and articles based on his work in Central America.Richard Sapper (1862-1912), whose father August had operated a hammer mill in the small Bavarian town of Wittislingen, was apprenticed to an export merchant in Bari (Italy). He emigrated to Guatemala in 1884, where he began his career as an estate manager but soon acquired land of his own. His estate in the municipalities of Coban, San Pedro Carcha, Senahu, Teleman, and Lanquιn, Alta Verapaz, eventually comprised a combined 30,000 acres with 550,000 coffee trees and was valued at 1.2 million reichsmarks in 1897 (Wagner 1991, 202-208). He also built up a large export firm and served as representative of the Guatemalan national bank in the Vera- paz region. In 1889 he became president of the German Society of Guatemala and in 1897 he was appointed vice-consul. Richard Sapper had four children from his marriage to Charlotte Schilling, daughter of a district judge in Ravensburg, Wurttemberg, in 1890. His youngest son, Theodor Helmuth, succeeded him in the office of German vice-consul. During World War II, Theodor Helmuth Sapper and 141 other Germans were arrested and deported to an internment camp in Texas in 1943.
Richard’s younger brother, Karl Theodor Sapper, was born in Wittislingen on February 6, 1866.
He attended high school in Ravensburg and studied geology and natural sciences in Munich from 1884 to 1888. After finishing his studies with a PhD degree in geography, he traveled to Guatemala to visit his brother Richard andrecuperate from pneumonia. From 1889 to 1893 he managed his brother’s Campur plantation in the municipality of San Pedro Carcha. In collaboration with the German planter Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, Sapper excavated several archaeological sites in the Ve- rapaz region, including the ancient Maya town of Mixco Viejo. Combining his own scientific interests with the economic interests of the region’s planters, Sapper systematically mapped the Alta Verapaz, surveyed estate boundaries, and established a series of meteorological stations. Following some geological work in Mexico (1893-1895) he returned to Guatemala, where he undertook numerous scientific expeditions in the years 1895 to 1900. Returning to Germany in 1900, Sapper submitted his second doctoral thesis (Habilitatiori) titled “On the Geological Significance of the Tropical Forms of Vegetation in Central and South America,” which was based on the data and observations collected during his travels, at the University of Leipzig. He became associate professor at the University of Tubingen in 1902 and full professor in geography in 1907. The following year Sapper and the ethnologist Georg Friederici undertook an expedition to New Guinea (then a German colony known as the Bismarck Archipelago) under the auspices of the Imperial Colonial Office. In 1910 he was appointed professor of geography and ethnology at the University of Straβburg, and in 1919 he became professor in Wurzburg. He founded an institute for American research there and served as rector of the university in 1928 and 1929 before retiring in 1932. Sapper, who was also elected to several prestigious scientific societies, died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, on March 29,1945.
Of Karl Theodor Sapper’s numerous scholarly publications, his work on Central America’s volcanoes and his cartographical work in particular have proved to be of enduring value.
A total of eighty-one volcanoes were first charted by him. His ethnological studies on the Maya peoples of Guatemala, especially the K’ekchi and the Pokom’chi, promoted the knowledge of their cultures in Europe. In his later years Sapper also published several studies on ancient American civilizations and on the colonial history of Guatemala that continue to be cited in modern scholarly publications. He corresponded with numerous geographers and ethnologists on both sides of the Atlantic, including the German American anthropologist Franz Boas, who taught at Columbia University starting in 1899.Michaela Schmolz-Haberlein
See also Dieseldorff, Erwin Paul; Panama; Termer, Karl Ferdinand Franz; World War I, German Prisoners and Civilian Internees in
References and Further Reading
Beaudy-Corbett, Marilyn, and Ellen T.
Hardy, eds. Early Scholars’ Visits to Central America. Reports by Karl Sapper, Walter Lehmann, and Franz Termer. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, 2000.
Schmolz-Haberlein, Michaela. Die Grenzen des Caudillismo. Die Modernisierung des guatemaltekischen Staates unter Jorge Ubico 1931—1944. Eine regionalgeschichtliche Studie am Beispiel der Alta Verapaz. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993.
Thermer, Franz. “Carlos Sapper, explorador de Centro America (1866-1945).” Revista Conservadora del Pensamiento Centroamericano 14, no. 69 (1966): 32-43.
Wagner, Regina. Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1828—1944. Guatemala City: Editorial IDEA, 1991.