The discovery of 21 unknown Rizal objects

During my 20 years of Rizal research work I discovered several unpublished letters of Rizal and several unpublished objects Rizal has described in his letters/diaries. In 2009 I got hold of an unpublished letter of Dr. Rizal dated London July 3, 1888 addressed to Dr. Bastian of the ethnological museum in Berlin. Rizal informed Dr. Bastian that he had received a letter from Dr. Joest with the question if he (Dr. Joest) could open a box which the ethnological museum had received. Although Rizal had sent the box to Dr. Jagor he wrote that he had no objection that they could open the box. Associated with this letter was a list of 21 items.

I was anxious to find out if those 21 objects still existed. In 2009, I contacted the ethnological museum in Berlin and a couple of days later, I received the unbelievable answer: they had located the 21 objects. I asked if it was possible to see the objects. Again, I received a positive answer: it was possible!

I could not wait to go to Berlin. The opportunity came very fast as I had been invited to attend the chartering of the Berlin-Bradenburg chapter in April 2009. I drove early March 2009 to Berlin for a Rizalian research trip. During this one week trip I performed several researches but the main aim was the ethnological museum.

This was once more a thrilling experience in my Rizalian research. The museum had exposed the 21 objects, which are normally kept in a vault, on a table. The condition of the objects appeared incredibly good. My hands trembled when I touched the objects which Rizal had sent to the museum 131 years ago.

I’ve carefully compared the objects with Rizal’s unpublished letter. They were all there: saya, kalikut, calzon, barong, salakot, different camisas, etc.

I believe (not to say I am sure) that the Barong Tagalog in the Museum was not Rizal’s personal one, but simply a sample presented by him. On his list, Rizal specified only one of these objects as being his own: a salakot (es gehörte mir — “this was mine”, as he annotated on the list).

After my research in the Czech Republic in 1998 and 2005 where I have seen the Rizal-Blumentritt documents and an unknown original copyof Noli me Tangere with dedication this Berlin research is my greatest discovery.

Some of the pictures have already been shown at the chartering of the Berlin-Hamburg chapter of the Knights of Rizal in April 2009 in the presence of Embassy personnel among them first secretary and consul Julius Caesar Flores, at the 3rd US Regional Assembly in Las Vegas, Sept. 3-5, 2010 and to the Rizal family in February 2011. (Lucien Spittael is a Belgian historian and Rizal researcher. He keynoted the ongoing Int’l Conference on Rizal at GT-Toyota Auditorium.)