4 June 1946 – 28 August 2009

Wayeb announces with sadness that our friend and colleague Annegrete Hohmann-Vogrin lost her fight against cancer and died on August 28, 2009.

Annegrete and her husband Hasso already shared an interest in the architecture and culture of ancient civilizations during their studies of architecture at the University of Graz. In the 1960s they started their architectural survey of Copan, the results of which were published in 1982 in their two volume work of “Die Architektur von Copán” (The architecture of Copan). Annegrete travelled to the Maya area nearly every year to undertake research on the architecture of various Maya sites, producing surveys, maps and photography. Her habilitation work “Struktur und Bedeutung der Stadt” (Structure and meaning of the city) is one of the most substantial contributions to research on Maya cities. The focus of her recent work rested on building arrangements and the perception of social and religious realities in Maya architecture. She was co-founder of the publishing house “Academic Publishers, Graz”, of the association “Interdisziplinäre Arbeitsgruppe Mayaforschung”, and member of the editorial board of “Cuademos de Arquitectura Mesoamericana”.

Annegrete was one of the speakers at last year’s EMC in Paris where she presented some of her impressive research in her paper “Exploring syntactic relations in Maya courtyard groups”. She will be greatly missed.

(adapted from a eulogy by Hermann J. Hendrich, September 6, 2009)