The exhibition “Spirits and Spirituality – Medicine and the Moravian Mission in Nicaragua” takes visitors into the fascinating world of the Miskito Coast, the eastern provinces along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. When the Moravian Church expanded its global missionary network to the Miskito Coast during the mid-nineteenth century, different concepts of health, spirituality, and community came into contact.
Missionaries established schools and medical facilities, while traditional healers continued to play a central role in the lives of the Indigenous communities of the Miskito, Mayangna, and Rama. This encounter gave rise to an often-contentious struggle over faith, knowledge, and healing that continues to resonate today in the parallel worlds of Christianity and Indigenous spirituality in the region.
The exhibition at Völkerkundemuseum Herrnhut presents 41 objects, centered around the doctor’s bag of missionary Guido Großmann, recently acquired by the museum. Großmann worked in the Miskito Coast region for nearly three decades at the beginning of the twentieth century. His doctor’s bag offers a fascinating insight into the daily practice of medical mission work. It is complemented by objects associated with traditional healers, including elaborately crafted headdresses, ceremonial staffs, enigmatic ritual dolls, as well as a “lightning stone” and a “comet bomb.”
Through medicinal remedies, house models, bark fiber cloth, and cotton textiles, the exhibition explores competing yet interconnected concepts of healthcare, hygiene, death, the soul, and supernatural forces. It shows how missionaries and traditional healers negotiated their respective systems of healing and belief over generations—and how new cultural practices emerged from these interactions.
At the same time, the presentation offers an exclusive glimpse into the development of the future general exhibition. Its key themes are already visible here: mission history from new perspectives, Indigenous voices, and the complex interactions between Christian mission work and the cultures of the Miskito Coast.
in Japanisches Palais
