Charles Wiener

Charles Wiener (1851–1913) was an Austrian-French scientist-explorer. Born in Vienna, he is perhaps best known as the explorer who traveled extensively in Peru, climbed the Illimani and came close to re-discovering Machu Picchu.

Biography The drawing by Charles Wiener, "tunnel on the La Oroya line" in his book Pérou et Bolivie - Récit de voyage was used by Hergé in his album of Tintin "Le temple du Soleil"

His first intellectual stirrings were in the area of linguistics, since he published a small work on this subject in 1873. Later, he was a teacher of German in Paris. He received a doctor's degree in philosophy from the University of Rostock with a dissertation edited with the title of Essai sur les institutions politiques, religieuses, économiques et sociales de l´Empire des Incas, Paris, 1874, work for which he contacted other students of Mesoamerican antiquity.

According to Kim MacQuarrie, Wiener, in his exploration,

"Wiener traveled in Peru in 1875, a few years after Herman Göhring (a fellow explorer) and [was] told in Ollantaytambo about certain ruins, including those at “Huainan-Picchu” and “Matcho Picchu,” but he was unable to reach them during his visit." "The map was apparently published in Paris by the Societe de Geographie in 1877, three years before the publication of Wiener’s book."

Also of note is that Wiener is mentioned in Mario Vargas Llosa's novel The Storyteller as the Frenchman "who in 1880 came across 'two Machiguenga corpses, ritually abandoned in the river,' which he decapitated and added to his collection of curiosities collected in the Peruvian jungle."

Gabriela Wiener's novel/memoir Undiscovered (2023; Huaco retrato in the Spanish original) reflects on her dual heritage: descendant of both Wiener and the mestiza María Rodríguez, unrecognized by French specialists in Wiener's work, and tormented by an elliptical reference in Wiener's travel narrative to an Indigenous boy, Juan, whom he may have brought back with him to Paris.