German Classicists and the Hunt for Literary Papyri: Discovering New Materials about a Secret (and Hence Forgotten) Project

The essay focuses on the initiatives of German classicists to acquire papyri in the period predating the Great War (1890–1914). In Berlin, it was Hermann Diels (1848–1922) and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931) who took the lead in an enterprise that would ultimately result in the founding and enlarging of some fifteen papyrus collections in Germany. Since it was considered counterproductive to reveal one’s partners in the Egyptian antiquities market to possible competitors, most of the information was kept secret. Thus, although numerous leading philologists of the time were involved in the project, very few traces remain in their publications, and it was only seventy-five years after its disbandment that its fundamental documents were published. The complete picture may only be reconstructed from long forgotten archives that were rediscovered in the last decades.