Adolf Furtwängler

Adolf Furtwängler stood between Berlin's museums and Max Ohnefalsch-Richter when Ohnefalsch-Richter sold to them and dug for them in Cyprus. Born at Freiburg on 30 June 1853, he became an assistant in the Berlin sculpture collection in 1880, moved to the Antiquarium in 1882 and was associate professor in 1884⁸. His 1885 catalogue of the Antiquarium's vases included the Cesnola pieces bought in 1869; Masson cites his nos. 71 and 72^1,7.

Karlsruhe obtained Cypriot material in 1879 from the Athens art trade "through the mediation of" Furtwängler, and in 1887, again through him, 151 finds from the sanctuary at Idalion that Ohnefalsch-Richter had dug in 1885⁷. On 15 February 1887 he wrote to E. Wagner at Karlsruhe offering part of "over 600 pieces" from an old Aphrodite sanctuary near Dali, writing that Berlin found the lot too large; further letters followed to 1 July³. In 1886 Ohnefalsch-Richter had proposed official German work at Marion to him and to Conze⁶.

Sources differ on whether Furtwängler went to Cyprus for the Tamassos campaign of 1889, which the Berlin museums financed. Ohnefalsch-Richter's own 1894 statement and Masson and Hermary give 1889; Buchholz says he was absent from the division of the finds on 20 to 22 November 1889 and arrived with Wilhelm Dörpfeld in February 1890^2,4. For the campaign of 1894-95, funded after Wilhelm II's grant of 1893, he was asked to oversee the fieldwork, and Masson and Hermary credit him with recognising the mud-brick fortification at Idalion, where the work lasted ten days in 1894 and seven in 1895^2,6.

He moved to Munich in 1894 and directed the Glyptothek and the Antiquarium there from 1896⁸. He died in Athens on 10 October 1907. Two stone sculptures and two ceramics from his collection reached the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt in 1915^7,8.