Alexander Conze

Alexander Conze is not known to have dug in Cyprus, but in 1889 he applied to the British for German excavation permits at Idalion and "Hyle"¹. Wikidata gives his dates as 10 December 1831 at Hanover to 19 July 1914 at Berlin, and records him as director of the Berlin Antikensammlung from 1877 and first Secretary General of the German Archaeological Institute⁶.

In October 1881 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter told Colonel Warren that Conze and Ernst Curtius would like a British permit for German excavations in Cyprus, Salamis above all. Schmid stresses that this rests on Ohnefalsch-Richter alone¹. In 1884 Conze published in the Archaeologische Zeitung a silver ring with an Athena scaraboid from a tomb cleared at Kourion in 1883, then held by Samuel Brown; the information came from Ohnefalsch-Richter. The ring reached the British Museum in 1889 through W. T. Ready^2,4. In 1886 Ohnefalsch-Richter sent proposals for excavation at Marion to Conze and Furtwängler¹.

Conze's own application, dated 30 August 1889 and written as Secretary General, went to Henry Bulwer. It offered to leave one of the two sites to the British School at Athens if it asked for it, proposed Wilhelm Dörpfeld as excavator and did not mention Ohnefalsch-Richter. The government was willing to grant Dali with some land reserved, and did not know what Hyle was. Schmid reads the exchange as a sign of British interest in blocking official German work, and notes that the letter came two years after the first British work at Kouklia¹.