Karl (Carl) Friederichs

Karl Friederichs, born at Delmenhorst on 7 April 1831, was the Berlin museums' envoy to Luigi Palma di Cesnola at Larnaca in 1869^1,2. Masson names him director of the Antiquarium from 1868 and says Cesnola got the Berlin museums to send him, helped by the American minister in Prussia, George Bancroft². The Vienna director Joseph Bergmann described him as sent by the Prussian government to arrange purchases and excavations³. Marangou's chronology places the visit in September and October 1869, though her narrative text says 1868⁶.

He bought for Berlin one of the smaller sets into which Cesnola had divided his holdings: stone pieces, bronzes, terracottas, gems and glass, which Recke's provenance list traces to Alambra, Idalion, Ornidia and Salamis^2,4. A Dali bichrome jar from that purchase later appeared as no. 72 in Furtwängler's catalogue of the Berlin vases⁵. Cesnola told his correspondent Hitchcock that Friederichs stayed about two months in his house, chose a few vases and fragmentary statues from Idalion, and that Cesnola was paid $2000 after months of delay, while the hospitality cost him more than $800⁶. In 1870 Friederichs also acquired objects for Berlin from the collection of Demetrios Pierides⁴.

On 17 November 1869 Bergmann reported to Vienna that Friederichs had bought a Cesnola set for Berlin and that another of about 100 pieces could be had for 1,000 to 1,200 florins. The Emperor approved on 19 November, and 155 finds reached Vienna on 16 February³.

Cesnola's Cyprus says that in 1869 he repeated trial digging at the temple site of Kouklia with the personal assistance of Dr. Friederichs⁹. Friederichs's own letters record a single day there and no digging, according to Maier, who adds that at Larnaca he selected votive terracottas from that site for Berlin⁷. He died in Berlin on 18 October 1871, and his travel letters, Kunst und Leben, appeared in 1872^1,11.