Richard Schöne

Richard Schöne (1840 to 1922) was Director General of the Royal Berlin Museums from 1880, and in 1889 his letters show the Berlin museums seeking, then giving up, a dig at Dali in Cyprus¹. After the 1886 ban on private excavations, Max Ohnefalsch-Richter looked for institutional sponsors, and the Royal Berlin Museums obtained a permit for Dali, ancient Idalion. Schöne's letter of 7 February 1889 to the Chief Secretary, Colonel Falkland Warren, revealed the permit. It drew a protest from Howorth at the Hellenic Society on 25 February, and the Committee of the Cyprus Exploration Fund said it would inquire¹.

The museums had hired Samuel Brown as agent for the application. Once the British established that the spot, the eastern acropolis at Moutti tou Arvili, was reserved to the government, the permit was rescinded¹. The museums' new agent, A. F. G. Law, wrote on 5 April 1889 that "the Director General informs me that he does not wish any excavations made at Dali at all unless permission can be obtained to excavate at the particular spot"¹. The Berlin interest turned to Tamassos, where the 1889 season for the Royal Prussian Museums found the royal tombs, and Adolf Furtwängler was sent to oversee the division of the finds¹.

In The Times of 7 November 1894 Ohnefalsch-Richter wrote that the Tamassos researches were undertaken by the General Administration of the Royal Berlin Museums and that he was "responsible to the General Director Geheimrath Schöne", while the work at Idalion was commissioned directly by the Emperor².