Edition Guidelines for the Wilamowitz-Moellendorff Correspondence

  1. The letters are no longer available in the original. However, in the first half of the 1920s Ulrich's daughter Adelheid Fredrich (1881-1954) made a copy (hereafter: 1st copy) of the letters, in which she did not reproduce passages that had been erased by the scribes, as is clear, for example, from Ulrich's letter to his mother of 15 October 1858. Before 1943, Adelheid's sister Dorothea Hiller von Gaertringen (1879-1972) made a copy (hereafter: 2nd copy) of the 1st copy. At least some of the autographs were still available to her, which enabled her to make additions and corrections. For this reason, the 2nd copy forms the basis of the annotated edition, which reproduces the facsimile of the 2nd copy line by line. Deviations from the 1st copy that change the meaning are noted in footnotes. Since (with the exception of the supplemented passages) it cannot be decided with absolute certainty which of the two copies is closer to the original, a facsimile of the 1st copy is also provided.
  2. The following letters are contained exclusively in the first copy and are edited according to it:
  3. The letters are edited diplomatically, line by line, according to the 1st copy or 2nd copy. Orthography and punctuation are retained. Only obvious errors (such as misspellings, transcriptions, dittographies) have been tacitly corrected. Underlinings have been adopted, but their length has been shortened to the width of the highlighted word. Dates and places are given according to the pattern "place, date"; the article sometimes used in the date is not adopted. The full name is used to designate the correspondent (e.g. Ulrike von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff instead of Mother). As a rule, the lines are left-justified; indentations can be traced via the facsimile.
  4. Adelheid Fredrich points out that Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's letters were no longer written in German but in Latin script from the beginning of his studies, and that only sentence beginnings and proper names were written in capital letters. However, since Adelheid Fredrich transcribed the letters in the upper and lower case that was customary in her time, Wilamowitz's idiosyncratic spelling is not reproduced in this edition.
  5. Apostrophes are inserted to facilitate the flow of reading (e.g. ist's instead of ists). Inch marks have been replaced by regular inverted commas and minus marks by half-quadrics. In addition, longer spaces have been deleted and the use of spaces adapted to today's sentence rules (z.B. instead of zB). Inverted commas are generally rendered according to today's conventions. The capitalisation of personal and possessive pronouns in the 2nd person singular and plural has also been standardised. Words written in capital letters are reproduced in regular spelling, as this was probably an oversight in the use of the typewriter, since emphasis in the original is not indicated in the transcript by capital letters, but by underlining.
  6. Handwritten additions and corrections made by Adelheid Fredrich or Dorothea Hiller von Gaertringens in the typescript are not marked, as they can be easily identified in the facsimile. Additional annotations by Adelheid Fredrich or Dorothea Hiller von Gaertringens are enclosed in square brackets [ ], the annotations by the editors in angle brackets ⟨⟩.
  7. Identified persons, places and (important) corporations are deposited with a link through which further information can be retrieved. The biographical information on the persons mentioned is kept as brief as possible and is generally limited to information relevant to the context of the letter. All place names mentioned in the letters are identified - as far as can be ascertained - and the historical administrative unit and political affiliation at the time are also given. Since there have been many changes here in particular, the GND number given regularly refers to the modern place. Information on ancient persons and places is based on the "New Pauly". By linking to the norm data, it is possible to access the resources of German libraries and other institutions on the internet dynamically with the help of interfaces.
  8. The order of the letters follows the text template prepared by Adelheid Fredrich, which is based on largely chronological principles, but adds supplementary letters, poems and drafts at the end of individual sections of his life. In this, the 2nd copy follows the 1st copy. The inserted numbering follows the order of the letters.