Die hellenische Geschichtsschreibung ist Zeitgeschichte: Eduard Schwartz on Greek Historiography in a 1939 Letter to J. Enoch Powell

Abstract

In early 1939, the British classical scholar, and later notorious politician, J. Enoch Powell (1912–1998) sent a letter in German to Eduard Schwartz (1858–1940) alongside a copy of his newly published book The History of Herodotus (Cambridge 1939). This interesting letter was published by Eckart Mensching in 1999, while Schwartz’s reply lay unpublished among Powell’s papers at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge. Both letters are here published with an English translation, displaying not only their value for the biographies of both scholars, but also for Schwartz’s concise yet significant reflections on Greek historiography, the relationship between history and poetry, and the role of historians in ancient societies.