Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft



The Realencyclopädie (German for "Practical Encyclopedia"; RE) is a series of German encyclopedias on Greco-Roman topics and scholarship.

Ur-Pauly
The first edition was the Real-Encyclopädie der Classischen Alterthumswissenschaft in Alphabetischer Ordnung ("Practical Encyclopedia of the Study of Classical Ancient History in Alphabetical Order") originally compiled by August Friedrich Pauly. As the basis for the subsequent Pauly–Wissowa edition, it is also known as the Ur-Pauly. The first volume was published in 1839 but Pauly died in 1845 before the last was completed. Christian Waltz (1802–1857) and Wilhelm Siegmund Teuffel completed the 6 volume first edition in 1852.

A second edition of the first volume of Pauly's encyclopedia was published by Teuffel in 1861. The revised second volume came out in 1866, with the rest of the work left incomplete.

Pauly–Wissowa


Georg Wissowa began work on a new and more ambitious edition in 1890. Paulys Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft ("Pauly's Practical Encyclopedia of the Study of Classical Ancient History"), more commonly known as the Pauly–Wissowa ( PW), was planned for completion by 1900 but work again outlasted its initial editor. Continued under Wilhelm Kroll, Kurt Witte, Karl Mittelhaus, and Konrat Ziegler, the series was not completed until 1972, with supplements added until 1978 and the index in 1980. Each article was written by a recognized specialist in the relevant field, but unsurprisingly for a work spanning three generations, the underlying assumptions vary radically with the age of the article. Many early biographies were written by Elimar Klebs, Paul von Rohden, Friedrich Münzer, and Otto Seeck.

Little Pauly
The size and price of Wissowa's edition being daunting, Konrat Ziegler put out an abridged Der Kleine Pauly ("The Little Pauly"; KlP) edition of 5 volumes between 1964 and 1975. Ziegler was assisted by Walther Sontheimer and Hans Gärtner.

New Pauly
Edited by Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Der Neue Pauly ("The New Pauly") was intended to be a 15-volume intermediate version of the work. The set itself expanded to 18 volumes plus an index, published from 1996 to 2003. From 2004 to 2012, seven more supplement volumes were added.

An English edition of Der Neue Pauly was published as Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World between 2002 and 2014. The edition, named after its publisher Brill, comprised a 15-volume series on "Antiquity", a 5-volume series on the "Classical Tradition", index volumes for each series, and 6 volumes of supplements. There are only 6 supplements in the English edition compared with 7 in the German edition, as in the German edition the index to the "Classical Tradition" was counted as a Supplement. It was edited by Cancik, Schneider, Manfred Landfester, and Christine F. Salazar.