Education
Wilcken studied ancient history and Oriental studies in Leipzig, Tübingen and Berlin.
historian university professor
Wilcken studied ancient history and Oriental studies in Leipzig, Tübingen and Berlin.
He was a disciple of historian Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), who encouraged Wilcken to take a position as cataloguer of papyri following graduation. Afterwards he was a professor at Würzburg (1900), Halle (1903, where he was again a successor to Eduard Meyer), Leipzig (1906) and Bonn (1912), where he succeeded Heinrich Nissen (1839-1912). Later he worked at Munich (1915) and Berlin (1917), where he was successor to Otto Hirschfeld (1843-1922).
Wilcken was a German pioneer of Greco-Roman papyrology, and is credited for amassing an extensive archive of Ptolemaic papyri documents and ostraca.
Prussian Academy of Sciences. Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Academy of Sciences of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]
In 1906 he became a member of the Saxon Society of Sciences, and in 1921, he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.