The love for books will often prove truer and last longer than amorous feelings for another human being. The new king of Greece, Otto, was an ardent bibliophile who invested part of his limited financial means on an ambitious project to create a royal library consisting of rare editions, manuscripts, political and military treatises, as well as a complete series of ancient Greek authors. The primitive state of the art of bookbinding in Greece, though, meant that Otto had to import not only books but bookbinders as well. He chose Rudolph Meyfarth, a German from Munich, and equipped him with the means to satisfy the king’s wishes for elaborate bindings and to teach his art to the Greeks.