Monuments as Memento Mori in Goethe’s Elective Affinities

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was one of the founding fathers of the conservation movement in Germany. This being the case, his celebrated novel Elective Affinities (1809) has received surprisingly little attention from conservation theorists in German-speaking countries. And this oversight on the part of the heritage industry is all the more remarkable given the frequency with which historic monuments actually occur in the book: the archetypal Tomb of Mausolus, for instance, takes center stage in a crucial tableau vivant scene; the renovation of a cemetery is taken as the starting point for lengthy discourse on commemoration and human transience; and a small but highly significant medieval chapel is subjected to what is perhaps the first literary treatment of an architectural restoration in the German language. But in sharp distinction to his other, nonfiction writings on art and architecture, Goethe here effects a radical rethinking of the monument and a complete inversion of its traditional temporal allegiances. This essay sets out to demonstrate that the intricate symbolic structure of Elective Affinities consciously and consistently mobilizes historic monuments and relics of times past as premonitions of future death—as memento mori proper.