Document: Reflections on a Monument to Be Erected to the Poet Goethe in His Native City (1821)

Goethe is frequently cited as one of the founding fathers of historic preservation, primarily because of his association with Sulpiz Boisserée and their collaborative campaign for the completion of Cologne Cathedral. But Goethe’s attitude toward monuments—both intentional and unintentional—was far from unequivocally positive. Of all Goethe’s texts on monuments, this memorandum has the peculiar quality of treating—and rejecting—his own monument more than a decade before his own death. Goethe voices all sorts of concerns about the cost, convenience, propriety, and durability of the monument. Indeed, he seems to have seen the projected tempietto as a premature tomb. Besides its anti-monument sentiments, this text also raises a vital question for the present: to what extent does an intentional monument, rather than serving life, actually consign its subject to the grave?