“ They owe to German hands their unique collection of glass models of flowers, a collection which is the very climax of artistic craftsmanship. It is brought home to them every year that the best musical and dramatic organizations in this country are in German hands; and they know that there are no loftier products of genius than noble music and drama, except the worthy approaches of the human spirit to Almighty God. The Germanic Museum will teach them how the German artistic sense and capacity have been developed and transmitted through long generations. ”

“ All too often the real significance of such an object is lost sight of over investigations which have to do with some slight detail, some question of authorship, some relation to other works or facts, some theory connected with it—investigations, in other words, which have to do with everything except the object itself. The primary office, then, of such a museum as this is to force the objects themselves upon the attention of the college student, to engender the habit in him of gazing and re-gazing, to adapt his sensuous perception to the objects of his study. ”

“ And I cannot close without uttering the fervid hope that the many millions of our American fellow citizens of German blood, who, while ardently devoted to this republic, still remember their origin with affectionate pride, will consider it a duty of honor to give free-hearted and open-handed assistance to an institution which appeals to their enlightened public spirit as well as to a sentiment that cannot fail to be dear to their hearts. ”

“ The establishment of a Germanic Museum as a part of this renowned American University signifies more than a mere collection and exhibition of things historically or artistically remarkable. It is an offspring of the tendency, growing and spreading among civilized nations, to recognize the community between them of thought, of intellectual achievement, of moral endeavor, and of ideal aspirations. ”

“ It is because of the arts that we are interested in this or that nation, all whose material signs of existence have long since passed away. Therefore, is it not to the arts that we should refer the young student of the ideal side of life and remind him of the men who, in the midst of prosperity,—kings, nations, republics, whatever they may have been, or individuals,—have used their wealth and power for the creation of these works and have conferred a lasting benefit on mankind? ”

“ There is no doubt, I think, to which of those two sides every university should address itself. If the young men of our country, having that ideal to start with, are not taught to believe here that that is the true side of life, that it is the ideal point of view that they must keep in mind as sons of the university, then where, in heaven's name, are they to learn it? ”

“ Let me illustrate by one or two examples from Emperor William's collection how such a museum as this appeals to a variety of scientific interests, how it will force upon the historical student and the social philosopher, the art critic and the literary and linguistic investigator the consciousness of the fundamental unity of their tasks, how it will tend to deepen, to widen and to vivify the conception of national civilization.
Since Burckhardt's “Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,” it has been a popular axiom that modern individualism had its origin in the era of the “rinascimento.” ”

“ German men of science have had, as you all know, no inconsiderable part in influencing the intellectual development of the United States. Not only have numbers of Americans lived and studied in Germany for many years, but there have been and there are still many Germans teaching in the intellectual centres of the New World, of which Harvard, which has given birth to so many of your great characters of public life and science, is the most ancient and the most important. ”

“ John Harvard founded Harvard College with his library and £800; but now museums, as well as books, are essential to the work of any university. They are peculiarly necessary in an American university; for we are a now conglomerate people, in a fresh land which has no monuments that are not recent, at the opening of an epoch characterized by tremendous new powers drawn by man from nature. These powers have changed profoundly every human occupation and the whole mode of life of civilized man; but their province is the material world and man's material welfare. ”

“ When Americans and Englishmen enumerate the things which they have in common and which sentimentally should bind them together, they seldom omit to mention by the side of the common law and their common principles of civil liberty and so on, their common Shakespeare. Now it is a significant fact that this common Shakespeare is in spite of the difference of language, more alive in Germany, not only than in France or in any Latin or any non-Germanic country, but more alive in Germany than in England or America ”

“ The project of a Germanic Museum had its inception in the growing conviction on the part of the instructors in the Department of German, that their true function was not merely to teach the German language, or even German literature, however important these might be, but to give our students a true conception of what Germany stands for in modern civilization, what her ideals have been, what she has contributed to the world's best intellectual possessions. ”

“ The historical student, the philologist, the student of art, the literary critic, each cultivates his own field, often quite unaware of what is going on in neighboring pastures, quite forgetful of the fact that national life is a unit, that it is the common soil from which spring forth the most diversified and yet allied activities, and that only by considering all these activities in their relation to each other and to this common soil can we arrive at a just estimate of their significance. ”

“ Clad in the costume of a Roman imperator, the marshal's staff in his right hand, with the left tightly grasping the reins and holding his horse in check, his head slightly thrown back so that the aquiline nose and the commanding eyes are in full sight, while the mane-like hair flows in bold masses over neck and shoulders, he seems the very embodiment of seventeenth century absolutism. ”

“ And thus we have good reason for gratitude to the men who originally conceived the plan of establishing this Germanic Museum, not only because it will be the most valuable aid to the scholar and the student in their scientific pursuits, but no less because it will be apt to bring different nations nearer together in the consciousness of kinship. Its effect in international relations may be ever so small and indirect, but it will be something and even a small weight of sentiment may sometimes serve to turn the balance in favor of friendly understanding. ”

“ The most immediate and obvious as well as the most general service rendered to the student by such a museum is its appeal to the eye. Goethe somewhere says: “What we have not seen with our own eyes is really no concern of ours.” Although not meant as such, this word of Goethe's is a severe and just indictment of much of what passes for critical scholarship. All too often critics forget that their first and fundamental task is to see a given object, be it a drama, a statue, or a social fact, to become familiar with its dimensions, its outline, its proportion ”

“ Her soil is the original birthplace of those motive powers of character, those mental tendencies and those ideal aspirations which most distinguish the Germanic race from others—peculiarities common to Germanic peoples which more or less distinctly reveal themselves in their fundamental conceptions of right and wrong, their collective consciences, their ideals of liberty, their methods of truth-seeking, their philosophies and an almost endless variety of things denoting common instincts. ”

“ It is most gratifying that still another side of German life is to be represented by a gift which comes from your own midst. I refer to the most welcome donation of 10,000 books on the history of Germany and of German civilization which Professor Archibald Cary Coolidge is to make to Harvard College as a memorial to the visit of Prince Henry of Prussia to the University in 1902. ”

“ How, indeed, if not through the study of the arts,—the most permanent possession that men leave behind them. Wealth goes, dominion goes, creeds go; but the arts that the people, who have had wealth and who have had dominion and who have believed in their religion, have created, those have outlasted all, from the remotest ages down to our time. ”

“ All modern universities need museums which illustrate adequately the materials of the earth's crust, the flora and fauna of both land and sea, and the entire past of the human race, its dwellings, utensils, tools and weapons, its arts, crafts, institutions and religions; but the American universities need especially collections which illustrate systematically and amply the products of the fine arts and the artistic crafts in earlier but surviving civilizations. ”

“ On the other hand nothing can be more honorable and blessed than any effort to create and nourish a public spirit abhorring the resort to war, except in case of the most absolute and extreme necessity, a sentiment inspiring a statesmanship bent upon devoting in international policy the keenness of its eye to the discovery, not of the things that irritate and divide, but of the things that conciliate and unite. ”

“ I am well aware that international relations are not determined by sentiment alone but mainly by interest and impulses of a different kind. In our own history we have had very striking experiences of the sentiment of consanguinity utterly failing to prevent family quarrels; and everybody knows that family quarrels once well started have been apt to be peculiarly fierce. But it would be wrong to assume that sentiment, and especially that of blood-relationship, may not have a very beneficent influence upon the intercourse of kindred peoples at all. ”

“ The Germanic Museum will doubtless prove to be the first of a group of museums, illustrating at this institution the progress of civilization among the leading races of mankind down to recent years. Year after year it will teach American students how the Germans developed artistic crafts and created beauty centuries before America was discovered. The members of Harvard University have occasion to know how the present generation of Germans practices the fine crafts and cultivates the fine arts. ”

“ A museum of just such scope did not, as far as we know, exist anywhere, for even the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg is in the main a German Museum.
It was thought, however, that this country, of all countries, should possess a Germanic Museum in the wider sense of the word, since the great majority of the American people are of Germanic origin, and it is here that in modern times descendants of all Germanic tribes have met on a common ground and carried on the work of civilization side by side. ”

“ Furthermore, if we would correctly understand the life of the great masses of the people, a life that is only indirectly reflected in the higher forms of literature, of which it nevertheless is the ultimate source, we must enter not only cathedrals and castles, but also the burghers' houses and the peasants' cottages, study the manners and customs of the inhabitants, watch these at their work and their play, observe their furniture, clothing, arms, implements. ”

“ But if it is true that there is much for Germany to learn in the United States, it is equally obvious, on the other hand, that the foundations of modern civilization can only be studied from written and other documents, dating from past centuries, in the possession of which Germany, among all countries of Europe, is particularly fortunate. ”

“ When, for instance, we contemplate the present American feeling towards England, it will strike us that the often-expressed sentiment that “blood is thicker than water,” already referred to by Baron Bussche, has of late acquired a real significance, which in case of a threatening clash of interests may, not indeed induce either party to forget, or to take an entirely different view of those interests, but at least powerfully stimulate on both sides the wish not to permit such a clash to degenerate into actual hostilities, but to leave no means unused that might bring about an amicable issue. ”

“ And so he sees in the works of this Germanic race, and more particularly in the works of the later development of it when it is specifically the German race, the ideals of a sturdy people carried out in a sturdy way,—less refined than some, less delicate than some, but lacking never in the power of virility,—the favorite materials for the expression of these ideals being the homely substances by which they were surrounded in their daily life—iron, stone, wood and leather. ”

“ It seems to me that nobody can examine carefully even the small model of the Viking-boat that we have been fortunate enough to secure, without realizing what a sturdy and intelligent race these hardy seamen were, that could fashion out of oaken planks, seventy-five feet long and eight inches thick, almost without iron, seaworthy boats as graceful as a modern yacht. ”

“ The collections are now multiplying in such a way and to such an extent that we are face to face with an entirely new problem, realizing that the land on which we stand, although we occupy but half of it at the present time, will be far too small for our purpose, knowing that at the present day we could fill that entire lot of land with things in our possession if we had the building available, so that a new life is starting out for the institution and we stand at the threshold between the parting of the old and the new generation in its development. ”