Attributed to Erwin von

Steinbach. Sketch B of
Strasbourg Cathedral.
Reprinted from Marcel Aubert,
The Art of the High Gothic Era,
1965.

Beyond the Paradigm

of Representation:
Goethe on Architecture
DOROTHEA E. VON MCKE

On German Architecture is Goethes brief, well-known 1772 pamphlet celebrating

Strasbourg Cathedral and its architect, Erwin von Steinbach. Scholars generally
interpret the pamphlet by placing it within the context of the rediscovery of the
Gothic, the Sturm und Drang cult of original genius, and a generation of young poets
asserting the independence of their German art from the ruling French paradigms of taste. Although these contextualizations are not wrong, they miss a key
point about the specificity, newness, and importance of On German Architecture : its
contribution to aesthetic theory.
Several factors set Goethes essay apart from the general eighteenth-century
interest in the Gothic revival. Goethe is not interested in the Gothic cathedral as
an actual building with specific purposes. Instead, he discusses the cathedral as if
it were a work of art, and explores its powerful effects on the subjectivity of the
beholder. The innovative thrust of Goethes essay must be sought in the way architecture rather than painting or poetry allows him to discuss the effects of a work
of art. In this respect the brief pamphlet far exceeds its various contexts and
becomes legible as an important contribution to aesthetic theory, asserting a profound paradigm change in the arts. Goethe turns to architecture as the model
object of art when art is no longer to be considered primarily a matter of representation. At stake in this essay from 1772, as well as in Goethes later essay On
Architecture from 1795, is the programmatic exploration of aesthetic experience
through architecture as a medium of emphatic presence.
Both On German Architecture and On Architecture consider the effects of
architecture on the beholder. The earlier piece focuses on the subjectivity of the
beholder; the latter on the beholders sense of embodiment. To reconfigure the
function of art, Goethe introduces architecture as an art that is situated in threedimensional space and bound up with a particular place. The polemical turn
against the then-reigning representational paradigm becomes even more evident

Grey Room 35, Spring 2009, pp. 627. 2009 Grey Room, Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

in a review of the work of the well-known art critic and philosopher Johann Georg
Sulzer, which Goethe wrote around the same time as On German Architecture.
Sulzers work must not be viewed primarily in terms of its theoretical insight but
rather as a repository of what were then considered generally accepted truths about
art and aesthetic experience. Like many works of its time, going back to Charles
Batteux, Abb Jean-Baptiste du Bos, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Sulzers work
also compares and contrasts the sister arts. It seeks their common purpose and
function in their vaguely defined ability to encourage the refinement of sensuality.
Goethes review characterizes Sulzers attempt to find this common denominator
as ultimately a trivializing, even distorting, enterprise:
Was lt sich durch solche Philosophie nicht verbinden? Malerei und
Tanzkunst, Beredsamkeit und Baukunst, Dichtkunst und Bildhauerei, alle
aus einem Loche, durch das magische Licht eines philosophischen Lmpgens
auf die weie Wand gezaubert, tanzen sie im Wunderschein buntfarbig auf
und nieder, und die verzckten Zuschauer frohlocken sich fast auer Atem.1
Everything can be related to anything with the aid of that philosophy.
Painting and dance, rhetoric and architecture, poetry and sculpture, all of
them will be projected onto a white wall through a tiny hole, by the magical
light of the lamp of philosophy. All colorful in this miraculous glow, they will
dance up and down, and the ecstatic onlookers will be almost out of breath
with enthusiasm.
Goethes critique takes aim at the philosophy enabling Sulzers comparison of
the arts; that is, at the theoretical framework and underlying set of distinctions that
produce the kind of thought Sulzer and his cohort of comparative art critics
engaged in. To a certain extent Goethes critical insight can be compared to Foucaults
The Order of Things, which also links the eighteenth-century episteme of representation with a specific technique of observation, the table.2 Thus Goethe characterizes the paradigm underlying Sulzers philosophy as a technical apparatus,
a hybrid of a camera obscura and a magic lantern capable of producing illusionary
tableaux for its captive audience.3 Both of the technologies combined in this hybrid
project images with the aid of light, producing fleeting, flat images that cannot
capture any of the three-dimensional features and embodied realities of sculpture,
architecture, or dance.
Goethe argues that Sulzers methodology crucially distorts the three-dimensional
arts. He supports this point by aligning the actual objects of Sulzers comparison,
in each case contrasting an art form that can be subsumed under the rubric of rep-

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resentation with a nonmimetic form situated in concrete space. In each pair

painting and dance, rhetoric and architecture, poetry and sculpturethe first art
form works with a repertory of signs that signify an intended but existentially
absent reality, which means that if they are imitated or copied by being projected
onto a wall nothing essential is lost. In contrast, dance, architecture, and sculpture
are emphatically three-dimensional. They exist as originalsunique, presentnot
as conglomerations of signs referring to something absent. This aesthetics of emphatic
presence becomes programmatic as the prestige and value of the arts of architecture, sculpture, and dance increase.4
Architecture as Art
Edward Youngs enormously influential Conjectures on Original Composition
(1759) celebrates a heroic artist figure, one capable of creating original works,
by comparing him to a magician whose work cannot be codified in rules and therefore cannot be copied. Young contrasts the magician with the accomplished technician: A Genius differs from a good Understanding, as a Magician from a good
Architect; That raises his structure by means invisible; This by the skilful use of
common tools.5 Goethes programmatic choice of architecture as the model object
of art also participates in a discourse of original genius, only with the architect
substituted for the magician or genius. In On German Architecture Goethe takes
up the discourse of original genius by criticizing the then-influential architectural
theorist Marc Antoine Laugier. Laugier had attempted to use functionalist principles to resolve debates over architectural taste and style, famously invoking
Vitruviuss primal hut. According to Goethe, however, Laugier would never be able
to do justice to the artistic genius of a true architect: Schdlicher als Beispiele
sind dem Genius Prinzipien.6 (To the genius, principles are even more detrimental than paradigms.) Continuing his attack on Laugier, Goethe writes,
Was soll uns das, du neufranzsischer philosophierender Kenner, dass der erste
zum Bedrfnis erfindsame Mensch, vier Stmme einrammelte, vier Stangen
drber verband, und ste und Moos drauf deckte? Daraus entscheidest du
das gehrige unsrer heurigen Bedrfnisse, eben als wenn du dein neues Babylon,
mit einfltigem Patriarchalischem Hausvatersinn regieren wolltest. (112)
You neo-French, philosophizing connoisseur, what is the point of invoking
the fact that driven by need the first inventive human being must have rammed
four posts into the soil, connected them with four poles, and covered the
whole construct with branches and moss? Based on this you want to judge

von Mcke | Beyond the Paradigm of Representation: Goethe on Architecture

todays needs. This is just the same as if you wanted to rule your new Babylon
with the simple patriarchal wisdom of those times.
When Goethe makes fun of Laugiers simple patriarchal wisdom, he targets the
attempt to derive aesthetic principles from common, everyday uses and aesthetic
form from primitive, archaic function. One might think of the architect as a mere
engineer or builder who has to meet well-defined needs. For the builder, form is
dictated by function. By contrast, according to Goethe the architect as true artist
and genius finds the form of his work by allowing himself to be inspired by the
confusing, seemingly infinite multiplicity of forms in nature; that is, by a manifold
of natural forms that appears confusing but has its own harmonic order and
design. Goethe illustrates the contrast between the functionally oriented engineer
and the genius inspired by nature:
Eure Gebude stellen euch also Flchen dar, die, je weiter sie sich ausbreiten,
je khner sie gen Himmel steigen, mit desto unertrglicherer Einfrmigkeit
die Seele unterdrcken mssen! Wohl! wenn uns der Genius nicht zu Hlfe
kme, der Erwinen von Steinbach eingab: Vermannigfaltige die ungeheure
Mauer, die du gen Himmel fhren sollst, dass sie aufsteige gleich einem
hocherhabnen, weitverbreiteten Baume Gottes, der mit tausend sten,
Millionen Zweigen, und Blttern wie der Sand am Meer, rings um, der Gegend
verkndet, die Herrlichkeit des Herrn, seines Meisters. (113)
You conceive of your buildings as if they were just two-dimensional surfaces. The more they expand, the bolder they rise to the skies, the more they
have to oppress the soul! Well! If that genius who inspired Erwin von Steinbach
did not come to our aid: Multiply the immense wall that you have to raise
toward the skies so that it rises like a sublime, widely spread-out tree of God,
whose thousands of branches, millions of twigs and leaves like the sand on
the ocean announce everywhere the glory of its lord and master.
The engineer who derives the form of the building merely from its function is
accused of being oblivious to the psychic impact his building will have on its
beholders. The greater his technical accomplishmentsthe broader his walls, the
higher they extend toward the skiesthe more his building will oppress the soul
of its beholder. For Goethe, architecture must be understood as art rather than as
just a form of engineering and must aim for an entirely different effect on the
beholder: architecture-as-art must uplift and edify the soul.
Goethe is playing on the relationship between a literal building or edifice and

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the spiritual meaning of edification, which derives from a New Testament image
describing the rebuilding of the soul in architectural terms.7 He continues in the
religious register by borrowing from devotional literature, comparing the architects tower to a tree of God that announce[s] everywhere the glory of its lord
and master. The change of register does not mean that Goethe assigns a religious
task to art. Although the architectonic work of art, like natural beauty, is to be an
object of devotional contemplation, Goethe radically secularizes this devotion,
because what reveals itself in the act of contemplation is not the divine creator but
the human genius of the artist. By thus making architecture the model object of art,
Goethe redefines the function of art: the function of art is not beautification, ornament, or decoration, nor is it in the realm of representation and mimesis; instead,
art is to present an occasion for a deeply moving encounter, a unique experience
which will leave a lasting impact on the beholder. Art, that is, is supposed to provide the occasion for an enduring, strengthening, and uplifting experience comparable to the kind of experience that used to be found in the religious domain.
Strasbourg Cathedral: Edification and Theophany
Few if any of the discussions interpret Goethes On German Architecture as a
systematic argument about the function of art, an interpretation that can be based
on an analysis of how this text stages its own argument.8 Goethe begins by thematizing, in great detail, the rhetorical situation of the text, thus addressing the pragmatic function of art in the introductory passage of the pamphlet. He presents the
text as the real-time, autobiographical commentary of a first-person speaker, a
pilgrim searching for the grave of Erwin von Steinbach. When the pilgrim doesnt
succeed in finding the grave, he decides to endow a memorial for the great architect
and artist. However, he quickly realizes that von Steinbach does not need a memorial because he has already memorialized himself through his own work, the great
tower of Strasbourg Cathedral. The pilgrim concludes this train of thought by carving the name of the architect, like the name of the beloved, into the stem of a slender
beech tree. He then remodels the tree into a primitive altar and, as a sacrifice to
von Steinbachs spirit, offers up some of the natural products he has collected during
the day.
By framing his text in this way, Goethe casts his discussion of Strasbourg Cathedral
and his mise-en-scne of an exemplary experience of art in bold anthropological
and ethnographical terms. The functional approach to art, which Goethe rejects in
his critique of Laugier, is replaced by a ritual and symbolic approach to art, the
primitive hut by the poets improvised altar.9 The sequence of actions in the intro-

von Mcke | Beyond the Paradigm of Representation: Goethe on Architecture

11

ductory passage, which is entirely in the present tense, is also a critical reflection
on the uses of certain place-bound religious and secular memorial practices. The
search for the gravestone recalls the Roman practice of pietas, the duty of the offspring to maintain the memory of the deceased, and contrasts with a more worldly
form of remembrance, fama, which maintains the memory of the deceased persons
glorious deeds and accomplishments.10 Whereas the religious practice depends on
the piety of the survivors, the glorious remembrance of a hero can be influenced
at least to a certain degreethrough clever public relations strategies. In either
case, fame needs a medium, which traditionally takes the form of epic poetry. The
speaker who presents himself in the role of the person who wants to memorialize
the great achievements of Erwin von Steinbach, who promises to endow a marble
monument in his memory, places himself in the position of the poet upon whose
achievement the heros fame ultimately depends.
However, the opening paragraph of Goethes pamphlet does not end by marking
the speakers position as the poet who would be charged with the memorialization
of the hero. Instead, the speaker realizes that his intention of creating a monument
to the memory of Erwin von Steinbach has already been rendered obsolete. The
hero has already made himself immortal by erecting the tower of Strasbourg
Cathedral, an achievement the would-be poet compares, with extraordinary boldness, to the building of the tower of Babel:
Wenigen ward es gegeben, einen Babelgedanken in der Seele zu zeugen,
ganz, gro, und bis in den kleinsten Theil notwendig schn, wie Bume Gottes;
wenigern, auf tausend bietende Hnde zu treffen, Felsengrund zu graben,
steile Hhen drauf zu zaubern, und dann sterbend ihren Shnen zu sagen:
ich bleibe bey euch, in den Werken meines Geistes, vollendet das begonnene
in die Wolken. (110)
Few had the gift to engender a babylonic thought in their soul, whole, great,
and necessarily beautiful down to its smallest part, like Gods trees; even
fewer had the gift of encountering thousands of hands, willing to dig into the
rock, and to magically build on that up to steep heights, and then while dying
say to their sons: I remain with you in the works of my spirit; complete what
I have begun in the clouds.
Already the neo-Platonic tradition of the Renaissance had rewritten the story of the
tower of Babel by no longer criticizing the hubris of the entire enterprise but
instead celebrating the superhuman achievement.11 What is new in the way Goethe
mobilizes the reference to the tower of Babel is that he celebrates the superhuman

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achievement as the artists actual realization of his bold idea. Moreover, this tower
is both a quasi-divine creation that embodies complexity, infinite detail, and wholeness and an open-ended work that memorializes its creator by inviting its beholders
to complete it in his spirit.
By making the beholder accountable for completing the work of art in the spirit
of its creator, Goethe reconceptualizes the traditionally understood relationship
among artist, artwork, and beholder; in effect, he collapses the artist and beholder,
leaving only the two primary positions of artist-beholder and artwork. The beholder
is given a status almost equal to that of the bold artist hero, which also protects the
beholder from the intimidating, overwhelming impact of a work of genius. By
becoming an active participant in the completion of the work of art, the beholders
spirits are uplifted and he feels strengthened and edified by his aesthetic experience. The artwork takes on a dual aspect: on the one hand, it is open-ended, to be
completed in its contemplation by a beholder; on the other hand, it appears as an
independent, complete, autonomous presence. The insistence on the actual realization of the building, not just its conceptualization, emphasizes the actual presence
of the work, a presence that manages in a unique material reality to survive the
physical presence of the artist, which for generations may be recognized, remembered, and understood by those who are capable of matching the creative spirit of
the artist.
For Goethe, a work of art is a unique original insofar as it, like a shrine devoted
to a saint, guarantees the presence of the deceased; specifically, the artwork guarantees the presence of its creator. Such works of art do not fit within a semiotic system, they are not based on a model of representation but instead on the emphatic
endowment of presence, which Goethe describes as the experience of mutual
recognition between artwork and beholder. This kind of aesthetic experience
requires a specific disposition in the beholderthe wholeness of his soul, whose
integrity is reflected back to him.
Was brauchts dir Denkmal! und von mir! Wenn der Pbel heilige Namen ausspricht, ists Aberglaube oder Lsterung. Dem schwachen Geschmckler wirds
ewig schwindlen an deinem Kolo, und ganze Seelen werden dich erkennen
ohne Deuter. (110)
What do you need a monument for! And from me! If the common crowd
pronounces sacred names, it is superstition or blasphemy. The weak philistine will always be dizzy confronted with your colossal monument, and souls
of integrity will recognize you without help.

von Mcke | Beyond the Paradigm of Representation: Goethe on Architecture

13

The speaker concludes by reporting to Erwins spirit how he (the speaker) carves
Erwin von Steinbachs name into the beech tree and presents to him a sacrificial
offering. The speaker leaves some botanical finds he has gathered on his walks to
decay in honor of Erwins spirit. The emphatic aesthetic experience, the selfaffirming communication between a beholder of art and the spirit of the deceased
artist is analogized to the sacrificial offering at a saints shrine. Alongside the pilgrimage metaphor the narrator places a metaphor of secular love by implicitly
comparing Erwin von Steinbach to the beloved whose name is carved into the bark
of a tree. Thus the loving exchange between beholder and artwork is analogized to
the symmetric and reciprocal exchange that occurs during a mutual recognition of
lovers. The lack of an official sacerdotal presence or officially sanctioned altar
highlights the improvisational character of the scene. The fact that the botanical
finds are just handed over to decay rather than killed or burned places the ritual at
a far remove from the sacrificial rites of monotheistic religion, especially the central
blood sacrifice of Christianity.
The experience of art as an intensified communication and exchange between
the spirit of the artist and the beholder promises to grant the kind of satisfaction
and affirmation that is provided when lovers look into each others eyes or an
infant finds him- or herself reflected in its mothers loving gaze.12 The original
work of art can exercise this self-affirming mirroring function because, like the
beloved or the mother, its accessibility is exclusive. The original work of art admits
only a special kind of beholder, not the common crowd or the deformed connoisseur. Because the original work of art does not fit any preexisting schema of perception, its appreciation requires a beholder who is sufficiently artistically
talented. Instead of being frightened and turned away by the works uniqueness
and openness, the beholder must be able to understand its compositional logic in
order to complete it in his own thoughts. In this ability the beholder is affirmed as
another potential artist and creator, capable of transcendence.13
In On German Architecture Goethe does not only attribute an edifying function
to the work of art; he also stages this function in the detailed report of his encounter
with Strasbourg Cathedral. Although both passages begin as if presenting the narration of a unique experience that leads to the revision of his prejudice against the
Gothic, closer inspection reveals that Goethe is presenting not a unique realization
but a process of contemplation that claims a paradigmatic status by calling for
repetition and inviting the readers identification and imitation:
Ein ganzer, groer Eindruck fllte meine Seele, den, weil er aus tausend
harmonierenden Einzelheiten bestand, ich wohl schmecken und genieen,

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keineswegs aber erkennen und erklren konnte. Sie sagen, dass es also mit
den Freuden des Himmels sei, und wie oft bin ich zurckgekehrt, diese
himmlisch-irdische Freude zu genieen, den Riesengeist unserer ltern Brder
in ihren Werken zu umfassen. Wie oft bin ich zurckgekehrt, von allen Seiten,
aus allen Entfernungen, in jedem Lichte des Tags zu schauen seine Wrde
und Herrlichkeit! Schwer ists dem Menschengeist, wenn seines Bruders
Werk so hoch erhaben ist, dass er nur beugen und anbeten mu. Wie oft hat
die Abenddmmerung mein durch forschendes Schauen ermattetes Aug mit
freundlicher Ruhe geletzt, wenn durch sie die unzhligen Teile zu ganzen
Massen schmolzen, und nun einfach und gro, vor meiner Seele standen, und
meine Kraft sich wonnevoll entfaltete, zugleich zu genieen und zu erkennen!
Da offenbarte sich mir, in leisen Ahndungen, der Genius des groen
Werkmeisters. Was staunst du? Lispelt er mir entgegen. Alle diese Massen
waren notwendig, und siehst du sie nicht an allen lteren Kirchen meiner
Stadt? (114)
A whole, great impression filled my soul. Because it consisted of a thousand harmonizing details I could very well taste and enjoy but I had no way
of cognitively grasping and explaining it. They say that it is the same with the
joys of heaven. How often did I return to partake in this heavenly-earthly joy,
to grasp the giant spirit of our older brothers through their works. How often
did I return from all sides, from all distances, in all kinds of daylight to view
his honor and glory. How hard it is for the human spirit if his brothers work
is so high above him that all he can do is bend down and adore. How often
did dusk bring friendly relief and rest to my exhausted eyes until it melted the
innumerable parts into one whole mass, which then would stand simple and
grand before my soul, and my entire force would unfold with great pleasure
to be able to enjoy while gaining insight at the same time! Then the genius of
the great master of this work would reveal itself to me in quiet anticipations.
What are you amazed at? He would whisper to me. All these masses were
necessary, and dont you see them in all of the older churches of my city?
The Strasbourg Cathedral passage can be read as the account of an experience
not only of the discovery of the beauty of the faade but of the discovery and revelation of a contemplative technique of the self. The first-person singular of the
experience, as well as of the description of the experience, is both an individualized I and an exemplary I inviting identification and imitation. The insight
into the harmony of the composition, the overview of the confusing multiplicity
of forms occurs only gradually after repeated contemplationhow oftenunder

von Mcke | Beyond the Paradigm of Representation: Goethe on Architecture

15

a variety of light conditions. Before the overall composition is cognitively revealed

to the beholder in his dialogue with Erwin von Steinbachs genius, it reveals itself
in a sensual, synesthetic experience that is interpreted as a foretaste of heavenly
joys. Traditionally, the vision of God can be reached by way of meditation. Thus,
for instance, Johann Arndts enormously popular spiritual self-help manual describes
the synesthetic unity of the experience of presence in the vision of God:
Das Sehen Gottes ist die Genieung Gottes, Gott sehen wie er ist, heiet der
ganzen Flle theilhaftig werden, und erfllet werden mit der unermesslichen
und unendlichen Gtigkeit Gottes, welche Flle wir in dem Herrn Christo
erkennen und umfahen, schmecken, und mit allen Auserwhlten und heiligen Engeln preisen werden, erfllet mit der Herrlichkeit Christi, und mit der
Freude des H. Geistes in alle Ewigkeit.14
The vision of God is the enjoyment of God, to see God as he is means
becoming aware of the entire fullness and being filled with the immeasurable
and infinite goodness of God, whose fullness we can recognize in our Lord
Christ and grasp it, taste it, we shall praise it with all the elect and holy angels,
filled with the glory of Christ and the joy of the Holy Ghost in all eternity.
The exemplary experience of art is not exhausted in its analogy to the meditative
practice leading to the vision of God. Goethes passage describes the oscillation
between a cognitively overwhelming impression and a sensuously mastered holistic comprehension of fullness, between an awe that is almost discouraging and the
elevation of the self in its self-recognition in the spirit of the master. Goethe presents not only the generic citation of the religious literature of devotion but also
affirms the purposiveness of sensuous experience in its own right, a sensuous
experience that is not immediately subsumed by cognition but simultaneously
asserts its own right to cognitive insight and the force of understanding. This is the
kind of experience most carefully asserted and described in Kants analysis of the
beautiful in the Critique of Judgment. But the experience of Strasbourg Cathedral
cannot be reduced to the experience of the beautiful. As with the Kantian mathematical sublime, the beholder of Strasbourg Cathedral at first feels overwhelmed
by its enormous multiplicity, an impression that is remedied only by the changing
light that ultimately allows the onlooker to grasp the totality of the composition.
Yet, whereas in Kants mathematical sublime the beholder is confronted with the
actual limitations of his imagination and the source of his pleasure lies in the affirmation of his reasoning ability, here the affirmation of the beholder consists in his
ability to conceive of himself in a dialogue with the artistic genius. This dialogi-

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cal exchange is prepared by the gradual aesthetic experience.

By presenting Strasbourg Cathedral as the occasion for an exemplary aesthetic
experience, Goethe gives to the work of art the function of strengthening the
beholders sense of self. The work of art that initially threatens to overwhelm with
its complex monumentality is nevertheless so pleasing that gradual exposure and
repeated approach allow the observer to intuit the artworks compositional principles, the order and harmony of its creation. The observers contemplation of the
artwork seems to him like a dialogue with the creative genius of the artist. At the
end of the process, strengthened in his autonomy, he feels the the equal of God.
Deinem Unterricht dank ichs, Genius, da mirs nicht mehr schwindelt an
deinen Tiefen, da in meine Seele ein Tropfen sich senkt, der Wonneruh des
Geistes, der auf solch eine Schpfung herabschauen, und gottgleich sprechen
kann, es ist gut! (115)
I owe it to having been taught by you, genius, that, confronted with your
depths, I am no longer overcome by vertigo, that a drop of this spirit sinks into
my soul, who can look down on his creation and speak like God, it is good.
Goethe calls attention to the problematic symbolic and semiotic character of art
by invoking an art of devotional edification that functions as the personal appropriation of a sacred presence. Practices of piety that employ techniques of the
self developed in meditational practice go back to antiquity and have played an
important, albeit contested, role in Christianity.15 The contested role of meditation
is comparable to the problematic role of the pilgrim, whoto the extent that he
starts to conduct his own negotiations at the shrine of the saintrisks questioning
and rendering superfluous the Christological economy of redemption as well as
the mediating function of the church.16
Goethes On German Architecture proposes a new paradigm of art, according
to which art takes over the role and function of religion. This means, on the one
hand, that the work of art is radically secularized with regard to institutionalized
religion. On the other hand, however, the work of art is endowed with a sacred
aura; it is the unique original that can instantiate an emphatic presence. This new,
ultimately neohumanist, paradigm of an aesthetics of autonomy pushes to the
background the previous paradigm of an aesthetics of illusion and representation.
Architecture in Goethes essay plays the same role as sculpture in Johann Gottfried
Herders essay from the same time period.17 Both three-dimensional art forms shift
the emphasis from representation to presence and embodiment. Art aims at the
self-affirmation of the beholders subjectivity, the beholders ability to invent

von Mcke | Beyond the Paradigm of Representation: Goethe on Architecture

17

himself as an autonomous self that creates himself anew as he creates his world.
The aesthetics of emphatic presence remained important even for the later Goethe,
although he increasingly distanced himself from the model of subjectivity derived
from pietist devotional literature. Instead he took up the experience of space,
thinking of it as an intense experience of embodiment. Also in his later years he
began to be interested in techniques of the self that aim at the control of involuntary bodily and physiological reactions such as disgust and vertigothat is, reactions that blur the clear distinction between an external, objective world of
perception and an interior world of vivid imagination.18
Architecture as Fiction
Architecture remained for Goethe an art form that allowed him to reflect on arts
ability to produce an emphatic presence, to enhance, transform, and transfigure a
beholders or audiences perception and sensibility. Yet, whereas the essay on
German architecture from 1771 makes its case by drawing on meditational techniques of contemplation and visualization, Goethes later essay on architecture no
longer draws on these religious techniques of the self. Instead, the later essay
works with two key concepts: character and fiction. Character, by then a category
in the discourse on architecture, dealt with the assessment of a particular buildings ability to relate form to function, be that in view of the buildings apt choice of
materials, proportions, and styles that would allow for the optimal use of the building, or in view of the buildings teleological transparency, its capacity to advertise
its use and function in semiotically transparent terms.19 Fiction, however, not a
common or conventional concept in architectural theory, becomes the counterpart
to character by which Goethe extricates architecture from functional and teleological determinism.
Whereas Goethes essay about Strasbourg Cathedral characterizes the experience of presence provided by the work of art as a gradual visualization of the compositional order of the almost infinite manifold, in the Architecture essay from
1795 the aesthetic experience of presence is cut off from the visual domain:
Man sollte denken, die Baukunst als schne Kunst arbeite allein frs Auge;
allein sie soll vorzglich, und worauf man am wenigsten acht hat, fr den
Sinn der mechanischen Bewegung des menschlichen Krpers arbeiten; wir
fhlen eine angenehme Empfindung, wenn wir uns im Tanze nach gewissen
Gesetzen bewegen; eine hnliche Empfindung sollten wir bei jemand erregen knnen, den wir mit verbundenen Augen durch ein wohl gebautes Haus

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hindurch fhren. Hier tritt die schwere und komplizierte Lehre von den
Proportionen ein, wodurch der Charakter des Gebudes und seiner verschiedenen Teile mglich wird.20
One would think that architecture, as one of the fine arts, would primarily
engage our sense of sight; however, something that has hardly been noticed
is the fact that architecture engages primarily our sense of motor control. We
have a pleasant sensation when we move in a dance according to certain
rules. A similar sensation should be provoked in somebody who is led through
a well-built house blindfolded. This leads us to the difficult and complicated
doctrine of proportions, which determine the character of a building and its
diverse parts.
Architecture as a fine art is thus no longer aligned with visual perception but with
the embodied sense of motor control. In addition, the spatial perception of a work
of architecture is compared to the temporally structured aesthetic experience of
ones own body while dancing. Goethe is suggesting that the proportions of a
specific building should be enjoyed in the way a dancer, rather than a passive audience member, enjoys a specific choreography. However, as in the earlier essay on
Strasbourg Cathedral, Goethe demands an active beholder. In the earlier essay the
beholder becomes a partner in dialogue with the artist who completes in his active
imagination the work of art. In the later work the beholder is not on an equal footing with the artist. Instead, the beholder enjoys himself as he is led through the
well-proportioned building. Goethes assertion that dance provides pleasure equivalent to that of a well-proportioned building allows him to redirect the discourse
on proportions and harmony; in effect, it is no longer grounded in the disembodied
discourse of mathematics, music, and the cosmic harmony of the spheres together
with all of its allegorical and emblematic dimensions. In its place is a dedicated
focus on the embodied individual.
Unlike the earlier essay on Strasbourg Cathedral, On Architecture does not
focus on one particular building. However, Goethe raises the issue of how we
should think about the individuality and specificity of a building, and from his
answer to this question he derives his decisive contribution to aesthetic theory. In
the essay on Strasbourg Cathedral the individuality of the work of art was depicted
as an issue of the artistic achievement of the individual artists genius, his ability to
present a manifold that appeared to dissolve into infinite detail within an ultimately
harmonious order. In the later essay Goethe pursues the question of a buildings
individuality under the rubric of character. Where the earlier essay included
Goethes critique of Laugiers reception of Vitruvius, the later essay refers directly

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to Vitruvius when articulating the distinction between mere buildings and architecture as art:
Soll aber das Baugeschft den Namen einer Kunst verdienen, so mu es neben
dem Notwendigen und Ntzlichen auch sinnlich-harmonische Gegenstnde
hervorbringen. Dieses Sinnlich-Harmonische ist in jeder Kunst von eigner
Art und bedingt; es kann nur innerhalb seiner Bedingung beurteilt werden.
Diese Bedingungen entspringen aus dem Material, aus dem Zweck und aus
der Natur des Sinns, fr welchen das Ganze harmonisch sein soll. (368)
If building is to deserve the name of art, it has to be not merely necessary
and useful but also sensuously harmonious. Each art has its own sense of
what is sensuously harmonious; it can only be judged on its own terms. Those
terms can be derived from the combination of the buildings conditions, from
the material, the purpose, and meaning of the building with which the whole
building has to be in harmony.
This formulation appears to be an echo of Vitruviuss demand that architecture, in
order to be beautiful, has to respect the function it serves and the materials that are
used. But Goethe is actually making a decisive departure from Vitruviuss functionalism. In contrast to the cathedral essay, however, considerations of function
are not just set aside. They take on the role of just one relativizing element in the
evaluation of the overall appropriateness and proportions of the individual elements. One specific purpose of a buildingfor instance, its intended use as a
princely residence or as a cathedraldoes play a certain role in the evaluation of
the use of certain architectural elements. The building is to be evaluated on its own
terms, which do not exclude a consideration of its purpose and the materials that
have been used. And yet, as Goethe continues to argue, evaluations of the specific
character of a building or attempts to come to terms with what makes a building
unique, must be addressed through exactly those aspects through which the building transcends its mere satisfaction of functionalist principles as well as the merely
appropriate use of materials.
Whereas Goethe initially severs the perception of architecture from visuality and
relates it instead to a spatial perception coupled with a sense of gross motor and
body controla step in his argument that seems to keep an architectural paradigm
at the appropriate distance from a paradigm of art as mimesis or representation
the introduction of the term character and the ensuing argument appear to take
back that separation of art from considerations of mimesis. Goethe even introduces
the term fiction, although what he means by this term is not at all self-evident.

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According to Goethe, a building that merely satisfies functionalist criteria is merely

part of the business of construction and is not yet art.21 A building must also produce a pleasant sensation when one explores it by walking around in it. However this
is not all that Goethe requires of a building that one might want to consider as art:
Hier [d.h. wenn ein Gebude eine angenehme, dem Tanz vergleichbare
Krpererfahrung hervorruft, D.v.M.] tritt die schwere und komplizierte Lehre
von den Proportionen ein, wodurch der Charakter des Gebudes und seiner
verschiedenen Teile mglich wird.
Hier tritt nun aber bald die Betrachtung des hchsten Zweckes ein, welcher,
wenn man so sagen darf, die berbefriedigung des Sinnes sich vornimmt
und einen gebildeten Geist bis zum Erstaunen und Entzcken erhebt; es kann
dieses nur durch das Genie, das sich zum Herrn der brigen Erfordernisse
gemacht htte, hervorgebracht werden; es ist dieses der poetische Teil der
Baukunst, in welchem die Fiktion eigentlich wirkt. Die Baukunst ist keine
nachahmende Kunst, sondern eine Kunst fr sich, aber sie kann auf ihrer
hchsten Stufe der Nachahmung nicht entbehren; sie bertrgt die Eigenschaften
eines Materials zum Schein auf das andere, wie z.B. bei allen Sulenordnungen
die Holzbaukunst nachgeahmt ist; sie bertrgt die Eigenschaften eines
Gebudes aufs andere, wie sie z.B. Sulen und Pilaster mit Mauren verbindet; sie tut es, um mannigfaltig und reich zu werden, und so schwer es hier
vor den Knstler ist, immer zu fhlen, ob er das Schickliche tue, so schwer
ist es fr den Kenner, zu urteilen, ob das Schickliche getan sei. (368)
Here [i.e., when a building produces the pleasant sensation we have when
we dance] is the moment when we can approach the difficult and complicated doctrine of proportions, which determines the character of a building
and its parts.
Here we will soon have to consider the highest purpose, the one that aims,
so to speak, at more than the satisfaction of one sense, one that presupposes
a highly educated intellect, which it will elevate and amaze enthusiastically;
this can only be produced by a genius which is in control of all of the other
requirements, and this is the poetic aspect of architecture, where architecture works like fiction. Architecture is not a mimetic art, but an art all on its
own, but on its highest level it cannot do without imitation; it appears to
transfer the properties of the materials, from which certain elements are derived,
for instance when it connects columns and pilaster with walls; it does so in
order to be more varied and richer, and as difficult as it is for the artist to feel

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whether what he does is truly appropriate, it is as difficult for the connoisseur to evaluate the appropriateness of the decision.
The principles of the architects creative process have been clearly severed from
merely functionalist considerations. Goethe is proposing an even more exceptional
kind of architecture, the architecture of genius, which somehow goes beyond all
architectural goals and appeals to the educated intellect of its beholder, amazes
and dazzles him in a way that seems to involve all of his faculties. Far beyond
a mere pleasant sensation, what is at stake here is the conscious perception of
appearance and semblance; for example, an allusion to a certain building material
that then might not be used. This kind of architecture would appeal to a critical
observer, a beholder who evaluates the architects conscious choices and his departure from established conventions. But why should this kind of an aesthetic experience, this coming together of sense perception, a certain bodily awareness of
space, and the conscious reflection on types of illusion assume an almost ecstatic
quality of wonder? And why is it that Goethe claims that the highest purpose of
architecture lies in the production of this reaction as an effect of fiction?
The reason for this exalted reaction seems to be that this kind of aesthetic experience provides an insight into human creativity. Herethat is, when fiction is at
stake and when an architectural work of genius is perceived as suchthe human
imagination can be intuited as a form of creativity that, unfettered by context,
need, function, or stylistic conventions, knows how to address, take up, and transform these very fetters. This is how architecture becomes the medium of an emphatically humanist approach to art.22
With this humanist approach to architecture Goethe departs from contemporary trends in architectural theory. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, architecture was typically associated with a symbolic function that could be articulated
in one of several ways: for example, to mean that specific buildings were to indicate in the design of their faade or their shape a specific function; or that they
were to serve as symbols of a specific collectivity or nation.23 Goethes notion of
fiction in architecture does not imply either notion of architectures symbolic function. For Goethe, the architecture of genius, in its ability to engage and enhance the
human imagination, represents the human imagination as a productive rather than
merely reproductive faculty. The architecture of genius invites the educated beholder
to admire in a work of architecture not its reference to something else but the specific choices and the creative selectivity of its artist.
The educated beholder evaluates a building by paying attention to the specific

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character of the individual building. His or her evaluation, the attempt to do justice
to the way individual elements in a building come together as a unique totality, is
distinct from both mere reaction to specific stylistic features and the more mechanical evaluation of certain proportions, evaluations that do not necessarily require
an on-site visit but can also be based on engravings, etchings, and other merely
graphic reproductions of the building. How should works of architecture be evaluated according to Goethe? On the one hand, he insists that any evaluation
requires a visit to and inspection of the actual building. Only exposure to the original, he believes, provides the beholder with the unique experience of how a building organizes the space through which the beholder moves. On the other hand, the
beholder must bring into play his knowledge of architecture, of alternative options
and choices the architect would have had at his disposal, in order to grasp the
unique achievement of any one building as the realization of a work of genius. By
emphasizing the embodied aspect of the architectural experience, Goethe distinguishes the emphatic aesthetic experience from a mere visual, cognitive, and imaginative experience mediated by the architectural discourse of the journals,
pamphlets, and architectural prints that were being widely circulated by the end
of the eighteenth century. To the extent that the mature Goethe requires of the
architectural work of genius that it entail an element of fiction, he demands that art
insist on the ability to transcend what is given, what is required, what is necessary
and predictable and to present its beholder with an anthropologically crucial dimension of the human imaginationnamely, its capacity to appropriate and transform
dominant teleologies.

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Notes

This essay is for Tom Shrager.

1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, [Review of J.G. Sulzers Die schnen Knste, in ihrem Ursprung,
ihrer wahren Natur und besten Anwendung betrachtet], in sthetische Schriften I: 17711805, vol.
18 of Smtliche Werke, ed. Friedmar Apel (Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1998), 97.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
2. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York:
Vintage Books, 1973), 71ff.
3. For an account of the engaged, embodied, and active observer, see also Jonathan Crary, Techniques
of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).
4. For a discussion of this paradigm change in aesthetic and semiotic theory, see my Virtue and
the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project in Eighteenth-Century Literature
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 163179.
5. Edward Young, Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), facsimile reprint (Leeds, UK: The
Scholars Press Limited, 1966), 26.
6. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Von deutscher Baukunst, in sthetische Schriften I, 112. (Hereinafter,
page numbers for this text will be given in running text.) Goethes On German Architecture initially
appeared as a one-off print in November 1772, without any information on its author or place of
publication. The essay first drew attention through Herders reprint in the collection Von deutscher
Art und Kunst (Hamburg, 1773).
7. See 1 Corinthians 3:9.
8. Although Jens Bisky acknowledges the systematic quality of Goethes architecture essay and
sees in it an exemplary staging of a secular, aesthetic experience, he does not analyze the introductory passage. See Jens Bisky, Das fhlende Genie, in Poesie der Baukunst: Architektursthetik von
Winckelmann bis Broissere (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Bhlaus Nachfolger, 2000), 3744.
9. See Richard Wittman, The Hut and the Altar: Architectural Origins and the Public Sphere in
Eighteenth-Century France, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 36, no. 1 (2007): 235259.
10. On this, see Aleida Assmann, Die Skularisierung des AndenkensMemoria, Fama, Historia,
in Erinnerungsrume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedchtnisses (Munich: Beck
Verlag, 1999), 3361.
11. See Assmann, Erinnerungsrume, 45.
12. On the centrality of the exchange of the loving gaze for the poetics of the young Goethe, see
David E. Wellbery, The Specular Moment: Goethes Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
13. Goethe concludes by summing up his conception of the function of art as the affirmation of
the decidedly anthropological dimension of free artistic form. The form of art must follow neither
requirements nor rules. Rather, in its autonomy, artistic form represents the affirmative activity of
human beings in their entirety: Die Kunst ist lange bildend, eh sie schn ist, und doch, so wahre,
groe Kunst, ja, oft wahrer und grer, als die Schne selbst. Denn in dem Menschen ist eine bildende Natur, die gleich sich ttig beweist, wann seine Existenz gesichert ist. Sobald er nichts zu sor-

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gen und zu frchten hat, greift der Halbgott, wirksam in seiner Ruhe, umher nach Stoff ihm seinen
Geist einzuhauchen. Und so modelt der Wilde mit abenteuerlichen Zgen, grlichen Gestalten,
hohen Farben, seine Cocos, seine Federn, und seinen Kper. Und lat diese Bildnerei aus den willkrlichsten Formen bestehn, sie wird ohne Gestaltsverhltnis zusammmenstimmen, denn Eine
Empfindung schuf sie zum charkeristischen Ganzen (116117). (Art is creative long before it is
beautiful. And yet, such art is true and great, perhaps truer and greater than when it becomes beautiful. For in man there is a creative force which becomes active as soon as his existence is secure.
When he is free from worry and fear, this demigod, restless in tranquility, begins to cast about for
matter to inspire with his spirit. And thus savages decorate their coconut-fiber mats, their feathers,
their bodies, with bizarre patterns, ghastly forms and gaudy colors. And even if this creative activity produces the most arbitrary shapes and designs, they will harmonize despite the apparent lack
of proportion. For a single feeling created them as a characteristic whole. Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, On German Architecture, in Essays on Art and Literature, trans. Ellen von Nardroff and
Ernest H. von Nardroff [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994], 8.)
14. Johann Arnd[t], Vier Bcher vom wahren Christentum . . . , ed. Joachim Langen (Berlin, 1712),
1144.
15. Seventeenth-century edification texts are characterized by an exemplary I, on the one hand,
and by a situational description related to a specific personal experience, on the other. This combination invokes both a total identification with the narrated I and an imaginary realization of the
speech situation. See Wolfgang Brckner, Thesen zur literarischen Struktur des sogenannten
Erbaulichen, in Volkskunde als historische Kulturwissenschaft 11 (1985): 209218.
16. Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage, ed. John Eade and Michael
J. Sallnow (New York: Routledge, 1991).
17. Johann Gottfried Herder, Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalions
Creative Dream (1778), ed. and trans. Jason Gaiger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
18. In his autobiography, On Poetry and Truth, Goethe reports how he painfully trained himself to
sustain the view from the tower of Strasbourg Cathedral without succumbing to vertigo, a procedure
similar to that which he used when learning to tolerate the dissection of human corpses in anatomy
theaters.
19. See Vittoria di Palma, Architecture, Environment, and Emotion: Quatremre de Quincy and
the Concept of Character, AA Files 47 (Summer 2002): 4556.
20. Goethe, Baukunst, in sthetische Schriften I, 368.
21. See also Jens Bisky, who argues that Goethe uses the concept of fiction to direct our attention
to the aspect of mediation and artificiality of all beautiful architecture, to make us aware of the growing distance of architectural forms from their primitive beginnings, to make us see architectural
history instead of quasi-natural archetypes. See Jens Bisky, Die Fiktion der Baukunst, in Poesie der
Baukunst, 75.
22. In ber Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke, Goethe also defends the purposeful use of illusion in art and advocates for an art that resolutely insists on its artificiality, taken
neither as nature itself nor as a reference to it. Because a successful work of art still appears as nature
to its viewer, Goethe has his advocate of art explain, Ein vollkommenes Kunstwerk ist ein Werk des

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menschlichen Geistes, und in diesem Sinne auch ein Werk der Natur. Aber indem die zerstreuten
Gegenstnde in eins gefat und selbst die gemeinsten in ihrer Bedeutung und Wrde aufgenommen
werden, so ist es ber die Natur. Es will durch einen Geist, der harmonisch entsprungen und gebildet
ist, aufgefat sein, und dieser findet das Frtreffliche, das in sich vollendete auch seiner Natur
gem. Davon hat der gemeine Liebhaber keinen Begriff. . . . [A]ber der wahre Liebhaber sieht nicht
nur die Wahrheit des Nachgeahmten, sondern auch die Vorzge des Ausgewhlten, das Geistreiche
der Zusammenstellung, das berirdische der kleinen Kunstwelt; er fhlt, da er sich zum Knstler
erheben msse, um das Werk zu genieen, er fhlt, da er sich aus seinem zestreuten Leben sammeln, mit dem Kunstwerke wohnen, es wiederholt anschauen und sich selbst damit eine hhere
Existenz geben msse (506). (A great work of art is a work of the human mind, and thus also a work
of nature. But because the work of art treats its diverse subject matter as a unified whole and reveals
the significance and dignity of even the most ordinary subjects, it goes beyond nature. A work of art
can only be comprehended by a mind that has been formed and developed harmoniously, because
only such a mind can relate to what is excellent and complete within itself. The savage art lover has
no concept of that. . . . But the true connoisseur sees not only the realism of what is imitated but also
the excellence in the selection of subject matter, the imaginativeness in composition, and the supranatural spirit of this micro-world of art. He feels that he must rise to the level of the artist in order to
enjoy the work, that he must focus his scattered energies on the work of art, that he must live with
it, must see it again and again, and thus achieve a higher level of awareness. Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, On Realism in Art, in Essays on Art and Literature, trans. Nardroff and Nardroff, 7778.)
23. On this, see Wittman, The Hut and the Altar. See also Anthony Vidler, The Writing of the
Walls: Architectural Theory in the Late Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press,
1987).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Baumstudie (Tree Study) , 1787.
Reprinted from Corpus der
Goethezeichnungen, 1960.

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