of Harvard University; Mr. C. Howard Walker, architect, and Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, historian.
The exercises were opened by the presiding officer, Professor von Jagemann, chairman of the Germanic Department of Harvard University, with an account of the history of the Museum.
ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR VON JAGEMANN.
Mr. President, Baron von dem Bussche, and Ladies and Gentlemen:—
You have been invited by the President and Fellows of Harvard College to witness the opening exercises of a new institution connected with our university—the Germanic Museum. The small beginnings of this collection have been, as most of you doubtless know, on exhibition for some time; nevertheless there seems to be good reason for such a ceremony as that which brings us together to-day. It is a natural desire when we have reached a turning point in the road, to look back in order to measure the distance which we have traveled, rejoice at the work we have accomplished, make sure that we are pursuing the right path, calculate how far we are still from our goal. This, I take it, is the purpose of our gathering to-day.
The beginnings of our enterprise date back some ten years. 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. For this purpose books alone do not suffice. As no person ever fairly understood the spirit of ancient Greece without beholding, at least in good reproductions, some of her greatest works of art, so it was felt that some phases of German life and thought were more truthfully embodied in the architecture, sculpture and paintings of mediaeval cathedrals and town halls than even in Wolfram von Eschenbach's “Parzival” or the writings of the Mystics.
