MEDI^.VAL GERMAN SCULPTURE IN THE GERMANIC 

 MUSEUM OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



By KUNO FRANCKE. 



{Read April 25, 1908.) 



There is a curious anomaly in the equipment of German uni- 

 versities, an anomaly accounted for partly by the traditional cosmo- 

 politanism of German scholarship, partly by the somewhat belated 

 development of Germany into a united and powerful nation. 



Whereas for sudents of classical archaeology there is provided in 

 nearly every university of the fatherland a well-planned and sys- 

 tematically arranged museum of casts of Greek sculptures, the 

 student of German history would not find at a single one of these 

 universities any collection which would offer to him a fairly accurate 

 representation of the artistic development of his own country. 

 Even in the German capital with its wealth of ethnological and 

 archaeological exhibits from Troas and Pergamon, from Egypt and 

 Assyria, from India and South America, no attempt has as yet been 

 made to bring together, in reproductions, the great artistic landmarks 

 of Germany herself. It has been reserved to an American university 

 to make at least a beginning of such an undertaking, but it is inter- 

 esting to note that the Germanic Museum of Harvard University 

 could not have achieved whatever success it has had thus far, had it 

 not been for the generous interest bestowed upon it by His Majesty 

 the German Emperor. So that this museum, although established 

 on non-German soil, is after all in its way another symptom of the 

 long strides which modern Germany has made toward national great- 

 ness and international influence. 



The bulk of the collections of the Germanic Museum at Cam- 

 bridge is devoted to German sculpture of the Middle Ages and the 

 Renaissance, and particular stress is laid upon a good representation 

 of the thirteenth century. 



It is not as generally acknowledged as it should be that the thir- 



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