Page:The Dedication of Germanic Museum of Harvard University p14.jpg

14 The Chairman: Ladies and Gentlemen, I was obliged to confess to you that some of us had occasionally felt that the project of a Germanic Museum here was almost too great to be capable of realization. There was, however, one member of the German Department whose enthusiasm and persistence never flagged, and to whose devotion to this cause the success of it is almost entirely due,—the Curator of the Germanic Museum, Professor Kuno Francke.

There are moments in the history of an institution as well as in the life of an individual, when forces which slowly and for a long time almost imperceptibly have been accumulating suddenly take shape in some new impetus, some new accomplishment, some new and inspiring thought. Such a moment, if I mistake not, came to Harvard University, and through Harvard to American universities at large, when the German Emperor decided to give to it the remarkable collection of casts, embracing some of the great landmarks in the development of German architecture and sculpture, which now forms the principal treasure of our Germanic Museum.

The idea of a Germanic Museum at Harvard University is not of yesterday. It is fully ten years old. It was engendered by the existence of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology, and by the successful efforts of the Semitic Department to illustrate the life of ancient Babylon and Judea through a collection of monuments embodying the results of scientific exploration to Asia Minor. It was taken up by the Committee of Visitors to the Germanic Department, who very unselfishly and earnestly devoted themselves to its furtherance. It was subsequently helped by the Germanic Museum Association, through whose propaganda it first became widely known. It was brought within sight of tentative realization through the grant by the President and Fellows of a building well suited to its immediate purposes. But not until the truly princely gift of the German Emperor came to us could we feel assured—as we do feel now—that this