Note 2 — ON GERMAN ARCHITECTURE

“What I had thought and imagined with respect to that style of architecture, I wrote in a connected form. The first point on which I insisted was that it should be called German, and not Gothic; that it should be considered not foreign, but native. The second point was that it could not be compared with the architecture of the Greeks and Romans, because it sprang from quite another principle. If these, living under a more favorable sky, allowed their roof to rest upon columns, a wall, broken through, arose of its own accord. We, however, who must always protect ourselves against the weather, and everywhere surround ourselves with walls, have to revere the genius who discovered the means of endowing massive walls with variety, of apparently breaking them through, and of thus occupying the eye in a worthy and pleasing manner on a broad surface.... If I had been pleased to write down these views (the value of which I will not deny) clearly and distinctly, in an intelligible style, the paper On German Architecture would then, when I published it, have produced more effect, and would sooner have drawn the attention of the native friends of art. But, misled by the example of Herder and Hamann, I obscured these very simple thoughts and observations by a dusty cloud of words and phrases, and, both for myself and others, darkened the light which had arisen within me. However, the paper was well received, and reprinted in Herder’s work on German Manner and Art.”—Goethe, Autobiography (1812). The “dear abbé” to whom Goethe is replying in this essay is the Abbé Laugier, author of the Essai sur l’Architecture (1753).