Monuments to 'Genius' in German Classicism

Abstract

"J 1 n'est pas d'usage d'dlever en France des monuments aux grands g6n6raux I ou aux hommes c6lkbres; les rois seuls obtiennent cette distinction." These words occur in Patte's Monuments e'rige's en France d la gloire de Louis XV, published in 1765. The polemical phrasing suggests that other countries were not sufficiently rigorous in the assertion of this dynastic privilege. England erected monuments not only to its generals and statesmen but even to its poets; and the English model began to impress the rest of Europe. Ten years after Patte's emphatic pronouncement that a monument ought to be an honour exclusively reserved for kings, we find Anton Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker advocating the opposite view in his pamphlet Vom Costiim an Denkmdlern (1776) :