Peter Boerner first saw the copy of David D'Angers' bust of Goethe in 1977 at the home of his college friend Ernst Wolfgang Mick, then director of the Tapeten-Museum in Kassel. Mick was a great admirer of Goethe and had the bust in his home (where, to his horror, his children had once painted a moustache on Goethe).

Mick told Peter that a friend of his, the director of a museum where the original bust was temporarily on exhibit, had offered to have a copy of the bust made for him. He said his friend would do the same for Peter. And that's exactly what happened. At the time, we were in Wolfenbüttel, where Peter had a research fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek. The new copy of the bust was only finished shortly before we had to return home. Since we were unable to take it with us to Bloomington, we were fortunate to be able to store it in Peter's mother's storage room in Darmstadt. Goethe remained there until we returned to Germany in 1980/81, this time to the ZiF in Bielefeld.

The bust was then set up in our apartment in Bielefeld. It was placed on a large box that Peter had brought into his office. When we had visitors, he would advise them to kneel down so that they could admire Goethe from the right perspective.

When we had to return to the US, we left the bust with Peter's mother in Darmstadt again. To her great delight, we were finally able to free her from it in 1986 (she needed the space in the storage room).

We brought the bust to Berlin, where Peter was working at the Wissenschaftskolleg. During our months in Berlin, after several complicated negotiations, we were able to have a corner cabinet and a desk from Peter's family estate transported from the East Berlin State Library (where an aunt had left them for safekeeping) to our apartment in West Berlin. At the end of our time in Berlin, we sent all three pieces to Bloomington by ship.

To our surprise, they survived the journey well, and so the large bust resided with us for many years - until it found a new, very beautiful home again with you in Germany."

Nancy Boerner, December 20, 2025