Schubert Gets Busted

Ancient and Modern Sources for the Composer's Gravesite Memorial

Abstract

Within a week of Schubert’s death in 1828, his friends broached the idea of a monument at his grave. Duly installed in the Viennese Währing District Cemetery, it lay three graves from that of Beethoven, in accordance with what Schubert’s brother Ferdinand interpreted as the composer’s dying wish: to be buried alongside his creative idol. The memorial’s configuration had no antecedent in Vienna. Schubert’s bust stood within a marble structure whose design evoked ancient classical forms. Further, the shape of the bust conjured its own distinctive traditions.

Its form is a herm. Originating in Athens, herms became a popular decoration for Roman villas, typically representing heroes, philosophers, and writers. The excavation and exhibition of herms in the second half of the eighteenth century inspired sculptors’ depictions of contemporary illustrious figures.

Despite their wide dissemination, however, no such busts had been incorporated into a public cemetery memorial in conservative Vienna at the time of Schubert’s death. Thus, placing his herm at his gravesite was an unprecedented choice, tapping into the symbolism that the rest of Europe was enthusiastically adopting.

Schubert scholarship has overlooked the traditions, ancient and modern, that informed the memorial’s design. This article gives an account of the monument’s sculptural and architectural antecedents, analyzes them in order to decode what meanings its planners contemplated and transmitted to individuals who visited the site, and finally offers its likely contemporary models.