Cologne cathedral as an international monument

Abstract

The paper examines international involvement in the completion of Germany’s most famous ‘national monument’. Long before Cologne Cathedral was listed as UNESCO World Heritage, it played an important part in the development of an international heritage consciousness. The paper sketches the multidirectional ways in which the cathedral was fashioned internationally. The first part examines how personal networks helped initiate the nineteenth-century completion; the second looks at international financial support and the place of the cathedral in cultural diplomacy and foreign heritage policies. The third analyses the broader reception by international audiences beyond the completion in the twentieth century. By understanding how historical culture in Germany developed transnationally, the paper suggests ways of overcoming the dominance of short-term and isolated perspectives in German history.