Cultural memory has yet to be discovered as a major theme in Goethe’s Von deutscherBaukunst: At the outset, a cluster of monuments demonstrates how remembrance in moderntimes is initiated by intermediality, more specifically by relations between architectural spaceand writing. Both aspects, medial preconditions and mnemonic modernity, recur in a chapterof Achim von Arnim’s novel Die Kronenwächter, which, as Goethe did aesthetically, focuseson master builder Erwin of Straßbourg and his cathedral. By way of an intertextual read-ing this paper will conduct a theoretical comparison. Pierre Nora’s account of modern prac-tice as ‘lieux de mémoire’ is widespread, while the notion of ‘Gedächtnisparagone’, mediacompeting with each other, embraces a wide range. A different approach is better equippedto describe the procedures in Baukunstand Kronenwächter: With her thoughts on languageand architecture referring to history Claudia Brodsky (In the Place of Language, 2009) coversthe more basic ground of intermedial performance. Furthermore, this elucidates the situ-ation around 1800, when memorial culture had to be poetically and socially re-established.