Anniversaries, birthdays, and jubilees, even those celebrating long-dead poets and philosophers, were not without significance in the public culture of twentieth-century Europe. Such celebrations, in the form of conferences, lectures, and broadsheet tributes on the pages of the feuilleton or culture pages of newspapers took their place in the rites and rituals, as well as debates and contestations, of the life of both intellectual engagement and the broader culture as a whole. Such rituals were not wholly without their reasons, as to celebrate a composer, a scientist, or a literary writer centuries after their passing is, in part, to celebrate an intellectual and cultural achievement that has endured.