The Goethe monument in front of the portico of the Wiesbaden Museum was created in 1919 by the sculptor Hermann Hahn (1868-1942). A few years earlier, he had sculpted the Goethe monument (1912) in Chicago (USA).

The sculpture shows the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sitting larger than life above a symbolically suggested cloud, his body wrapped in folds of cloth in an antique style, with his upper body almost free, in the pose of Zeus, the Greek father of the gods. Bettine von Arnim had already formulated this pictorial idea around 1830. Goethe, whose facial features are clearly recognizable, is holding an eagle in his left arm.

The Goethe monument is made of polished granite from the Fichtelgebirge mountains - an allusion to the geologist and mineralogist Goethe. During his spa stays in Wiesbaden in 1814 and 1815, Goethe had campaigned for the creation of a museum and the inclusion of the unique natural history and art collection of his friend, the Frankfurt merchant and scholar Johann Isaac von Gerning. He is thus regarded as the initiator of the Nassau Antiquities Collection. Goethe's words already foreshadowed the characteristic tripartite division of the museum, which opened in 1915 and was reflected in the architecture of the new museum building, into a picture gallery, a natural history department and an archaeology department.

The Goethe monument was controversial from the outset. In 1992, it had to be removed from its place in front of the museum entrance. The sculpture spent two years packed in plastic bags in the museum's inner courtyard. Following pressure from the public, the monument was reinstalled in a corner on the lawn in front of the museum. It was only shortly before the poet's 250th birthday in 1999 that the Goethe sculpture was able to take its place again on the plinth in front of the museum's portico, albeit now slightly lower down.