The Goethe-Institut has 169 institutions across the world promoting German language and culture, funded by the Federal Republic of Germany. On 169 individual business cards, the Goethe-Institut’s namesake, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), is printed together with each address of the global Goethe Institutes. These familiar objects offer an alternative means of mapping the ubiquity and lingering imperial implications of national cultural institutes in a globalised terrain. The business cards show the person Johann Wolfgang von Goethe embodied: a poet, a politician, a scientist, a playwright and a novelist.