The university erected this monument to its long-serving professor K Morgernstern. Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern (1770-1852) was a German scholar who was a professor of eloquence and classic philology, aesthetics, literary and art history in the University of Tartu from 1802 to 1836. He was one of the founders and the first director of the University of Tartu Library (1802-1839). He founded the Museum of Art of the University of Tartu in 1803.