Tracing the classics in Weimar

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Kerstin Sucher
Weimar is small. It lies in the green heartland of Germany, in Thuringia, and has just about 65,000 inhabitants. Yet it still enjoys world fame as a city of literature, art, music and history. It was founded by many great minds, above all by the writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, who lived and worked in Weimar for many years. But Lucas Cranach also belongs among their ranks, the artist of the Reformation, and the great reformer Martin Luther, who often preached in Weimar; Johann Sebastian Bach, the most widely played composer, and Franz Liszt, who led Weimar in the post-classical era into a silver" age of music. They all walked along the historical cobble stones of the market place, past the stands of the brightly coloured vegetable market that still exists today. Nowadays, it's not just the city inhabitants but also numerous tourists who saunter and mingle there. Almost all of the visitors have a common goal: about 500 steps away lies the Goethe House, the city's holiest of literary sanctuaries. Nobody needs a taxi in Weimar. Everything can be reached easily on foot. But if you really want to gain a feel of the time around 1800, then the best thing to do is ride in one of the many horse-drawn carriages.
Young Herr Goethe may well have found the place small and confined when he arrived in the royal seat of residence in 1775. He was, after all, born in Frankfurt. He came at the invitation of the equally young, art-loving Duke Carl August, who became Goethe's friend by both challenging and supporting him. And Johann Wolfgang von Goethe remained over 50 years until the end of his life in the little Thuringian town. He found peace and strength there, as well as the material prosperity he needed to cultivate his creative genius.
Goethe's house overlooks the Frauenplan and is Weimar's most visited museum. That's saying something. In Weimar 24 museums and memorial sites are snuggled together in a space measuring 500 by 600 metres, and 14 of them have been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. On entering the Goethe House guests are welcomed with the greeting "Salve" inlaid in the wooden floor. Everything looks as if the great poet had just left the house. The study, the library, the private rooms: nothing has been changed since Goethe's time. In the Juno Room, the reception room with the grand piano, the great writer met with leading personalities of his time, writers and scholars. He often accommodated his guests at the neighbouring Weisser Schwan, which is now a popular tourist restaurant. And the menu offers Goethe's favourite dishes, such as boiled breast of beet with Frankfurt's famous green sauce and parsley potatoes.
Goethe's private library contains a collection of over 6,000 books, whilst the Duchess Anna Amalia Library possesses one million volumes. This library is an art historical research centre of international standing. In the autumn of 2004 a large fire destroyed tens of thousands of books in the wonderful rococo reading room. But the careful restoration work will be completed by October 2007 returning the former splendour to the historical building. The handwritten legacies of both Goethe and Schiller, totalling over 2 million documents, are preserved in the world's oldest literature archive: the Goethe and Schiller Archive. UNESCO has included it in its Memory of the World programme. Directly behind the Anna Amalia Library lies the park beside the River Ilm, a green oasis in the heart of the city. Goethe's garden house is set in the midst of this idyll, his first domicile in Weimar. But it soon became too small, and too modest for the privy councillor", because the poet was also a minister of state in the service of the duke. Throughout his life the garden house, which is now open to the public, served as a refuge for his creative writing. This is where he found peace, where he could be at one with nature, the man who was also interested in plants, minerals and the colour spectrum.
Not far from the Goethe House stands the small house that Schiller bought in what is now Schillerstrasse, Weimar's pedestrian precinct. In the little study on the first floor he wrote Wilhelm Tell and Maria Stuart. The friendship between the two great writers also inspired their work, and they provoked each other to write new masterpieces. Schiller urged Goethe to complete Faust, on which he had spent a lifetime of work, and it was Goethe who staged Schiller's dramas in what is now the Deutsches Nationaltheater. He was, after all, the theatre director.
One hundred years later history was written in this theatre. In 1919 the constituent assembly proclaimed Germany's first democratic constitution which then became known in the history books as the "Weimar Constitution". Directly opposite the theatre, the Bauhaus Museum has opened its doors to the public. It is dedicated to the Staatliches Bauhaus, the revolutionary art, architecture and design school of the 20th century, which was founded in Weimar. Walter Gropius and Wassily Kandinsky are just two of the great names associated with the Bauhaus. A few paces away from here stands the Wittums Palace, the residence of the widowed duchess Anna Amalia with its illustrious round table room. The artistically inclined Anna Amalia gathered Weimar's leading personalities here in her salon, aristocrats and common citizens, where as Goethe wrote, "everyone entertained themselves and others in their own way".
But Weimar is also a city of extreme contrasts: humanism and horror are close neighbours. Almost within shouting distance of the classic residences the National Socialists erected Buchenwald concentration camp on the Ettersberg hill. Over 56,000 people met their untimely death here. Buchenwald is now a much visited memorial centre and a warning against cruelty and inhumanity.
Between three and four million tourists visit Weimar every year. No other town of this size is able to boast nearly as many museums and historical buildings which breathe so much history and culture with virtually every step you take. But without Goethe and Schiller, Weimar would never have become the intellectual centre of the era that went down in literary history as the epoch of the Weimar Classics. Weimar's visitors retrace the spirit of these bygone times, in a vibrant city of the present. Before departing many of them meet up for a final photograph in front of the Deutsches Nationaltheater, because this is where the two great poets now stand, united in a bronze memorial. And those who have their picture taken in front of the city's famous landmark can always say: "I was in Weimar" when they return home.
— Deutschland