Germany · Thuringia

Weimar

  • Population:~65,000
  • Timezone:CET/CEST
  • Currency:Euro (EUR). ATMs on the Markt and near Goetheplatz. Klassik Stiftung tickets (combination ticket) are purchaseable online and at the box office. The Anna Amalia Library rococo hall timed ticket sells out — online booking in advance is essential in summer.

Overview

Weimar (population ~65,000) is Germany's most culturally loaded small city — two consecutive UNESCO inscriptions in a decade (Classical Weimar 1998, Bauhaus 1996), the hometown of Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, and Nietzsche, and the birthplace of the Bauhaus and the Weimar Republic. Eight kilometres to the north-west, on the Ettersberg hill, the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial is an unavoidable counterpoint. All of this in a city 15 minutes from Erfurt by regional train.

Practical Info

Safety: Weimar is a very safe city. The historic centre and park areas are well-maintained and frequently visited. Standard precautions apply when visiting the Buchenwald Memorial site — respectful behaviour is expected throughout the grounds. Language: German throughout. English spoken at major Klassik Stiftung sites (Goethehaus, Anna Amalia Library, Bauhaus-Museum), at the Buchenwald Memorial (English-language audio guides and exhibition text), and at the tourist-oriented restaurants around Theaterplatz and Frauenplan. Currency: Euro (EUR). ATMs on the Markt and near Goetheplatz. Klassik Stiftung tickets (combination ticket) are purchaseable online and at the box office. The Anna Amalia Library rococo hall timed ticket sells out — online booking in advance is essential in summer.

Travel

Weimar is the city where German cultural history concentrates most densely. In the late 18th century, Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar assembled the greatest writers of German Enlightenment at his court — Goethe arrived in 1775 and stayed until his death in 1832; Schiller lived here from 1799 to his death in 1805; Herder and Wieland joined them. The four together constitute the Weimarer Klassik — the German literary classical period that defined the national intellectual canon. A century later, in 1919, two events converged in Weimar: the founding of the Bauhaus school (Walter Gropius's synthesis of fine art, craft, and industrial design, which became the most influential design school of the 20th century) and the drafting of the Weimar Republic constitution in the National Theatre on the Theaterplatz. Both the Goethe era and the Bauhaus era left their UNESCO-listed physical mark on the city. The practical scale of Weimar makes it a two-day destination at minimum — but a very concentrated one. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar manages all the major sites: the Goethehaus at Frauenplan, the Schillerhaus at Schillerstraße, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library (its rococo book-hall severely damaged by fire in 2004 and restored by 2007), the Weimarer Schloss museum, and the landscape Park an der Ilm with Goethe's garden house. The Bauhaus cluster on the opposite end of town includes the original Gropius-designed school building on Geschwister-Scholl-Straße and the Haus am Horn. A separate ticket covers the Bauhaus-Universität and related spaces. The Buchenwald Memorial (Gedenkstätte Buchenwald) on the Ettersberg hill 8 km north-west of Weimar is not optional for a Weimar visit — the proximity of one of the largest Nazi concentration camps (1937–1945, approximately 43,000 deaths) to the city of Goethe and Schiller is the central unresolved question of German cultural memory, addressed directly in the memorial's permanent exhibition. The bus from Weimar Hauptbahnhof takes 15 minutes.

The Goethehaus at Frauenplan 1 is the centre of Weimar's Classical UNESCO ensemble — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived here from 1782 until his death in 1832, and the building preserves his domestic and working spaces in extraordinary original detail: the reception rooms he designed in the neoclassical style he favoured after his Italian journey (1786–88), the private apartments, and the study where he wrote much of Faust Part II. The house was managed as a museum from 1885 onwards and has been a UNESCO site since 1998 as part of the Classical Weimar ensemble. The Schillerhaus (Schillerstraße 12), where Friedrich Schiller lived for the last three years of his life (1802–1805) and wrote Wilhelm Tell and Die Braut von Messina, is a ten-minute walk away — a modest townhouse with Schiller's original study preserved, contrasting with the more elaborate Goethe residence. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library (Platz der Demokratie), the library of the Weimarer Klassik, is the ensemble's most visually spectacular element — its 18th-century rococo book-hall (the Rokokosaal), two storeys of books on curved galleries, was severely damaged in a fire in September 2004 (which destroyed 50,000 volumes and damaged 118,000 more) and restored to its original appearance by 2007. The rococo hall requires a timed ticket, capacity-limited — the most sought-after in Weimar and worth booking weeks in advance in summer.

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