Germany from A to Z: Weimar

Weimar opened a new Bauhaus Museum in April 2019. The Bauhaus School for Architecture, Art and Design was active in this city from 1919 to 1925. It is renowned for its designs of buildings, furniture and everyday objects — including the cradle above — that were reduced to essential lines. Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius (1883-1969) personally contributed to the selection of the museum's collection.

The founding site of the Bauhaus school is today the campus of the Bauhaus University of Weimar. In 1919, Walter Gropius united the School of Arts and Crafts here to create a revolutionary new educational institution. In the light-flooded studio building (photo), artists, designers and architects worked on ideas to modernize society after World War I.

Attracting creative artistic minds to Weimar was the policy of the dukes of Saxony-Weimar for almost 200 years. Duke Karl August and his mother, Anna Amalia, laid the foundation stone: At the end of the 18th century they ensured Weimar's rise to a center of German cultural and intellectual history. Today, the ducal art collection in the City Palace is a testimony to this legacy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe came to Weimar as an aspiring poet in 1775 at the invitation of Duke Karl August. The Duke gave him the garden house in the Park an der Ilm to live and work in. Later, Goethe moved to the more spacious house on Frauenplan, which is now also a museum.

Because Goethe gave him an apartment and the duke offered him better pay, Friedrich Schiller moved to Weimar in 1799. The second floor, the mansard, served as the writer’s work and living rooms, which are now a museum. With the exception of "The Maid of Orleans," all of Schiller's late dramas were performed at the Weimar Hoftheater, which is today the German National Theater.

The Anna Amalia Library is one of the earliest publicly accessible collections of a sovereign's books and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Goethe was its director for 30 years. Destroyed by a devastating fire in 2004, the restored rococo hall is today once again a magnificent home for the classics of German literature from around 1800.

Not only were Schiller's plays performed in this theater, but in 1919 the National Assembly of the first German republic met here. The Deutsches Nationaltheater thus became the birthplace of German democracy. Nowadays, opera, drama and concerts, from classical to contemporary works, are on the program.

But even the darkest chapter of German history has left its mark on the city. On the Ettersberg Hill, the Buchenwald Memorial Site is a reminder of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. They set up the Buchenwald concentration camp on the site in 1937, and it became one of the largest death camps in Germany. Some 56,000 people died here from torture, medical experiments or starvation.

A detour to the beautiful center of Weimar is a must when visiting the city — the marketplace is a meeting point for locals and tourists. Here, you'll find the Town Hall (on the right) dating from the Renaissance and the Hotel Elephant, where all the famous guests of the town have stayed.

No visit to Weimar would be complete without tasting Thuringian dumplings. The restaurant Scharfe Ecke in the old town is an institution for its famous dumplings, which are, of course, homemade. Everyone can see from a distance whether the restaurant is open or not by whether the Kloss-Marie (Dumpling Marie) statue is positioned outside the front door.