Weimar, Germany
Stunning cultural centre is 10 km from barbaric Buchenwald camp
Thousand-year-old cultural centre near Buchenwald concentration camp.
Germany at its best — Germany at its worst. That’s Weimar in a nutshell.
Home to about 65,000 residents and five universities, Weimar was a major intellectual capital from the 18th to early 20th centuries.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Frederich von Schiller called Weimar home. So did Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus architectural movement, and renowned philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder.
Weimar was also the home of the Weimar Republic, the short-lived, ill-fated attempt to make Germany a democracy after the First World War.
However, Weimar’s centre is about 10 kilometres from the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. Designed to incarcerate and ultimately work prisoners to death, this “beach tree forest” (an English translation of Buchenwald) was a horrendous metaphor for Germany’s transformation from an intellectual to barbaric capital.
Less than three hours by train from Berlin — under two from Leipzig — 1,000-yearold Weimar is a fascinating destination for those intrigued by German history and culture.
Almost unscathed by air attacks in the Second World War, Weimar today is a wonderful combination of historic sights and old town streets and byways, all within a very compact area.
Though home to the 16thcentury artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, and from 1708 to 1717 to Johann Sebastian Bach when he was court organist, Weimar’s best years began with the rule of Duchess Anna Amalia (1739-1807), who ruled from her 18th birthday, and her son and successor Karl August (1757-1828).
Aside from encouraging a climate for intellectual pursuits, Anna Amalia’s legacy includes an extraordinary, elegant library filled with 16,000 works including medieval manuscripts and other 14th- to 18th-century works.
The library was beautifully restored after a devastating fire in 2004. Don’t miss its gleaming gold and white, Rococo Hall.
Goethe, who lived in Weimar for most of his life, was a friend and colleague of Karl August, who prized intellectual discussions.
He lured Goethe to Weimar with the offer of several government posts that ensured his comforts. Goethe completed several works here including his masterpiece, Faust.
Goethe’s presence also helped draw his close friend, playwright Frederich von Schiller, author of Don Carlos and Maria Stuarda.
You can visit the Goethe National Museum and private residence, a 1709 baroque structure where Germany’s most lauded writer lived for about 50 years before his death in 1832. You can see his living room, study and bedroom as well as Goethe’s own collections of art and natural science.
Not far away is the residence where Schiller spent his last years and where he wrote William Tell and Maria Stuarda. According to a Weimar guide, lacking funds for his house, Schiller paid for the house with the promise of revenues from future writings. He died in 1805, soon after completing the last of these promised works.
You might want to spend several hours at the Palace Museum. Highlights include works by Cranach and Durer, as well as German expressionists including Max Beckmann and Max Libermann.
Another of Weimar’s prime draws is the Bauhaus Museum detailing the works of the world-famous architectural and design style and school of art that flourished here from 1919 to 1925.
Other intriguing Weimar stops include the home where Franz Liszt lived and taught between 1869 and 1886, the 16th-century home and studio of Lucas Cranach, and the German National Theatre.
The present structure, erected in 1907, which dominates Weimar’s main square, was where the German National Assembly adopted the constitution of the Weimar Republic. Interestingly, the building’s predecessor was where the world première of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin and many of Frederick Schiller’s plays were staged.
Taking the short journey from the apex of German culture to Buchenwald seems like a visit to another planet. Roughly 250,000 people were imprisoned there between 1939 and 1945. About 50,000 died, mostly worked to death in a nearby quarry or munitions factory. Others perished from exposure, disease, or from being subjects of gruesome medical experiments.
Visitors today see barracks, a memorial hall, sites of “medical” testing, areas where people were hanged or strangled, and the crematoria where corpses were incinerated. Buchenwald’s were much smaller than those at Auschwitz since Buchenwald’s main mission was to use prisoners as labourers.
Even stranger is Buchenwald’s actual setting. For prisoners, it must have been especially cruel since well within view were lovely forests and a hunting palace.
Incidentally, Russians who occupied this part of Germany after the Second World War were not about to let a perfectly fine prison go to waste. Until 1955, they too used Buchenwald to warehouse their own corps of political, cultural, criminal and other undesirables.