Portrait: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, national poet and naturalist

24 March 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  7 minutes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1828

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Joseph Karl Stieler in 1828

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, critic, and amateur artist. His works include: four novels; epic and lyric poetry; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is considered to be the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.   read more…

Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar

29 March 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  9 minutes

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. The library contains 1,000,000 books, 2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10,000 maps, and 4,000 musical scripts. The research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10,000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther. Today, the library is a public research library for literature and art history. One of the library’s most famous patrons was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who worked there from 1797 to 1832. The library also includes the world’s largest Faust collection. The Duchess’s significant 13,000-volume music collection is also available in the library.   read more…

Weimar – Goethe, Schiller and Bauhaus

19 May 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, European Union, European Capital of Culture, Museums, Exhibitions, Sustainability, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

Weimar City Palace © Maros M r a z

Weimar City Palace © Maros M r a z

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the Bundesland of Thuringia, north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899. Weimar was the capital of the Duchy (after 1815 the Grand Duchy) of Saxe-Weimar (German: Sachsen-Weimar). Weimar’s cultural heritage is vast. It is most often recognised as the place where Germany’s first democratic constitution was signed after the First World War, giving its name to the Weimar Republic period in German politics, of 1918–1933. However, the city was also the focal point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading characters of the literary genre of Weimar Classicism, the writers Goethe and Schiller. The city was also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, with artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, and Lyonel Feininger teaching in Weimar’s Bauhaus School. Many places in the city centre have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage sites.   read more…

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