Famous Landmarks in Weimar
Ducal Baroque palaces neighbour the Art Nouveau school building that became the Bauhaus.
Four of Weimar's recorded landmarks were built for the dukes of Saxe-Weimar within a compact area beside the Ilm river: a city palace rebuilt in Neoclassical stone after repeated fires, a ducal library that opened to the public in the late seventeenth century, and a Baroque summer palace with French and English gardens on the town's edge. These began as court buildings, later turned over to museums, archives and collections once ducal government ended. A different material and period appear only once, in the Art Nouveau school building Henry van de Velde designed for the art academy that later became the Bauhaus. Weimar's landmark stock is therefore small, closely spaced, and weighted toward the seventeenth-to-early-nineteenth-century ducal court rather than any later industrial rebuilding.
Goethe's House
1709 · Georg Caspar Helmershausen
Beside the house is a garden that once grew produce for the household - asparagus, artichokes, apricots and grapes - extended eastward in 1817 to add a small pavilion built to hold a mineral collection.
This was Goethe's main residence in Weimar, where he lived from 1782 to 1832, though he occupied other houses in the town too. Built in 1709 by Georg Caspar Helmershausen, its rooms were redesigned once Goethe moved in, to reflect the ideals of Weimar Classicism, a movement in which he was a leading figure. Many original furnishings survive. An adjoining garden supplied the household with asparagus, artichokes, apricots and grapes; extended eastward in 1817, it gained a pavilion for Goethe's mineral collection. The house now holds the Goethe-Nationalmuseum and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.
- The adjoining garden originally grew asparagus, artichokes, apricots and grapes for the household.
- A pavilion added to the garden in 1817 was built to store Goethe's mineral collection.
- Goethe lived in the house for fifty years, from 1782 to 1832, though he occupied other houses in Weimar as well.
Photo: Mylius (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Duchess Anna Amalia Library
1691
The library is remembered as much for the 2004 fire that gutted its main wing as for its holdings: restoration of the salvaged volumes was not finished until 2015.
This is a public research library specialising in German literature from the Classical and late Romantic periods, its holdings built up under the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar with stock supplied by the Weimar bookseller Hoffmann and the Strasbourg publishing house Bauer, Treuttel and Würtz. It opened to the public in 1691 and was renamed for Duchess Anna Amalia in 1991, the tricentennial of that opening. Listed as part of the Classical Weimar UNESCO World Heritage Site, it lost its main wing and part of its collection to a 2004 fire; restoration of the surviving books took until 2015.
- It was renamed for Duchess Anna Amalia in 1991, exactly three hundred years after it first opened to the public.
- Its collection was built up partly with volumes from a Strasbourg publishing house, Bauer, Treuttel and Würtz.
Photo: Rudolf Klein at de.wikipedia.) Later version(s) were uploaded by Most Curious at de.wikipedia. (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
Weimar City Palace
1803
A Neoclassical palace of restrained, symmetrical stonework stands at the edge of a riverside park, its plain lines a contrast with the ornate Baroque building that stood on the site before a fire.
Weimar's dukes had their principal residence here from the mid-sixteenth century, known variously as the Grand Ducal Palace or City Castle. A Baroque range associated with the architects Johann Moritz Richter and Johann Adolf Richter burned in 1774 and was replaced by the Neoclassical building that stands today, completed in 1803. It stands at the north end of Park an der Ilm, beside the Ilm river. Four rooms commemorate the poets Goethe, Herder, Schiller and Wieland, and since 1923 the palace has held the Schlossmuseum, with paintings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and works related to the city.
- Works by Johann Sebastian Bach were premiered in the palace's chapel before that Baroque building burned down.
- It has been destroyed by fire and rebuilt more than once over its history.
Photo: Steffen Schmitz (more photos) (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Bauhaus University Main Building
1911 · Henry van de Velde
Curving lines and organic, plant-based ornament mark the facade as Art Nouveau, unlike the symmetrical classicism of the ducal buildings elsewhere in the city.
Designed by Henry van de Velde and completed in 1911, this Art Nouveau building housed what began in 1860 as the Great Ducal Saxon Art School. The school gained collegiate status in June 1910, and in 1919 its new director Walter Gropius renamed it Bauhaus; it took its current name in 1996. It now serves a public university specialising in art and technical fields, with more than four thousand students enrolled, around 27 percent of them international.
- The university marked its 150th anniversary as an art school in 2010, and the centenary of the Bauhaus itself in 2019.
- It has changed its name more than once, taking its present title only in 1996.
Photo: Ralf Herrmann (CC BY-SA 2.0 de)
Belvedere Palace
1724-1732 · Gottfried Heinrich Krohne and Johann August Richter
A low, symmetrical Baroque block with matching pavilions on either side stands in landscaped grounds that combine formal French parterres with informal English planting.
This Baroque pleasure house was built in 1724-1732 for Ernst August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, as a venue for house-parties outside the town, its main block flanked by two symmetrical pavilions. Formal French-style gardens were laid out in 1728-1748, and much of the surrounding parkland was reworked as an English landscape garden after 1811. The palace now displays porcelain, faience, furniture and eighteenth-century paintings, and an Orangery wing holds a collection of historical carriages. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998 as part of the Classical Weimar site.
- A catalogue of its plant collection was published in 1820 as Hortus Belvedereanus.
- Grand Duke Carl Friedrich, for whom the gardens were remade in the English style after 1811, died at the palace in 1853.
Photo: Dr. Bernd Gross (CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
History
Weimar's dukes held their city palace from the mid-sixteenth century. A Baroque range burned in 1774 and was replaced by the Neoclassical building that stands today, with rooms later dedicated to the poets Goethe, Herder, Schiller and Wieland. Duke Ernst August built a Baroque summer retreat at Belvedere in 1724-1732, its formal gardens later reworked in the English landscape style. The ducal library opened to the public in 1691, was renamed for Duchess Anna Amalia in 1991, and lost part of its collection to a fire in 2004, with restoration finished in 2015. A ducal art school founded in 1860 gained collegiate status in 1910, moved into Henry van de Velde's Art Nouveau building, and was renamed Bauhaus in 1919. Weimar's other twentieth-century turn came after the First World War, when Germany's first democratic constitution was signed here, giving the postwar republic its name.