Find out more in the Oxford Companion to German Literature.Stratford-upon-Avon would be just like any other small town in the attractive countryside of central England were it not for William Shakespeare. As the birthplace of the world-famous playwright, Stratford has become a place of pilgrimage for people from every corner of the globe. Germany has its Stratford, too: Weimar, home for many years to Goethe, Schiller and numerous other writers.
Weimar, with its population of 60,000 inhabitants, is situated in the heart of the beautiful forest, the Thüringer Wald, in the south-east of Germany. Always a centre of culture, it has managed to hold onto its reputation throughout its history. As part of the German Democratic Republic until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it maintained its privileged position even though it seemed to lay dormant and neglected for years. Since then, Weimar has picked up the pieces and energetically set about reinventing itself, conserving the substance of its many historical and beautiful buildings as well as creating an attractive alternative scene for younger people. In 1999 it was the European City of Culture.
Visiting Weimar today, one sees everywhere the evidence of the city’s rich history. Stand in Theaterplatz (Theatre Square), for example, where classicism meets modernism. In the middle of the square is an impressive statue of Goethe and Schiller, commemorating the city’s literary and philosophical heyday in the late 18th early nineteenth century. Behind their backs is the German National Theatre where Germany’s first democratic constitution was put in place in 1919 and where the Weimar Republic began its brief 14-year existence.
Follow Goethe and Schiller’s gaze across the square and you will see the Bauhaus Museum. This contains an impressive collection of objects and archives from the Bauhaus, a school of architecture and design founded in that same year, 1919. Building on the foundations of a school of arts and crafts established in 1902 by the Belgian artist and architect Henry van de Velde, Walter Gropius quickly established the Bauhaus as the cornerstone of the Modernist movement. Teaching at the school was based on workshops; they produced among other things, furniture, lighting, and typography, much of which is still regarded as iconic by designers today. You can see many of these in the museum. It also attracted famous modern artists such as Klee, Kandinsky, and Moholy-Nagy. An approach to architecture based on functionalism evolved, too. The work of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe (director of the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1930) came to dominate world architecture as the International Style. It is a short walk from Theaterplatz to Geschwister-Scholl Strasse – and you can pass the houses of both Schiller and Goethe on the way – where the original school, designed by van de Velde, is still in use by the Bauhaus University. And round the corner is the house of the composer Franz Liszt.
Literature, philosophy, politics, architecture, art, and design have all been nurtured in Weimar and from there launched onto a world stage. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Goethe produced the definitive translation into German of all Shakespeare’s plays.
Useful Dates
William Shakespeare 1564-1616
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller 1759-1805
Henry van der Velde 1863-1957
Walter Gropius 1883-1969
Paul Klee 1879-1940
Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy 1895-1946
Mies van der Rohe 1886-1969
Franz Liszt 1811-1886
Weimar Republic 1919-1933
Bauhaus in Weimar 1919-1925
Find out more in the Oxford Companion to German Literature.