Online Encyclopedia
Weimar
For the locality in Texas called Weimar see Weimar, Texas.
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Weimar is a city in Germany. It is located at 50° 58 min 6 s north / 11° 18 min 6 s east, in the Bundesland of Thuringia (German Thüringen). Its current population is approximately 62,000. The oldest record of the city dates to the year 899.
Weimar is one of the great cultural sites of Europe, since it was the home to such luminaries as Bach, Goethe, Schiller, and Herder. It has been a site of pilgrimage for the German intelligentsia since Goethe first moved to Weimar in the late 18th century. The tombs of Goethe, Schiller, and Nietzsche may be found in the city, as may the archives of Goethe and Schiller.
The period in German history from 1919-1933 is commonly referred to as the Weimar Republic, as the Republic's constitution was drafted here while the capital, Berlin, with its street riots after the 1918 revolution was considered too dangerous for the National Assembly to convene.
Weimar was the center of the Bauhaus movement. The city houses art galleries, museums, the German national theatre, and the Bauhaus University . During World War II, there was a concentration camp in Weimar, at Buchenwald, a little wood that Goethe had loved to frequent.
UNESCO selected the city as cultural capital of Europe ("Kulturstadt Europas") for 1999.
On September 3 2004, a fire broke out at the "Duchess Anna Amalia Library". The library contains a 13,000 volume-strong collection of Goethe's masterpiece "Faust," in addition to a music collection of the duchess. A authentic Lutheran Bible from 1534 was saved from the fire. The damage toll measures into the millions of dollars. The number of books in this historic library exceeded 1,000,000, of which 40,000 to 50,000 were destroyed. The library belongs to the UNESCO world heritage, and is one of the oldest public libraries in Europe. The fire, with its destruction of much historical literature, amounts to a huge cultural loss for Germany, Europe, and indeed the world. A number of books were shock-frozen in the city of Leipzig to save them from rotting.
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