Weimar
Weimar, city, Thuringia Land (state), eastern Germany. Weimar lies along the Ilm River, just east of Erfurt. First mentioned in documents in 975 as Wimare, it was declared a town in 1254 and was chartered in 1348. Ruled by the counts of Weimar-Orlamünde from 1247 to 1372, it then passed to the Saxon house of Wettin and became the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Weimar in 1547 and of the grand duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1815 (until 1918). The German National Assembly, forming the constituent national representative body of the German Republic, which was created after the revolution of 1918–19, met in the city from February 6, 1919, and the constitution of the new republic (known commonly as the Weimar Republic and lasting until 1933) was drawn up there. Weimar was the capital of Thuringia from 1920 to 1948.
Weimar is a railway junction, and its industrial products include machinery, precision instruments, truck parts, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, and foodstuffs. Metalworking is also important.
The city sustained damage during World War II, but most of its monuments have been restored. Many of the important buildings in Weimar are associated with the German writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, who lived there for many years and died there. During this period, the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Weimar was the intellectual centre of Germany. Reminders of the period include a bronze monument to Goethe and Schiller (1875) in front of the German National Theatre; a Goethe-Schiller Mausoleum; a Goethe-Schiller Archives (opened 1896); the Goethe National Museum (occupying a house where the poet lived) and his summer garden house; homes of Schiller and Franz Liszt; the Liszt Museum; the Franz Liszt College of Music; and an archive of Friedrich Nietzsche. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library holds some 1 million volumes, including a large collection devoted to Goethe and a Bible that belonged to Martin Luther; a fire in 2004 destroyed tens of thousands of volumes, including first editions of the works of Schiller and William Shakespeare.
Other notable landmarks include the Wittums Palace (1767), Weimar Castle (1790–1803), Belvedere Castle (1724–32), Tiefurt Castle, and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul (with an altarpiece by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his son), sometimes called the Herder Church for its association with the critic and theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder. Between 1919 and 1925 Weimar was the seat of the Bauhaus architectural school before its move to Dessau. In 1996 Bauhaus buildings in Weimar (along with those in Dessau) were collectively designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO; two years later the city’s classical sites (including the Duchess Anna Amalia Library and the houses of Goethe and Schiller), dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, were also included on the World Heritage list. The city is the seat of the Bauhaus University of Weimar, whose art school was founded in 1860. In 1953 the East German government established the National Research and Memorial Centre of the Classical Writers of German Literature, with its centre in Weimar. Also in the city are the headquarters of the German Shakespeare Society, a college of architecture and building, and a national observatory.
Northwest of Weimar, on the 1,568-foot (478-metre) Ettersberg (Etters Hill), is the Buchenwald National Memorial, on the site of one of the largest and most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps (established in 1937), in which about 43,000 persons died. Primarily for political prisoners, the Buchenwald camp was especially notorious for medical experimentation on living human beings. It was the first of the large concentration camps to be entered by the Allied armies, in April 1945. Pop. (2011) 62,764; (2021 est.) 65,138.