Art and Culture

For many, Weimar is inextricably bound to the two most famous writers in German literature: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. The authors of Faust and William Tell, respectively, penned much of their works during the decades they lived in Thuringia. Also, Henry van de Velde, the artist and mastermind behind the Art Nouveau movement, came to Weimar in 1902 to run the applied arts school. He made Walter Gropius his protégé. And in 1919, Gropius founded the world-famous Bauhaus in Weimar. It produced such immortal expressionists as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky or the painter and graphic artist Lyonel Feininger.

“His name should be Meer (ocean), not Bach (creek),” Beethoven famously quipped about Johann Sebastian Bach, born in 1685 in Eisenach. Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner also composed in Thuringia’s cities. Fairy-tale writers Johann Karl August Musäus and Ludwig Bechstein left behind stories they wrote in and about the state.

Thuringia has long been a cradle of new ideas in philosophy and science, producing such great figures as Martin Luther, Thomas Müntzer, Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Haeckel and Friedrich Fröbel. Innumerable monuments are still keeping the values and works of these artists and thinkers alive. From time immemorial, Thuringia has been open to social, cultural and academic schools of thought. The Weimar Constitution written in 1919 was the first-ever attempt to establish a democracy on German soil.

Over 1,250 years old, the state capital, Erfurt, invites visitors to experience the ambience of the Middle Ages. Narrow, winding alleyways, the towering Cathedral Mount, plazas lined by imposing buildings and the romantic Krämer Bridge - the oldest bridge lined with houses in Central Europe.

Nowhere else in Germany are there so many theaters, opera houses, museums and orchestras as in Thuringia. The German National Theater in Weimar, the Meiningen Theater and the Thuringia Philharmonie Gotha-Suhl have reputations that extend far beyond the Free State’s borders. Thuringia’s cultural calendar has something for every taste. And no summer in Thuringia would be complete without the Cathedral Steps Festival in Erfurt, the Cultural Arena in Jena and the Art Festival in Weimar.

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