Weimar, the Cultural Center of Goethe’s Day

Referred to in UNESCO World Heritage literature as "the classical city of Weimar," Weimer is where the "dark" poets, Goethe and Schiller, introduced romantic themes into German literature, and it is also where classical composers (Wagner, Liszt, and Bach) filled the air with structured melody and where Lucas Cranach, the Elder "painted the town red." (His house and studio, now a theater school, is on the Market Square.) Our trip there was a journey back to the German Enlightenment. Every merchant in town seemed to participate in the recreation of sights, sounds, and smells from the past.

The city enjoys what I would call a "legacy of delight." For example, the poet Goethe designed the city park and filled it with "ancient ruins" he himself commissioned to be built there in the 18th Century! (Anything to enchant his beloved garden home in the park!) Another patron of the city, wealthy Duchess Anna Amalia, donated land to widen and improve the main avenue, now a visitor’s promenade lined with famous statuary and fountains, trees, and unique, pleasing pavement. Picture-perfect Schillerstrasse must be one of the most photogenic streets in Germany! Its attractions include the Widow’s Palace, Schillerhaus, Bauhaus Museum, the German National Theater, City Museum, and rows of quaint shops. Every street and square in town follows suit.

Attractions span several centuries. Churches date from medieval times and are decorated with Cranach masterpieces. The Market Square from the 1500’s had its north side bombed during WWII and was rebuilt with Apothecary and other attractions. The highlight of our trip was staying at Hotel Elephant (1542), my favorite hotel anywhere in the world, on Market Square. The homes of Goethe (2 of them) and Schiller and the Widow’s Palace take us up to the time of Goethe’s death (1837), the heyday of Weimar as a mecca for thinkers with new ideas. Nietzsche (1844-1900) was also here with his "God is dead" philosophy co-existing with churches preaching German Reformation doctrine since the 1500’s. (The Neitzsche Archives are here.) One can’t find a more interesting or diverse intellectual background!

Quick Tips:

Two days in Weimar were not enough for me. We visited 8 attractions, but there are so many more: two castles out of town, composers' homes, more churches, the Nietzsche Archives, more Bauhaus sites, and others. See Weimar. This city of 50,000 has more to see than any other I know. Together with Leipzig (50 minutes by train), it provided us with a slice of Germanic culture in colorful detail.

Visitor Info is easy to find on the Markt.

Best Way To Get Around:

To get to the pedestrian zone with luggage, one needs a bus or taxi from the front of the train station. Ask the driver to point you in the direction of the market square from where the bus stops, since large vehicles don’t go all the way to the center of this World Heritage city. I did see one yellow taxi on the center square delivering passengers to the Hotel Elephant, and there is traffic behind the hotel and square within a block. Time of day may determine whether anyone but merchants can drive here. If you have your own car, better call ahead or inquire at the train station to find out where to park.

In the pedestrian zone, signposts on every corner point the way to all attractions. We hardly needed a walking map, but Visitor Info has them, and so do hotels.

Add to "posh" some extra status for being over 4.5 centuries old, and you get "historic luxury," my designation for hotels like "the Elephant." This history decorated with artistry doesn’t come cheap, except to Sheraton Preferred Guests cashing in points. Others may pay $300/night in season for a room where someone famous may have stayed. This is the building where the poets Goethe and Schiller wined and dined with painter Lucas Cranach, composers Bach, Mendelssohn, and Liszt, and philosopher Herder. (Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoi, and Karl Marx were other famous guests in more recent centuries.) Their statues and poetry painted on the walls haunt Elephantenkeller in the basement of the building. Because guests were artists and intellectuals, and because Weimar was the center of cultural activity in eastern Germany while the poets lived here, the hotel still caters to an intellectual crowd.

This crowd likes understated, intellectualized elegance, so chic modern art and Bauhaus furnishings contrast with the hotel setting first recorded in 1542. More statuary than I’ve ever seen in a hotel and on its grounds decorate the lobby, balconies, Anna Amalia Courtyard, and restaurants (3). This is the place to admire Bauhaus decor, since the design movement started here and the Bauhaus Museum is here. We toured the entire building, a showcase for that design movement, as well as for the centuries of Weimar’s history, since the establishment, located on the center market square, was the center of life here by 1600.

One of the fine restaurants is named after the Duchess Anna Amalia, friend of the poets and leader of the city’s social life in Goethe’s day. This formal room extends onto a stone patio with pond, bronze statuary, and a large elephant topiary in the enclosed courtyard with weeping trees. We chose the romantic cellar with Thuringian menu for a delicious late dinner. A third dining room and enticing Marlene piano bar were notably beautiful.

Our room was a suite with sofa and chair on one side of a room divider and sleeping room on the other. Our bath had the usual three facilities, each divided from the others with their own partitions--extra nice bath. The best things about our room on fourth floor were two sets of hinged windows that opened onto center market, where there was always activity to watch. Service and hospitality were exceptional and included turn-down, chocolates, and closing the curtains while we were out in the evening.

We especially liked the day clerk at the front desk. She spoke perfect English and always asked where we had visited each time we went out, which we did often, since all attractions were just up the streeet. She offered extra commentary on each one and on the hotel’s history and design, too. Her smile was "lighted," and we hope to see it again! She made an already perfect stay even better.

A Weimar institution for over 400 years, Elephantenkeller is famous for the poets, novelists, composers, painters, and philosophers who frequented the establishment in the basement of the Hotel Elephant. Goethe, author of Faust, made it his haunt in the 18th Century, and even Hitler dined here. The rather chic cellar is also famous for its excellent Thuringian cuisine. The dishes of the region are hearty and feature meat, sometimes with several meats in the same dish, some of them organ meats. Sausages loaded with the spice marjoram and the famous German potato dumplings are from Thuringia. This is all fine with me.

Guests in the hotel, we had only to walk downstairs, but an outside entrance is on the market square. On this weekday in April, many tables were not occupied, and we got a large circular booth along the wall. I am told that the population of Weimar doubles in summer and that reservations are recommended in season. A large party near our table spoke a variety of languages and conversed in groups of two. These were parents visiting students at the Franz Liszt School of Music just around the corner.

Our large circular booth had the wall above it decorated with a poem by Goethe about Wasser or water. Other decorations included statues of the poets at the entrances and busts of them on platforms behind some of the booths. Our menu was in English, good for me, since this was the first restaurant in Germany where I could read the descriptions of the dishes. I was so content with this, I read the history of the restaurant, too. Then came the difficult decision: I ordered one of the dishes with roast beef and goose livers with mushrooms. The meat with brown sauce was good, and so were the potato dollars. My companion had Thuringian beef stew with salad and potato dumplings and was pleased with her meal. We were inundated with bread, three kinds, all warm and delicious and more than we could finish. Service was impeccable.

When we were finished with our meal, we stopped in the hallway on our way out for some photos with the famous poets. We’re still talking months later about the pleasant experience we had at the Elephantenkeller. In other towns, we looked for the cellars or weinstubens and sampled others, and then we decided that this one was special.

Elephantenkeller is open year round for lunch and for dinner after 6:00 pm. It isn’t difficult to find on the center square.

The Ilm River is a lazy stream as it winds its way through Weimar, lazy enough for wooden footbridges and a park that felt so "cozy" to me that I could easily understand why Goethe loved it. The poet "designed" the park according to Worlitz's model for a sentimental landscape, but the pleasing, haunting setting was already "naturalistic." I’ve never seen a wood that appealed to me so much, and I found it impossible to decipher where Mother Nature left off and Goethe began. What I know for certain is that this work of art was designed to soothe the soul and that every neighborhood should be situated on a park like this. Perhaps that is what the poet wanted to communicate to posterity. After all, he did enjoy it as his backyard until he moved from his Garden House to a grander residence in town. His life here has been romanticized and the park added to the lure of the city.

When we entered the wood, we knew nothing about it except that it would lead us to Goethe’s Garden House, his first home that he would never sell because he enjoyed it and the park in summer, even after he moved from the scene. After touring it, we walked back to town via a different path and discovered a large statue in the park. Imagine our surprise at stumbling across Shakespeare so far from home in an 18th Century wood! The bard wasn’t all. Behind him, a partial wall suggested a theater. We climbed up to it, and from there, we saw the entrance to an ancient temple--just the entrance, standing there by itself without any visible means of support. Only when we returned to the hotel did we learn that Goethe had had these "ruins" built here. A follower of his had placed the statue in 1900. I’m still wondering what statement he intended to make with this metaphor! Or is it metaphorical at all? Maybe he just liked "ruins."

We encountered people romping with children and dogs. An occasional bicycle rolled along the primitive surfaces of packed gravel paths, defined by sparse rustic cover just enough to minimize our contact with the damp dirt, not enough to ruin the perfect scene from another time. A mist lay on the River Ilm, and I wished that I had talent as a painter. Even more than the old town center, this idyllic park took me back to another century. The wood is large, and since we were committed to a tour, we didn’t see it all. Two hours here would have satisfied me more.

On the way back to the hotel (2 blocks), we stumbled across more statuary: a pedestaled bust of Alexander Pushkin, another writer far from home. He surprised us in an unlikely place, along the sidewalk in front of what appeared to be an ordinary house. As I said before, everything in Weimar is intended to delight and surprise.

Everyone raves about French breads and pastries, but German ones are just as good. I can testify to this because of long evenings at home following around a good German cook in my own kitchen. Through a relative once stationed in Germany, Karen acquired a cookbook of authentic traditional recipes which required help to prepare, she insisted. (They were time-consuming!) Even with American ingredients, they were refreshingly different and definitely not as sweet as American sweets. We made large cakes with only 1/4 cup of sugar and lots of cream. Yum! I was already a fan of bienenstich and mandeltorte or bee sting cake and almond torte. I was ready for the backerei, my appetite already whetted.

The bakeries in Weimar are superb, and we allowed ourselves to throw all dietary caution to the wind and visit more than one each morning. One needs no more justification than this: a person would have to consume a whole bag of German sweets to get the worthless calories in one American donut! American cereals even have more sugar than a typical German pastry with creamy or fruity goodness inside. No wonder the bakery is an important institution in German life, so much more than in ours. And, this fact makes the nostalgic trip back in time complete. We could be children again and let our innocent fancy choose our breakfast.

If we had forgotten to visit the bakeries, we would have been reminded as soon as we stepped out the hotel door, because everyone else in town carried their sheets of wax paper with treats exposed and half consumed. We hurried to our first tour but found a cherry torte on the way. An hour later, we got fruit-filled cookies on the way back to the hotel. This turned into a routine (tour/bakery) which culminated in the best find of all: our beloved bienenstich can be found at D. Reichenbach at the corner of the Markt! The egg yolk pudding in the middle was rich, but not very sweet. The cake was similar to the one we make, only cut in small square portions for one person. Like some other German sweets, the recipe calls for fine dry breadcrumbs soaked in milk, rather than flour, and the result is much more satisfying.

Reichenbach’s selection is good. We were so excited about finding our familiar favorite that we forgot to buy bread, but I remember they had a good selection of that, too. I also remember the crowds at every establishment we stopped at. Reichenbach bakery was full of patrons, and the wait required us to take a number. Bienenstich is worth it!