|
WEIMAR, Germany - A question asked often since World War War II: How could the Germany that produced poets like Goethe and composers on the order of Beethoven, Handel and Bach also have crafted the horrors of the Third Reich?
In this city of picture-postcard squares, sprawling parkland and restored 18th-century homes of nobility, the paradox is unavoidable. For Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Weimar's favorite son and the father of German classical literature - once strolled on a nearby mountainside that became the site of Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp where heinous medical experiments were conducted and 56,000 people died. What's amazing to the visitor is that the camp's proximity, far from being an enduring source of embarrassment, is a sober lesson of man's inhumanity to man that Weimar's people actually want outsiders to consider and, if they possibly can, grasp. Historically an important cultural capital of Germany and the city where the post-World War I republic was declared, Weimar was an East German showcase that attracted 4 million Soviet bloc tourists a year under the former communist regime. Now, there's every indication that this city of 60,000 will become a busy Western tourist draw. So if you're quick, Weimar can be enjoyed before it becomes too cute, made over with the inevitable boutiques, kitsch galleries, der Big Macs and the other trappings of mass tourism. The only fast food now comes from a small mobile stall, which deals in braised, 15-inch bratwurst (a bargain at $1.56) sold on the main plaza, Market Square. A pedestrian-only street starts near Market Square, and it is lined with pleasant stores and laid-back cafes ripe for upscale gentrification, among them the historic White Swan inn, now a popular if pricey restaurant that adjoins Goethe's home. The yellow house is a museum- shrine to the late-18th-century thinker, politician and writer who, for good measure, deftly dabbled in architecture, biology and zoology. The pedestrian way ends at the Theaterplatz, site of the National Theater where the Weimar Republic was declared in 1919 - because Berlin and other large cities after World War I were in the throes of short-lived communist uprisings. Goethe had been director of the original theater, and Franz Liszt, musical director from 1848 to 1859, conducted the debut performance here of Wagner's opera Lohengrin. Cultural name-dropping is an ingrained Weimar habit, and no wonder. Architecture's Bauhaus movement was founded here by Walter Gropius, the abstractionist Wassili Kandinsky painted here after the Russian Revolution, the final, tormented years of the philosopher Nietzsche were spent in Weimar and composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Strauss toiled here, as did the poet Schiller, the painter Paul Klee and theologian Martin Luther. The list goes on. Less happily, Hitler held his fledgling National Socialists' first party congress here in 1926, becoming enamored with Weimar and its historic Elephant Hotel, painstakingly restored as an ultraluxury hotel, Bauhaus style. On the more enlightened side of its political history, Goethe persuaded his patron and employer - Grand Duke Charles Augustus - to open the ducal parks and libraries for the enrichment of the general public, a progressive but rare step for the period. A few blocks' stroll from the palace, which houses the Weimar art collection that ranges from Titian and Tintoretto to contemporary German painters, is the Ilm River-straddling park. There, at his garden villa, Goethe rendezvoused with a lover, the writer Charlotte von Stein. He was later ostracized by the intellectual and social elite when he co-habitated with Christiane Vulpius, a factory worker 20 years his junior. They married, but Goethe, who wrote the dramatic poem, Faust, never quite regained his social standing. A short bus ride away is Buchenwald, whose role as a moral object lesson to the world has expanded somewhat since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. And controversy has dogged the national memorial. For the first time, people felt free to talk openly about the Soviets using Buchenwald from 1945-50 to intern suspected Nazis and thousands of others, including children, who were picked up at random or denounced groundlessly by enemies. An estimated 7,000 died from poor conditions and were secretly buried. That has put on a whole new complexion on the debate of how to shape the post-reunification message of Buchenwald. Under communist East Germany, it was an ideological shrine to anti-Nazis, with not a word about Jewish victims who comprised about a third of the prisoners, said Buchenwald researcher Marlis Graefe. Aside from the need to correct this picture, there is debate on how to juggle Soviet and Nazi atrocities. Before resigning last year, the last memorial director, Thomas Hoffmann, expressed concerns to the newspaper Die Welt not only about the risk of local authorities getting the emphasis wrong but also the fear that the condemnatory view of the Nazis, fostered by the now discredited East German regime, might be popularly rejected now as so much "communist propaganda." A former mayor underscored the point, saying: "We have a responsibility to show people what was done there. "The people of Weimar live between Goethe's house and Buchenwald. One is human, the other inhuman," he said. "There is so much here for young people to learn what happens when you don't accept others." How to Weimar Getting there: By car,Weimar can be reached on the Autobahn traveling southwest about 160 miles from Berlin in about 31/2 hours. By train from Frankfurt, there's one change. To reach Buchenwald, less than five miles away, it's a short taxi or bus ride. |
|
Clients• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
• Consectetur adipiscing elit • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet • Consectetur adipiscing elit |
Awards• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
• Consectetur adipiscing elit • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet • Consectetur adipiscing elit |
Publications• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
• Consectetur adipiscing elit • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet • Consectetur adipiscing elit |
Interviews• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
• Consectetur adipiscing elit • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet • Consectetur adipiscing elit |
