By Rafe Calder
Weimar has about 66,000 people. It has also given its name to a constitution, a republic, a literary period and, in a way, a school of design. That is a lot of freight for a town in Thuringia.
Where it sits
Wikipedia puts Weimar in the German state of Thuringia, between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, about 80 km south-west of Leipzig. It gives the population as 65,954 on 31 December 2024. The oldest records date from 899. From 1552 until 1918 the town was the residence of the Saxe-Weimar rulers.
Goethe, Schiller and the first listing
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe moved to Weimar in 1775, Wikipedia says, and he and Friedrich Schiller are the central figures of Weimar Classicism. Both are buried in the town. UNESCO inscribed Classical Weimar in 1998. Its own page lists the Goethe house, garden and garden house; Schiller’s house; the Herder church, house and Old High School; the Residence Castle and Bastille ensemble; the Dowager’s Palace; the Duchess Anna Amalia Library; the Park on the Ilm with the Roman House; Belvedere Castle and park; Ettersburg and Tiefurt castles and parks; and the historic cemetery with the Princes’ Tomb. UNESCO says a cultural flowering in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries drew writers and scholars to a small town, and that enlightened ducal patronage lay behind it. The page says the property has twelve buildings or ensembles, yet the list on it runs to eleven entries. We report both numbers.
1919 and the school
Two things happened in 1919. According to Wikipedia, the Weimar National Assembly drafted a constitution in the National Theatre, and the republic took its name from the town. And on 1 April 1919, as its article on the Bauhaus has it, Walter Gropius founded the school by merging the Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Fine Art with the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts. The word means “building house” and points back to the medieval masons’ lodge, the Bauhütte. The school stayed in Weimar until 1925, then moved to Dessau. It closed in 1933.
UNESCO listed “Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau” in 1996 and modified the boundaries in 2017. Its Weimar components are the Former Art School, the Applied Art School and the Haus am Horn.
The model house
Wikipedia’s article on the Haus am Horn says it was finished in 1923, in about four months, for the Bauhaus exhibition that ran from July to September. Georg Muche designed it; students chose his design by ballot over one Gropius had meant to produce himself. It is a flat-roofed cube with a central living room lit from above. Bauhaus workshops made the furnishings. The article says it was meant as a model for a campus that was never built, which is why it is sometimes called the Musterhaus. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar has owned it since 2017, and it reopened on 18 May 2019 after restoration.
Wikipedia’s article on the Bauhaus Museum Weimar says its new building opened in April 2019, and that its Gropius Collection is the world’s oldest collection of original Bauhaus works.
The onion market
Here the two sources we read part company on small points. The Weimar city website says the Zwiebelmarkt was first recorded in 1653 as a market for livestock and onions, held on a Sunday around 10 October, when the town had roughly 5,000 residents. Wikipedia says it was first celebrated in 1653 and is held in October over three days. The city site says that since 1990 it has run Friday to Sunday on the weekend closest to 2 October. Those are not the same month, and we do not choose.
The city site adds that the market was extended to three days in 1861, that a market ordinance followed in 1872, and that dealers still come mainly from Heldrungen, 46 km away. The famous souvenir is the onion garland; about 70,000 were sold in 1971, the year a record 200,000 visitors came. It says about 350,000 visitors attend now. Wikipedia counts roughly 500 stalls and more than 100 stage performances. The city site says Goethe is said to have kept onion hearts on his desk. We pass that on as a said-to-be.
Dates in order
- 899: oldest records of Weimar, according to Wikipedia.
- 1653: the onion market first recorded, according to the city website.
- 1775: Goethe moves to Weimar, according to Wikipedia.
- 1 April 1919: the Bauhaus founded, according to Wikipedia.
- 1923: Haus am Horn built, according to Wikipedia.
- 1925: the school moves to Dessau, according to Wikipedia.
- 1996 and 1998: the two UNESCO listings, according to UNESCO.
- 2019: new museum opens and the Haus am Horn reopens, according to Wikipedia.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia; two UNESCO World Heritage pages; and the city of Weimar’s own website. We give no opening hours or transport.
What we left out
We left out the later twentieth-century history of the area, which needs sources we did not read, the politics around the school’s moves, and all costs.
Quick answers
When did the Bauhaus start in Weimar? According to Wikipedia, Walter Gropius founded it on 1 April 1919 by merging two art schools. It moved to Dessau in 1925.
Which parts of Weimar are World Heritage sites? UNESCO lists Classical Weimar (1998) and the Bauhaus sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau (1996), which in Weimar include the Haus am Horn.
What is the Zwiebelmarkt? The city website calls it an onion market first recorded in 1653 and now a three-day festival, with onion garlands as the best-known souvenir.
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Roam first. Shop later.