Michael H. Kater. Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Illustrations. 480 pp. $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-300-17056-6.
Reviewed by Ulf Zimmermann
Published on H-German (January, 2016)
Commissioned by Nathan N. Orgill
Michael H. Kater covers the terrain an‐ of the local Gymnasium, the only upper school in nounced in his subtitle in ten chapters, slicing the duchy and one that taught classical languages, Weimar’s history into periods unique to the city. and ends with the death of Johann Wolfgang von Thus he has, for example, a chapter specifcally Goethe. Heintze’s appointment was immediately on the Weimar Bauhaus experiment, from 1919 to approved by Anna Amalia, who, as a niece of 1925, followed by a general one on the Weimar Frederick the Great and princess of Braun‐ Republic, from 1918 to 1933. In addition to a chap‐ schweig-Wolfenbüttel, had a taste for culture. She ter on the Third Reich, from 1933 to 1945, he in‐ was, for example, familiar with the work of cludes a separate one on the nearby concentra‐ Christoph Martin Wieland, then a professor of tion camp of Buchenwald, from 1937 to 1945. philosophy at Erfurt University who had just pub‐ In a brief prologue, Kater explains his motiva‐ lished The Golden Mirror (1772), a work whose tions for writing this book. As a child at his grand‐ pedagogical and political ideas on how a prospec‐ parents’ home in Germany he had heard much tive ruler should be brought up and rule seemed about a direct ancestor who was “a member of perfect for the more exclusive education of the fu‐ the circle of savants surrounding Dowager ture duke. Duchess Anna Amalia and her son, Duke Karl Au‐ By the time he became duke at eighteen, Karl gust,” which instilled in him a personal interest in August knew of The Sorrows of Young Werther the city (p. x). His reading of David Clay Large’s (1774), which had made its author famous across exemplary history of Berlin (Berlin, 2001) then Europe, and wanted to bring Goethe to Weimar. stimulated his scholarly interest. Accordingly, in Thus in 1775 Goethe was likewise brought in as the frst chapter, Kater begins with this “golden an administrator of the duchy. When a new super‐ age,” which was initiated with the installation in intendent (of churches and schools) was needed 1770 of Johann Michael Heintze as the new rector in 1776, Goethe suggested Johann Gottfried H-Net Reviews
Herder whom he had met in Strasbourg. These to French and continued to exclude the increas‐ were the three stars in the frmament that would ingly emergent bourgeoisie, and economically be‐ eventually attract Friedrich Schiller in 1787. Lack‐ cause the new duke, Carl Alexander, was not will‐ ing the resources of a Renaissance Maecenas, ing to invest in it. Hence, the “silver age,” as Kater Anna Amalia showed great administrative acu‐ describes it in chapter 2, “Promising the Silver men, as Kater rightly points out, in hiring these Age, 1832 to 1861,” did not really begin until after “stars” for jobs in her realm but getting the cultur‐ 1848. The “silver” was mainly due to the presence al riches they ofered for free on the side. They of Franz Liszt whom the grand duchess, Maria were part of an exceedingly small elite group sur‐ Pavlova, had ofered an easy job in 1842. He took rounding the court (all having to sooner or later it because the three months of work it required get titles to participate fully—except for the pro- gave him time to compose—and because his new revolutionary Wieland). lover from Poland might be able to get a divorce Why did Goethe, famous across Europe, take with the help of Maria Pavlova since she was the the job and stay in Weimar? Kater hypothesizes sister of Tsar Nicholas. This is the sort of intimate that he was tired of Frankfurt and saw an oppor‐ and pivotally important detail that Kater never tunity to play a larger, more infuential role than fails to provide and that makes his history a sa‐ he might have in one of the other major cities and vory reading pleasure. The Liszt household had at one of their courts, what with a young duke many illustrious visitors though none stayed. Liszt whom he could infuence and a higher-level of‐ also premiered some Richard Wagner operas cial position than he likely would have had any‐ there and Weimar could have become Bayreuth— where else (not to mention a commensurate but did not invest in building the theater that it salary). And this makes eminent sense, especially required. when we see how energetically Goethe devoted Liszt became, like Goethe before him, a himself to his administrative responsibilities. tourist attraction in the city, as Kater writes in The court was the town’s sole “industry” and chapter 3, “Failing the Silver Age, 1861 to 1901,” largest employer, apart from which Weimar was and had a hand in founding the music school that basically a village populated by peasants who let is now named after him. Carl Alexander did found their pigs and sheep out to pasture, but it did al‐ a painters’ academy in 1860 and Franz Lenbach ready have its subsequently famous inns, includ‐ and Arnold Böcklin were on the faculty for the ing the Elephant. Weimar had a population of frst two years while Max Liebermann briefy around six thousand, a bit smaller than Heidel‐ studied there later. In 1889, the young Richard berg and only a ffth the size of Frankfurt. It was Strauss arrived, just as a Goethe revival was crest‐ still chiefy agricultural, still feudal and extremely ing, and he helped the city stage a brief comeback. poor, with its sheep supplying only local textile But the Goethe revival was now part of an in‐ shops and nothing for export. But by the time creasing chauvinistic—and antisemitic—trend in Goethe and Schiller fnally got together in 1794, the new German Empire. Goethe was linked to the city was becoming well known for its classic this empire and its German “heroes” through his status, with four “geniuses”—hence the “golden Dr. Faust and through other men of action, such age.” as Frederick the Great and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. This trend was reinforced by the dis‐ Following Goethe’s death in 1832, the city be‐ torted image of Friedrich Nietzsche that his sister came something of a living museum, as Kater apt‐ Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was now broadcasting ly describes it, and this actually kept it from mak‐ ing any progress, socially because the court stuck
2 H-Net Reviews from Weimar via her apocryphal compilation of them apprenticeship certifcates even in those the Will to Power (1901). felds. Nietzsche had evidently expressed a wish to In chapter 6, “Weimar in the Weimar Repub‐ retire to Goethe’s town, as Kater observes in chap‐ lic, 1918 to 1933,” Kater judiciously reminds us of ter 4, “The Quest for a ‘New Weimar,’ 1901 to another reason the parliament convened there. 1918,” so it was here that his sister built his Apart from getting out of chaotic Berlin, many shrine. Through her acquaintance with Count members knew of the metropolis’s dubious repu‐ Harry Kessler, an admirer of both Goethe and Ni‐ tation in the South and deemed the conservative etzsche, she got the Belgian artist Henry van de Weimar, situated very much in the center of Ger‐ Velde to come to Weimar to open a seminar on many (but not too far from Berlin), more political‐ arts and crafts in 1902. Thanks to the grand duke’s ly palatable for framing a new government. support, this became the Grossherzögliche Kunst‐ Weimar would be the capital of the new state of gewerbeschule in 1907. Walter Gropius would lat‐ Thuringia and its frst government was sufcient‐ er combine this craft school with the already es‐ ly liberal to authorize the Bauhaus to begin with. tablished painters’ academy to form the Bauhaus But as the economy, getting worse across the School. By 1918, when the grand duke surren‐ country but the worst in Thuringia, declined, its dered his sovereignty, about all that was left was citizens increasingly turned to the radical right. Förster-Nietzsche’s antisemitic tarnishing of the By 1925 Weimar was happy to have Adolf Hitler city’s reputation. come speak publicly (and have the Bauhaus Kater devotes chapter 5 expressly to the leave) and by 1929 Thuringia was the frst state to Bauhaus experiment, from 1919 to 1925. Gropius have a Nazi-controlled government. was already known in Berlin when he went to The Third Reich, from 1933 to 1945, is cov‐ war in 1914, having worked for the prominent ar‐ ered in chapter 7, in which Kater reminds us of chitect Peter Behrens. Van de Velde had recom‐ the frst concentration camp being built near mended him to run the arts and crafts school (he there in Nohra. While Bayreuth became more im‐ himself had had to leave as an “enemy alien”). portant to Hitler, he enjoyed Weimar where he With this and the painters’ academy, Gropius was had been able to restart his career in 1925. He able to lay the foundations for the combination of used it to start the Reich’s reconstruction pro‐ art and technology that constituted the Bauhaus. gram, providing personal input to the rebuilding Gradually it attracted more students to the design of the Hotel Elephant. side as well as students from abroad and a goodly Separately, in chapter 8, Kater treats the con‐ number of women to whom such education had centration camp Buchenwald, beginning with its just become newly open. The Bauhaus got its in‐ infamous entrance legend “Jedem das Seine” (“To ternational cachet from a show Gropius put on in each his own”), designed, ironically, by a Bauhaus 1923, bringing Igor Stravinsky to perform along graduate sent to Buchenwald for his Communist with such architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and afliations. This camp was located on the Etters‐ Le Corbusier—the biggest thing to happen in berg, but SS ofcers said it could not be named af‐ Weimar in the twentieth century. Of course the lo‐ ter that because of its association with Goethe. So cals hated the sort of foreigners (or Jews) who Heinrich Himmler named it “Buchenwald” for the came as well as these long-haired or short-skirted beech woods that Goethe was rumored to have students. And while the Bauhaus itself shunted picnicked among. After the war, the citizens of women into the weaving and pottery workshops, Weimar would claim no knowledge of Buchen‐ the Weimar chamber of commerce would not give wald activities, although many SS members lived
3 H-Net Reviews in Weimar, prisoners walked through the town on wald was now a memorial that attracted tourists, their way to the camp from the train station until though this was not enough to stem the fow of March 1943, and the camp’s German Shepherds skilled workers to the West with the only popula‐ competed in local dog shows. tion infux coming from retiring Wessis (West In chapter 9, “Weimar in East and West Ger‐ Germans).[1] As most of us know from that era, many, 1945 to 1990,” Kater depicts the city’s bifur‐ despite former Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s promise cated postwar fate. In the new East German of “blooming landscapes,” the employment land‐ regime, states were replaced with districts and in scape was exceedingly bleak, with the population this reorganization Weimar lost its status as the actually declining. Kater ofers a highly telltale capital to Erfurt. During this period, Weimar’s statistic: In 1991, the city recorded 779 deaths but only distinction, Kater notes, was the dubious one only 398 births (p. 333). To help maintain at least of having the country’s highest rate of youth crim‐ the cultural heritage, a “Weimar Classics” founda‐ inality. This went up everywhere in East Germany, tion was underwritten with thirteen million because, given the drain of competent workers, marks from Bonn and Erfurt. Its most valuable as‐ these young people, Kater persuasively contends, set was the Anna Amalia Library, which had been knew themselves to be indispensable to the state woefully neglected (and burned down in 2004, and thus believed they could get away with any‐ though to be mostly rebuilt and stocked by 2007). thing. But there were some young West Germans The new rulers were, however, concerned coming over to study at what had been the about refurbishing their “classics” sites and Bauhaus, from which the East Germans had, how‐ Weimar, which had eventually been bombed, was ever, excised the art portion. In a rare case of let‐ crucial here. The theater and conservatory were ting the East Germans choose their own leaders, restarted as was the architecture program. Appar‐ the government permitted the school to choose ently the best they could do for the conservatory one of its own—Gerd Zimmermann, a specialist in was to appoint Hermann Abendroth to head it af‐ the history and theory of architecture—and he ter he had previously done the same in Leipzig as cast back to the Weimar model and, in 1996, even a loyal Nazi. For architecture they actually found got it renamed the Bauhaus University. With this a faithful Communist, Hermann Henselmann, exception, the more senior West German power whom the party had protected, because of his elite ran the cultural show and, indeed, sought to Jewish father, during the Nazi reign with a job in make the city a showcase for itself, chiefy via an Prague, and he brought back some Bauhaus peo‐ annual festival of the arts. A big hullaballoo en‐ ple. (He was soon put in charge of the Stalinallee sued when the elitist West German director of the and hence taken away to Berlin where he would festival forbade stands selling the famous become East Germany’s most prominent archi‐ Thuringian sausage. How could one have a festi‐ tect.) Overall though, Kater assesses this era as a val without that!? This made headlines across the cultural low point and economically worse than country and, indeed, the common Weimar citizen under the Nazis. could barely aford their Wurst, never mind the actual cultural events themselves. Chapter 10, “Weimar after the Fall of the Wall, 1990 to 2013,” surveys the post-unifcation period. In an epilogue, Kater concludes that Weimar The new Germany resurrected the state of was simply “a small town with a provincial men‐ Thuringia, if in somewhat lesser form, but Erfurt tality” and it consistently remained that (p. 373). remained the capital (though Weimar was chosen Even when cultural icons visited, the local leader‐ as a “European Culture Capital” in 1999). Buchen‐ ship seemed never to be interested in giving them
4 H-Net Reviews the economic resources necessary for attaining any other status. Weimar, with the notable excep‐ tion of the beginning of that “golden” era of Anna Amalia, and to a good extent her son, never again seemed to enjoy the leadership to have and follow through on a vision. But there was also no foundation there, no in‐ frastructure economically or socially, on which one could build and which would attract people. For a moment, when Kater cites Weimar’s rejec‐ tion of Carl Zeiss’s application for a permit to open a machine shop there, we may be tempted to think, “Ah, this could have been the home of the famous Zeiss optical works!” But the fact of the matter is that if the Carl Zeiss Works had been permitted to open up in Weimar, the city would just have had another machine shop. It took the university in Jena, with which Zeiss was quite fa‐ miliar from spending time there previously when he was apprenticed to the court machinist Friedrich Körner who also lectured there, and its laboratories and experimental orientation, to en‐ gender the agglomeration economies that would never have arisen in Weimar. And in that sense Kater remains absolutely right in his above con‐ clusion. Since the history of Weimar, therefore, does not require the kind of space Large’s Berlin does, Kater has augmented the city’s history with a se‐ ries of portraits of the people who tried, for better or worse, to take advantage of that golden era and has given us an excellent and colorful social and cultural history. Note [1]. After East Germans and West Germans began interacting with one another again follow‐ ing the fall of the Berlin Wall, they referred, in typical German shorthand, to East Germans as Os‐ sis and West Germans as Wessis.
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Citation: Ulf Zimmermann. Review of Kater, Michael H. Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present. H- German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2016.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42519
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