Travel: Weimar ~ Of Goethe and the gingko leaf

A bronze of Goethe and Schiller in Weimar

Weimar wouldn't be Weimar without Goethe and the gingko. Both its citizens and visitors agree on that. For it was the noble 19th-century German poet and writer who first introduced the exotic gingko tree to the East German `city of the classics'. Theirs is a tale inextricably knotted together. For today, if Goethe is the scenic city's favourite son, the gingko leaf is its all-pervasive symbol, imprinted on every tourist's souvenir.

Weimar is situated 278 km southwest of Berlin on the Ilm river. It was in 1999 as the European City of Culture for the year, that Weimar and its 63,000-strong population celebrated the 250th birth anniversary of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Simultaneously , millions of visitors from around the globe marked the 80th anniversary of the National Assembly which convened in Weimar in 1919 to stamp its approval on Germany's first democratic constitution.

Walking through the historic streets of this celebrated town last October, I glimpsed major portals of European cultural history. Weimar, first referred to as a `city' in a 1254 document, played host to Martin Luther in 1518 and the 80-year-old painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder, in 1552. Johann Sebastian Bach was its court organist during 1708-1717 before he became musical director of its court orchestra.

As for the composer and piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt, he spent the years 1848-61 as the chapel master at the court theatre. In Goethe's footsteps, the dramatist, Friedrich Schiller followed the elder statesman to Weimar where he wrote his famed Wallestein Trilogy. Into this receptive milieu for great minds came the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, in the winter of his life, to pass away in 1900.

Weimar is not merely defined by its classical context, though. For it was here that one of the definitive art-design architecture movements of the 20th century began -- the Bauhaus, nurtured by the vision of the architect Walter Gropius, who brought to t he site creative minds like Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Johannes Itten. The school was based in Weimar from 1919 to 1925 before it moved on to Dessau because the conservative mindset of Weimar's local populace could not adapt to such a non-conformist venture.

And yet, the classical is at the core of Weimar as captured by the Goethe-Schiller bronze monument in the heart of the city, which depicts the two figures hand-in-hand sharing the laurel wreath of fame. But Goethe's presence in Weimar predates it by years. His arrival was shaped by two key figures. One was the widowed Duchess Anna Amalia -- Frederich the Great's niece -- who sensitively nurtured the arts during her reign. She invited the philosopher Wieland to Weimar in 1772 to tutor her two sons. And i t was her elder son, the liberal Duke Carl August, who invited Goethe to his cultured city -- and appointed him a member of his Privy Council in 1775, besides making him a gift of a modest garden house in the Ilm Park.

The picturesque house, his dwelling for six years, is set amidst a park built for lyricism. It was in 1778 that Goethe began to remodel the Ilm Park according to the `sentimental landscapes' stemming from Worlitz's `sequence of aesthetic images'. Within the evergreen estate, which today resembles and English garden, the poet had a colonnaded Roman House built as a summer residence for the duke, probably influenced by his own extensive travels through Italy. And just the throw of a voice away stands the Shakespeare monument built in 1904, an artificial ruin in its shadows.

An exquisite gingko leaf

Goethe's park echoes the heartbeat of the Weimar experience. In autumn, I wandered through cathedrals of natural colour, dazzling in their muted glow; with the russet leaves rustling against the magentas and olives, the orange foliage teasing the tanned breeze-tossed sprays while a lilting chorus of birds enhanced a verdant world defining itself through a dazzling palette.

The dazzling palette extends into the quaint interiors of the Garden House where Goethe spent his early days with Christiane Vulpius, whom he later married. But the essential Goethe, the mosaic of the man, comes to life best in his baroque-style home at Frauenplan, where the poet lived for almost 50 years with his personality imprinted on every nook.

Escorted through the orderly rooms, it is easy to imagine the poet at work. Up the wooden staircase that leads to Goethe's private study, my eyes come to rest upon high rostrum desks with workaday chairs, adjacent to a writing stand, complete with a quil l and inkwell. It was here, I guess, that he completed Faust II, whose manuscript was revised with his daughter-in-law Ottilie in 1831, before it was sealed up again in a poplar cabinet.

Every artefact in the nearly authentic study -- which was inventoried and locked up after his death in March 1832, at the age of 85 -- was selected by Goethe, including an opal glass flacon with a bust of Napoleon as a stopper.

In the elegant rooms overlooking a herb garden, it is easy to conjure up a picture of Goethe and his associates, Eckermann and Riemer, preparing the final edition of his literary, autobiographical and scientific works. Adjacent to it is his library of ov er 6,000 volumes, a room for pilgrims to worship in at the altar of Goethe.

The prismatic personality of Goethe gains another dimension as an art collector, whose treasury of 26,511 pieces of mainly antique and Renaissance art, are partially displayed in the reception rooms, even alongside the Renaissance-style staircase. Marble busts and oil paintings adorn room after room. A different facet to the poet surfaces in his mineral and rock collection of 18,000 specimens, displayed in wooden cabinets scattered through the house. As Goethe once noted, he chose `not by whim or whimsy , but always with a clear plan and intention in the consistent pursuit of my own education'.

Goethe's house, first opened to the public in 1885, is a true memorial to the man. Perhaps his ever-inquiring mind and the essential wanderer in him is best captured by the perfectly restored family carriage in wood and leather that stands in the coach h ouse downstairs.

The house on Frauenplan is just an instance of what makes a trip to Weimar rewarding -- the meticulous restoration of authentic sites at a total cost of over 70 million DM in the build-up to 1999.

Schiller House, the Albert Schweitzer Centre, the market square, and the ancient castle, are among key stops on a visitor's itinerary; and so is the Buchenwald Memorial. The Buchenwald concentration camp in nearby Ettersberg where the Nazi regime claimed over 56,000 lives, will forever personify the negative face of Weimar, its doomsday chimneys looming large against azure skies.

As I wandered the streets of Weimar in search of the perfect gingko souvenir, sifting through jewellery, porcelain mementoes and finely embroidered linen, I thought of the legacy that Goethe had left behind to Germany and the world. And as I viewed these symbols of pacifism against the pretty `bouquets' of onions on sale in the cobbled market place, on `pedestrians only' Schillerstrasse, I hoped that neo-Nazi trends would never rear their head again in Weimar.

What to see:
~ Duchess Anna Amalia library
~ the baroque Wilhelmsburg Castle Complex
~ Goethe National Museum
~ Schiller Museum
~ German National Theatre
~ Weimarhalle
~ Cranach triptych in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul
~ Bauhaus college of architecture
~ Nietzsche archive
~ the historical graveyard
~ Belvedere Castle.

Travel: Weimar ~ The legend of the Bauhaus

The first inkling of an art historical revelation arrives in November 2000 as a letter from the current director of the Bauhaus museum at Weimar in Germany: 'Did you know that the first Bauhas exhibition outside Germany took place in Calcutta in 1922 under the leadership of Abanindranath Tagore?'

The news is electrifying, considering that the Bauhas, the fount of industrial design in Europe, came into being only in 1919. A follow-up missive adds details to the news break: "This exhibition was organised by the Indian Society of Oriental Art. It included 250 graphic works, 35 drawings and woodcuts from Lionel Feininger, 23 drawings and woodcuts from Johannes Itten, four drawings by Wassily Kadinsky, nine water colours by Paul Klee, 29 woodcuts from Gerhard Marcks, nine graphics from Georg Muche, 83 watercolours and woodcuts by Lothar Schreyer, 57 works by Margit Tery, 49 works from the courses of Johannes Itten and two watercolours by a student named Susanne Korner".

But the best was yet to follow: "You could buy the works for just £ 5 to £ 15". That is how Herr Michael Siebenbrodt concludes his letter.

The letter contains photocopies of the correspondence between the Bauhas and the society in Calcutta. One, dated October 22, 1922, from its assistant secretary, reads: "I am directed to inform you that the pictures sent to Dr. Abanindranath Tagore for exhibition in the Indian Society of Oriental Art have reached this city, but as a very heavy customs duty is being charged, delivery cannot be taken. The packets are with the Customs and the government has been moved for orders for delivery of the packets free of duty. We shall not receive them till the decision of the government is arrived at. Kindly let us know how long the pictures may be kept here?"

Did any of the now historic Bauhaus works find a market in Calcutta? The society's letter dated March 3, 1923, lists one: Korner's work sold for all of £ 3.

Though further details of the exhibition are hard to come by, either at the Max Mueller Bhavan libraries or through contacts with an art historian in Calcutta, the Bauhaus news transports me back to Weimar in the autumn of 1999, then designated the year's European City of Culture.

The aesthetics of Bauhaus design

My first stop is a room that is purest Bauhaus. I know it from the instant I step into it. The frosty-domed lamp, with its electric cable visible within the glass shaft, harmonises function with aesthetics. Since it was first made in 1923-34, it has become a milestone of modern industrial form.

It is placed on a functional table of dark wood, adjacent to right-angled shelves in wood-and-glass. The lighting overhead extends the theme of right-angles, each tube of light slotting into the other at black T-points.

The sofa is a bright canary yellow, extending the geometric resonances. The carpet is a wondrous pattern of rusts, mustards and blues; each slanted plane fusing harmoniously into the adjacent one. The tapestry on the door extends the colour scheme, its textured surface knobby. The large glass window in the room overlooks a rustling pattern of autumn foliage.

This could pass for an unusual German office room, except that it is the recreated and restored office of Walter Gropius, legendary director of the original Bauhaus, when it was founded at Weimar, 278 km southwest of Berlin, in 1919. It was re-opened to the public on December 3, 1999.

I conjure up Gropius, intense and dapper, in my mind's eye - and the visionary architect fits perfectly into the ambience of the room. As we continue our Bauhaus trip, footnotes to the movement are provided by Bauhaus University's public relations officer Reiner Bensch.

For the Bauhaus movement was, of course, a pathbreaking attempt to overcome the results of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, to erase the boundaries between the artist and the artisan, and to realise a lifestyle that respects the creative worker.

Its large, airy building, replete with zigzag staircases, features sweeping passageways, which welcome daily gusts of fresh air. And new ideas, design revolutions in their wake.

The Bauhaus was the very first German art school reformed after World War I, to teach in the Weimar Republic constituted in 1919. Its 150 initial "apprentices" rallied around the essence of the Bauhaus Manifesto framed by Gropius: "The ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building." They were to erect a Utopian "building to which all would contribute through craftsmanship".

Bensch emphasises that the Bauhaus faculty was drawn from the most brilliant creative spirits of its time, starring the painter Feininger, the sculptor Maracks, Expressionist painter Muche, avant-garde genius Klee and Kandinsky of the Munich-based Blue Rider group.

He adds, "Johannes Itten, painter and art theoretician originally based in Vienna, became a role model. With his shaved head and round eye-glasses, dressed in a special Bauhaus uniform of his own design - funnel-shaped trousers, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, with a high-necked jacket fastened by a belt of the same material - he superscribed to the Mazdaznan sect, with its precepts of vegetarianism, fasting, disciplined breathing, and sexual discipline. Soon, many of his students began to dress like Itten, and even to think like him."

Once, Itten showed his 1920 class the weeping Mary Magdalene from the Grunewald Altar. They try to extract its basic elements from the complex maze. Itten looks at their efforts and storms out of class. He feels if they were sensitive enough, they would have burst into tears themselves.

Breakaway. Non-conformist. Radical. These adjectives are appropriate for the Bauhaus of the early 20th Century. If its teaching methods were unorthodox, including workshops on bookbinding, graphic printing and weaving, so was its campus life. Bensch narrates: "The young men and women often had wild parties with jazz music in the nearby Ilm Park, best known in the context of Goethe. The conservative inhabitants of Weimar were so shocked by their behaviour that, when a child was naughty, the parents would threaten it: Behave yourself, or will send you to the Bauhaus."

Celebrations apart, the Bauhaus was distinctive because it admitted equal numbers of men and women, the result of the 1919 Weimar constitution that allowed women the unrestricted right to study. But the women were sent directly to the weaving workshop, where they made the acquaintance of the weft and the warp by trial and error. None was admitted to the architecture course. Was it then considered a male preserve?
Today, the Bauhaus is a hothouse of youthful energy. Students from all over Europe converge on its historic premises to plunge into courses from architecture to online design. Its faculty hopes for students from more distant climes, but with little success - mainly due to the recent resurgence of the skinhead phenomenon in eastern Germany.

A special exhibition of the fruit of the early workshop looms is on when I visited the Bauhaus museum. The walls are draped in an array of richly-textured, autumn-hued tapestries. Rusts merge into browns, veering into patches of burnt gold on one. A kite- bright carpet for a children's room, made in 1923 by Benita Koch- Otte, adorns another wall. It is a visual feast, an invitation to touch - immediately denied by the custodians of the sacred cloth.

In a room nearby stands a pot-bellied Gropius teapot with its distinctive spout, now a classic prized by European families, despite its tendency to spill while pouring. Marianne Brandt's 1923 tea essence container, squat and rotund with an unusual handle, calls for attention. Close by is Marcks and Max Krehan's round-bellied 1921 jug with abstract patterns. Peter Keler's design catches the eye, an unusual kinderwiege or cradle in bright cotton with a metal frame. Their unorthodox contours made Bauhaus products stand out in the market even then. And spawned imitations by the dozen in later years. Soon, variants on the theme became the norm in global design circles.

But, to return to the core of the first major Bauhaus experiment - the building. The initial energies of the Bauhaus were directed towards a major exhibition in 1923 (partially due to the stipulation of a government loan), including a fully furnished house, named after its site beyond the Ilm Park - the Haus Am Horn.
The house, designed by painter Muche and executed by Adolf Meyer, is now regarded as an architectural classic. Its exterior resembles a white concrete block, unrelieved by landscaped greenery beyond. Its corridor-less interior - with all the functional rooms grouped around the central living room - is a challenge to conventional lifestyles. The original model features pictureless walls in the living room, with the horizontal- vertical planed furniture of Marcel Breuer juxtaposed against a geometricised carpet by Martha Erps-Breuer.

In the starkly functional Frau's room, constructivist forms dominate the furniture, besides a round mirror on a flexi-frame. The chair facing it has an angled backrest, enhancing the contrasts of light rosewood and dark walnut. The man's chamber has equestrian-style seats that require unusual balance, while the WC is tucked into a discreet corner, with standing room only.

The kitchen at the Haus Am Horn is the first ultra-modern one of its kind. Its workshop extends in front of the window, while its chairs fit under the table. It features technical innovations like a hot-water boiler in the kitchen and a laundry in the cellar. As for the children's room, it has large wooden blocks and walls to scribble on.

Today, the Haus Am Horn is infused by the humane story of its recent dwellers. According to Bensch, the head of the Gronwald family, who lived there since 1971, was an architect with a faculty position at the local University of Construction. He brought the Bauhaus back into focus in former East Germany through an exhibition of its history. Even Muche visited them, most recently in 1983. But with the reunification of Germany, the disillusioned architect hanged himself, unable to adapt to the new reality.

During the reconstruction of Germany, Frau Gronwald and her two sons continued to live in the Haus Am Horn, treating it as an inhabited museum. But with mounting costs, she found the upkeep of the house impossible. That is when the "friends of the university" took over the historic house.

'Monument to the March Dead': sculpture by Walter Gropius

The spirit of the original Bauhaus has grown, brick by brick. Despite its relocation to Dessau in 1924 after the National Socialist victory in the Thuringian elections, and then to Berlin until its dissolution in 1933 under Nazi pressure, it remains a touchstone for movements that revolutionise lifestyles. Even today, the legend of the Bauhaus continues to thrive, from Weimar to Calcutta and beyond.