The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is one of the largest and most significant cultural institutions in Germany. It owns more than 20 museums, palaces, historic houses and parks, as well as literary and art collections, a number of which are World Heritage sites.It focuses on the Weimar Classicism period, but also covers 19th and 20th century art and culture with properties associated with Franz Liszt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry van de Velde and the Bauhaus.Eleven of its properties are listed as part of the Classical Weimar World Heritage site and the Haus am Horn is part of the Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau World Heritage site.The foundation was created on 1 January 2003 through the merger of the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik and the Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar. It was known from 2003 to 2006 as the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen.
The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is a member of the Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen, a union of more than twenty cultural institutions in the five new states of Germany which were formerly part of the German Democratic Republic.
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents and is part of the UNO designated Classical Weimar . In 2004 a fire destroyed the main wing and a substantial part of the collection; restoration of salvaged volumes lasted until 2015.
The library contains:
1,000,000 books
2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts
600 ancestral registers
10,000 maps
4,000 musical scoresThe research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10,000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther.
Schloss Weimar is a Schloss in Weimar, Thuringia, Germany. It is now called Stadtschloss to distinguish it from other palaces in and around Weimar. It was the residence of the dukes of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach, and has also been called Residenzschloss. Names in English include Palace at Weimar, Grand Ducal Palace, City Palace and City Castle. The building is located at the north end of the town's park along the Ilm river, Park an der Ilm. It forms part of the World Heritage Site "Classical Weimar".
In history, it was often destroyed by fire. The Baroque palace from the 17th century, with the church Schlosskirche where a number of works by Johann Sebastian Bach were premiered, was replaced by a Neoclassical structure after a fire in 1774. Four rooms were dedicated to the memory of poets who worked in Weimar, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller and Christoph Martin Wieland. From 1923, the building has housed the Schlossmuseum, a museum with a focus on paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries and works of art related to Weimar, a cultural centre.
