Monday, 20 May 2024 Weimar: Cranach, Anna Amalia's library, and the Bauhaus

Written 3 August 2024

Breakfast a our little hotel was much less elaborate than those at the big chain places, but quite adequate to our needs. At the left here, cheeses, cold cuts, butter, and yogurt. Also little single-serve cups of genuine Philadelphia cream cheese, but no bagels!

At the right, bread buns, a tall wicker basket full of hot boiled eggs and little egg cups for them, jams and honey, single-serve packs of brand-X Nutella, and a basket of fruit. I think our companions got the last of the bananas and pears.

I guess these clear cylinders are an improvement over the open bowls in which Europeans used to offer breakfast cereal on buffets, where they quickly got soggy from the humidity, but these dispensers invariably grind the cereal in the process of dispensing it.

Another table bore big pitchers of orange juice, bottles of mineral water, tins of many kinds of loose tea, and a modern touch-screen coffee dispenser.

At the right is my plate: bread, cheese, salami, butter, and jam. Boiled egg on the side. The dispenser couldn't do decaf, and I learned from the unfortunate example of the person ahead of me in line that the coffee cups were not large enough for the serving of hot chocolate it produced; you have to use the tall glasses.

After breakfast, we set off on foot for a special exhibition on Lucas Cranach (remember him? painter in Wittenberg?) at the Herzogin (= Duchess) Anna Amalia Bibliothek, maybe 600 yards from our hotel. Just around the corner from the hotel, we came to the Donndorfbrunnen (the Donndorf fountain), which we subsequently walked back and forth past several times. Donndorf was commissioned to create the bronze statue ("Mother Love") for an American client in 1876. Four copies were cast. The first is in Union Square in New York city, the second in Zwittau (Czech Republic). Donndorf made a gift of the third, this one, to Weimar, his native city, and the fourth is in Stuttgart. That last one was melted down for the war effort in 1917, but it has since been recreated.

A little further along, we encountered this "horseless carriage" conducting a guided tour of the town. The steering wheel is on the side nearest the camera, but the driver has parked and turned to face his passengers while he describes the neighborhood.

Next we passed this doorway with two "lived here" plaques. From 1799 to 1902, Schiller lived here. Later, Heinrich Jäde, "freedom fighter 1848" lived here.

The big white building with flags over the entryway is the Rathaus, Weimar Town Hall, facing on the market square.

Also in the market square was the usual bronze relief map, but we didn't have a local guide to explain it and were on our way elsewhere, so I didn't get a chance to study it.

About a block beyond the square, we passed this bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. The pedestal specified "In Weimar 1703, 1708–1717."

And here are two figures who loom large in the history of Weimar: Duchess Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (in a 1769 portrait by Johann Ernst Heinsius) and her son, Karl August, sovereign Duke of Saxe-Weimar and of Saxe-Eisenach (on the horse).

So you remember Frederick II of Prussia—Frederick the Great, Old Fritz—flautist, Elector of Brandenburg, builder of Sanssouci palace, never had children, introduced of the potato to Germany, etc. Well, he had 12 siblings, the 7th of whom was a sister, Princess Philippine Charlotte of Prussia (1716–1801). Philippine was considered an intellectual, composer, and collector of books.

In 1756, the 16-year-old Anna Amalia (niece of Frederick the Great, still with me here?), brought up by a musical and intellectual mother, married 18-year-old Ernest Augustus II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and moved to Weimar. They had two sons. Two years after the marriage, Ernest Augustus died, leaving Anna Amalia as regent of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Eisenach for their infant son Karl August (he was 9 months old at the time, so she must still have been pregnant with his brother). She ruled until 1775, when he could take over the job.

Despite her administrative duties, which she executed quite competently, she found time for a rich musical and intellectual life, studying keyboard and musical composition and collecting books. Her "salon" included Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and other luminaries of the time. Oh, and one of her nieces married George V of England.

Karl August ruled until his death in 1828, so between them, he and his mother ran the city and the region for 70 years, all of it promoting music, literature, philosophy, and the arts. Weimar became the cultural capital of central Europe. Hummel, Liszt, and Wagner all spent time there.

The Cranach exhibition was light on actual works of his but very rich in information and explanation. At the left here is a magnified view of an illumination from an old religious manuscript (not by Cranach). It shows the Garden of Eden in amazing detail, considering the original is about four inches across. In the magnified version, when I blow my photo up to full size, I can see Adam and Eve, the serpent (watching them from a distance), a whole lot of very disparate animals (including an elephant about the same size as the lion next to it), the sun and birds of the air, the moon and stars, sea creatures, . . . . Amazing.

At the right is one by Cranach (the elder)—it's "Simson" (Samson, I assume) wrestling with the lion.

At the left here are the betrothal portraits (by Cranach the elder) of Johann Friedrich der Grossmütigen von Sachsen als Bräutigam and Sibylle von Kleve als Braut. He was 22; she was 15. It was an arranged marriage, but they were lucky and developed a real affection for each other that lasted into old age.

At the right is a crucifixion scene by Cranach that was the center panel of a three-paneled altarpiece.

Then it was on to Anna Amalia's baroque library. At the left here is a model of the building. They wouldn't even let us walk in our street shoes in there—just outside the library proper were long shelves bearing over-sized felt slippers that we had to slip on over our shoes. The fell off easily, so we mostly had to shuffle to keep them on.

At the right is a panel of shelving in the library. Note the curvature of the shelves at the right-hand side.

The library was gorgeous. In the left-hand photo, that's Leon in the pink shirt with his hands behind his back. I also felt the urge to keep my hands behind my back—everything was so delicate and fragile!

Besides the books, the library houses busts and portaits of important literary and scientific personages of the period. At the left here is Goethe, and at the right Schiller.

And here's one of Anna Amalia herself.

In the center, you could look straight up to this fresco on the ceiling. I think we were told it was a copy of a copy of something, the original maybe by Carracci? The figure is supposed to represent "genius."

For lunch, we went back to the Market Square and chose Zum Schwarzen Bären "At the Black Bear), shown here with Leon and David for scale. Many restaurants of a wide range of nationalities were available, but we were trying to experience the local food—we didn't fly to Europe to eat Asian food, and certainly not barbecue or Tex-Mex!

Here's David's sampling of the local brew: Ehringsdorfer ("The Weimar Beer").

The other three all went with items on the "seasonal menu." Gritta ordered a stir-fry of "Schupfnudel" (spindle-shaped potato noodles) and sliced green and white asparagus, cherry tomatoes, and other fresh vegetables in a pesto sauce.

David wanted something light, so he just ordered a plate of asparagus, potatoes, and hollandaise, without his usual schnitzel.

Leon ordered red lentil fritters on a bed of ragout of green and white asparagus, salad on the side.

Then we were off to the Bauhaus museum, maybe 600 yards the other direction from our hotel.

The leafless tree poking up behind it is a birch being held upright by a stand of some kind and festooned with multicolored ribbons. Left over from May Day, maybe?

Nearby, we passed this double-decker bicycle rack. The upper racks can be lowered for loading and unloading. They must pull out like drawers before dropping down, or you wouldn't be able to get your bike out if someone parked his below it.

We've actually encountered similar arrangements in several parking garages (including the extremely compact one under our hotel, which Leon was not willing to entrust the car to), and in more than half of them, the upper rack is no longer in use, because cars have gotten larger since they were built, and two won't fit above one another any more.

Here we are at the Bauhaus Museum, and as you can see, it is, predictable, a cube. I've never been a particular fan of Bauhaus architecture (to which I was reluctantly introduced back in Art 100), and I can't say these exhibits changed my mind, but I did learn a lot more about the movement—for example that it extended far beyond architecture, encompassing a whole characteristic view of the way life in the future should be lived, and that its influence is still strongly felt today, for example in the design of this lamp.

I was always given to believe that the Bauhaus philosophy was that beauty emerged when form followed function, but who in the world was it that thought cube-shaped buildings were either attractive or functional?! The modern library serving an educational institution next door to the Baroque library is a cube, inside and out, and photos of the interior strike me as practically antifunctional. Yes, those tall flat walls, four stories high, accommodate a whole lot of books, which you can climb up to narrow balconies to get at, but work and study space is limited to the floor at the bottom, below a vast empty space. Other libraries manage to include lofty atria and a sense of sunlit openness by other means.

According to Wikipedia, "The Stadtliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational [in Weimar] from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function."

A lot of what was displayed was text rather than images or objects, so the museum gets rather short shrift here. I still don't really understand what the movement was on about or, beyond architecture, what makes something Bauhaus. I would need to spend a lot more time in the museum and read everything two or three times.

At the left here is a "floating sculpture," an abstract wooden thing by László Moholy-Nagy (actually a reconstruction of it). It was hard to capture in a photograph; the wooden part (and a metal rod attached to the far end of the horizontal bar) is suspended from the end of the metal spring fixed to the base. The spring is rigid enough to hold the rest in midair.

At the right is a cradle. It must be heavily weighted at the bottom to keep it upright, as it looks as though, if you pushed it, it would just keep on rolling, dumping the baby out along the way.

Now what makes this snow leopard Bauhaus? I have no idea, unless it's just the macho, red-in-tooth-and-claw thing.

On the other hand, the model at the right of a cube-shaped house has Bauhaus written all over it, at least to my eye. The house is a cube, of course. No indication was given of the function of the long rectilinear covered gallery. Maybe the closed part at the right is the garage.

The poster at the left is entitled "Man as Industrial Palace," depicting the human body as being run like a machine, with a little guy pulling levers and pushing buttons to make buckets of oxygen come and go from the lungs. Clearly these guys had the industrial revolution much on their minds.

At the right is a shot of the gift shop, where you could get Bauhaus vases, lamps, and chess sets, as well as models of Bauhaus designer chairs and wooden toys, like wooden ships, tops that produced colorful optical illusions, and a miniature cradle.

The museum included much, much more, including paintings, more architecture, more examples of design, like household objects, even film clips of Bauhaus callisthenics!

The Bauhaus was founded by Walter Gropius, so something in this museum must have conveyed the information I found in one of my notes— that Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel (a Viennese woman who was married at one time or another to composer Gustav Mahler, Gropius, and writer Franz Werfel and who was imortalized in a song by the brilliant Tom Lehrer) was born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler in 1879. She died 1964.

For dinner, we went to Restaurant Anna in the venerable historic Elephant Hotel, on the Market Square next door to the Black Bear. When we entered, I was struck by wonderful layout of the ground floor. As you entered, you found yourself in the lobby, with the reception desk, where all the business of checking in and out took place. But as you continued toward the restaurant in the back, you passed through a large, wonderfully appointed lounge, at least three times the size of the lobby, furnished with comfortable chairs, sofas, a fire place, and library tables—eally more of a common room than part of a hotel lobby.

Beyond the lounge was the restaurant. Here's Gritta at our table, facing me across the bread service. Note all the little crocks of different spreads for the bread.

My starter, at the right here, was foie gras with strawberries and green pepper and pistachio creme.

Gritta chose herbal cream soup with prawns and asparagus, croutons on the side.

At the right is a gratin of cauliflower.

At the left here is a shrimp risotto with cherry tomatoes and grilled white asparagus.

At the right is Gritta's vegetarian plate of carrots of several colors, some rolled in sesame seed, and thick grilled slices of "Kräuterseitlinge," call king eryngii or king mushroom in English—they're a variety of oyster mushroom ("Seitlinge") that's almost all thick stalk and almost no cap. Under the mushrooms are broccoli and broad beans.

At the left here is my plate of "Thüringer wild game" and foie gras. I think it was venison. The menu said it was served with sugar snap peas, but what I got were ordinary snow peas.

At the right is an herbal sorbet (I don't remember what flavor) and strawberries.