Our main aim was to get to know the bright and dark sides of Weimar and not only to look at the history of the topic, but also to take a closer look at literary greats such as Schiller and Goethe.
Our journey began on Tuesday, 21.01.2025. From Zwickau, our travel group would have arrived in Weimar in just over two hours. However, due to a missed train, we unexpectedly had to spend an extra two hours in the "cosmopolitan city" of Gößnitz. Nevertheless, this did not diminish our anticipation - on the contrary: we were all the more excited to finally reach our destination. Once we arrived, the group made its way to the Deutsches Nationaltheater (DNT). Federal volunteer Jan, our tour guide, was already waiting for us and led us through the niches and corridors of the theater. For a good hour and a half, we were given an insight behind the scenes of the theater and were allowed to look over the shoulders of the make-up artists, who are not only responsible for the make-up but also for wigs, the tailors and the set designers, among others, and were given a brief excursion into the history of the DNT by Jan at the end. During the first few hours in Weimar, we came across some of the darker sides of this city. Jan also told us that the theater was taken over by the NSDAP, that the Hitler Youth was founded there and that all employees who did not follow the same ideology as the NSDAP were removed from their workplace. The theater became a monotonous venue that not only banned any diversity, but also only performed plays that conformed to ideology.
After this multi-faceted tour, we immediately headed to the nearby Schiller Museum, whose exhibition "Caspar David Friedrich - Goethe and Romanticism in Weimar" impressed us with impressive paintings by other artists. The first day in Weimar was rounded off with another visit to the DNT. This time we watched the play "Hoffnung - Schiller synthesized". We listened to one of the actors perform Schiller's ballads such as "The Diver", "The Cranes of Ibykus" and "The Glove". The special feature: All the works were musically accompanied by electronically animated drum sounds and live sounds of new synthesizers.
Wednesday started in the early hours of the morning with a guided tour of the city, focusing on the alternating history of the city "celebrated and abused". The guide gave us a lot of knowledge with insights into the past and present. Who would have known, for example, that the Goethe-Schiller monument does not correspond to the poets' actual heights, but that Schiller was actually 1.90m tall and Goethe only 1.69m? Our tour guide explained to us that the artist of this monument deliberately portrayed both writers at eye level in order to present them as "equals" and as a symbol of special cooperation. In the afternoon, a program item was on the agenda that was both the high point and the emotional low point of the trip to Weimar: the visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. We were in for a particularly impressive and moving tour, which also marked the historical low point of Weimar and was a reminder of the darkest time in the city's history. We were given a bloodcurdling insight into the prison cells of that time, which even 80 years after the concentration camp was closed still make you feel the inhumane conditions and the immeasurable suffering of the prisoners. Our guide led us across the huge open area to the pathology building and the crematorium next to it. Beforehand, we saw the disinfection building from a distance and later stood in the middle of the replica of the former doctor's room with the adjacent execution facility. All the impressions are reminiscent of that time. However, the full extent of the horror is beyond imagination!
On the last day of our project trip, we once again had the chance to find out a wide range of information about Weimar. Divided into groups, we explored topics such as "Weimar in the Nazi era", "Weimar in the GDR" and "Weimar's monuments" with the help of various city rallies. Shortly before leaving, we were given a guided tour of the famous Duchess Anna Amalia Library and were amazed to learn that around one million books and other documents are stored there. But the highlight by far was the Rococo Hall. With a tragic history due to the fire in 2004, the hall now lives up to its name with its golden accents, historically restored busts of personalities of the time and the collection of old books.
Assuming that we would catch the train back to Zwickau on time at 6 p.m., we took our suitcases and waited for our train, exhausted but full of the impressions of the last few days. Instead, we experienced a real ups and downs of emotions - Weimar's light and Weimar's shadow also at Deutsche Bahn. We were stuck on the tracks at Weimar Central Station for over two hours due to vandalism. However, after a number of canceled trains and the arrival in Zwickau originally planned for 8 p.m., we ended up stranded in Glauchau, from where our parents picked us up at around 10:30 p.m.
On Friday, we had to prepare what we had learned for the open day at our international schools in Reinsdorf so that we could present the Weimar project to interested parents and potential new pupils in the afternoon. The lingering tiredness from the exhausting previous days did not stop us from designing an entire classroom on our topic within a few morning hours and summarizing everything important from the three days and displaying it legibly for the guests. A real favorite among the visitors was the station about the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial.
In short, this trip was one of the most eventful we have ever experienced. In less than half a week, we experienced more ups and downs in relation to the history of Weimar than ever before, with an impact on the whole of Germany, Europe and even the world. The variety of impressions that we gathered, both emotionally and historically, will probably shape our memories for a long time to come.
Jessica Bauer - Student 10IGR
