Thuringia is the cultural heart of Germany, a place of inspiration for world-famous artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals. Remarkably, much of Thuringia’s cobbled streets and old stone architecture has barely changed since the time of Bach et al, so as well as touring the many museums devoted to these famous creative and intellectual figures, you have the opportunity to literally walk in their footsteps. Start right here ...
Johann Sebastian Bach: baroque brought to life
Germany’s greatest baroque composer was a jobbing musician throughout his life, and Thuringia is full of traces of his industrious career. Bach was an organist at Arnstadt, but his legacy is celebrated at the annual Thuringian Bach Festival in spring, and Eisenach (where he was born, in 1685) boasts the world’s biggest Bach museum. Housed in a splendid medieval building, the Bach House is devoted to the Bach dynasty – not only Johann Sebastian, but also his numerous musical relatives. The house is full of artefacts from Bach’s life and times, and each visit includes a short concert, played on original baroque-period instruments. If you’re a fan of classical music, you’ll also want to visit the Liszt House in nearby Weimar, where the great Hungarian composer Franz Liszt lived and worked.
Martin Luther: the father of Reformation
Luther spent his teenage years in Thuringia, first as a schoolboy in Eisenach, and then as a student at the University of Erfurt, graduating with an MA from its faculty of arts. While he was a student, Luther lived in Erfurt’s Augustinian Monastery (open to visitors – you can even stay the night). However, the most spectacular Luther site is Wartburg Castle, near Eisenach, where Luther hid, in disguise, from 1521 to 1522, and translated the New Testament into German – cementing the Reformation and establishing German as a national language. You can visit the room where Luther wrote his meisterwerk, where there used to be an ink stain on the wall – no longer visible – supposedly made when Luther threw an inkpot at the devil, who was trying to distract him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: the master of all trades
It’s hard to overstate quite how important Goethe is to German culture. Poet, playwright, novelist, philosopher and scientist, his genius encompassed virtually every avenue of German intellectual life. Born in Frankfurt in 1749, he came to Thuringia as a young man, fresh from the success of his sensational first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and spent time in Erfurt, Jena and Gotha, before settling in Weimar. The baroque house, where he lived for 50 years, until his death in 1832, is now the Goethe National Museum. There are lots of other sites associated with Goethe all over Thuringia, from the Liebhabertheatre in Kochberg Castle to the Botanical Garden in Jena.
Lucas Cranach (Elder and Younger): Renaissance father and son
Lucas Cranach is one of Germany’s most celebrated painters, and Thuringia is full of paintings by this Renaissance master and his son. Lucas the Elder was the better painter, but his son was almost as good, and their styles are so similar that it’s often hard to tell them apart. Born in 1472, Cranach the Elder settled in Weimar near the end of his life to live with his son’s family, and his adopted hometown is full of mementoes of his life and work. There are plenty of paintings by both Cranachs in Weimar’s Castle Museum, but the crowning glory is the magnificent altarpiece in the Church of St Peter & St Paul, started by Cranach the Elder and completed by his son. If you’re travelling around Thuringia, don’t miss the Friedenstein Palace in Gotha and the city’s art museum in Erfurt, which both have fine Cranach collections, and St John’s Church in Neustadt an der Orla, with its precious altarpiece. However, the most atmospheric setting for Cranach’s moody masterpieces is Wartburg Castle, where Cranach’s good friend Martin Luther hid away. The castle contains several acute portraits of Luther by Cranach the Elder, as well as some intimate, perceptive studies of Luther’s parents and his wife.
Walter Gropius: founder of Bauhaus
Modernist architect Walter Gropius was born in Berlin in 1883, but it was in Thuringia that he made his name. In 1919 in Weimar, he founded the Bauhaus – a revolutionary design school that transformed the way we live today. Gropius taught his students to work across a wide range of disciplines – from pottery to printmaking, and carpentry to ceramics. He taught them to throw out the chintz, to see that less is more. His house style was stark, minimal and, above all, practical. Everything he made was fit for purpose. His ideas have since become commonplace, but in the 1920s they were shocking. In 1925, local conservatives drove him out of Weimar, and when the Nazis came to power he was forced to flee abroad. Yet, here in Thuringia, his influence lives on. Next year, bauhaus museum weimar marks the centenary of the Bauhaus with a move to a smart new building – a fitting forum for the world’s oldest Bauhaus collection. There are plenty of other Bauhaus sites elsewhere in Thuringia, including the Haus Auerbach in Jena, built by Gropius, and a Bauhaus-era hotel, the Haus des Volkes, in Probstzella.
Carl Zeiss: a new vision
Born in Weimar in 1816, Zeiss trained as a fine machinist in Thuringia, and in 1846 he opened a workshop in Jena, making telescopes, microscopes and other optical devices. By the time he died, in 1888, his little workshop had grown into a large factory. By the beginning of the first world war, it was the largest camera manufacturer in the world. After the second world war, the Soviets stripped the factory bare, and took much of the equipment back to Russia, but although it ended up behind the iron curtain, Zeiss held its own against western competition – and when Germany was reunified it was one of the few East German firms to survive and prosper as a viable concern. You can learn all about Zeiss at the German Optical Museum in Jena, then visit the nearby Zeiss Planetarium, fitted with state-of-the-art Zeiss telescopes.
