This week we travelled to Weimar on a group excursion. For those of you not familiar with German history, Weimar is significant because it is the center of a significant number of developments in German history and culture. Some highlights:
- Goethe's main residence
the Bauhaus University and founding location
Franz Liszt's main composition town
seat of the German government between WWI and WWII
and so much more!
This may be displayed by using Goethe to advertise the local favorite Schwarzbier, as seen here. It makes me wonder: Did Goethe really drink Köstritzer? (actually, yes) or perhaps by posting plaques outside of every building that ever had a famous person reside there, even if the building is no longer standing... In any case, is it really so important to remember the past in this manner? I can appreciate museums and monuments just fine, but sometimes I feel as though some of the effort put into memorializing the past could possibly be better used to develop the present.
On a side note, I encountered an amusing example of the striving to recreate the past in Eisenach, at the Bach museum. In this town, a house is attached to the museum and is called the 'Bach House'. Ironically, they discovered some years after the construction of the museum that Bach never actually lived in this house. But rather than try to memorialize him in a place he actually lived, they opted to be very specific with the language used in the Bach house, displaying "furniture that was owned by someone who lived at the same time as the Bach family" and "a copy of the book that was so prevalent in this time that Bach is sure to have owned one".
German Word for the Post: Bemerkung
Definition: observation, note
Pronunciation: buh-MARE-koong
Very cool. Your hair looks so long in the picture!
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