Friday marks the 250th anniversary of Goethe's arrival in Weimar. On November 7, 1775, the then 26-year-old came to the city at the invitation of Duke Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. By then, he had already achieved fame with "The Sorrows of Young Werther". In Weimar, he eventually went from literary pop star to phenomenon - his new adopted home became a city of culture. But are Goethe and his most famous Weimar work "Faust" still relevant?
Goethe's relevance for his adopted home of Weimar is undisputed, according to Ulrike Lorenz, President of the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar. Without Goethe, Weimar Classicism would probably never have existed. Weimar would have retained the "character of a small residential town", says the art historian, "without the intellectual splendor of the late Enlightenment and humanism." Numerous sites of Goethe's work are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Goethe House and palace, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, the Goethe and Schiller Archive and the Park on the Ilm. "Goethe gave Weimar a soul and the global significance it still has today," says Lorenz.
