Weimar Redux Two

Christian Lehman, for that was his proper name under the demotic Dayton exterior, proceeded to load me down with documents outlining the two kinds of changes needed to make Weimar shine again--renewed infrastructure and retrieving as many of the run down buildings as the budget would allow. "How much time do you have?" "Look, I'm retired. My time is my own. I'd like at least to see where the Bauhaus started. Is that still around?"

"Not exactly. But the tradition definitely is. Gropius didn't start a new building here when he came in 1919. That came later in Dessau. He used the marvelous buildings the Belgian architect Henrik van de Velde built between 1906 and 1911 for the art school in town. That's only a ten minute walk away and I love to show it off, especially the Oskar Schlemmer murals and other decorations.

And there's a marvelous Bauhaus Museum just down the street, in the Theatre Platz. But if you're going to stay for a couple of days, you'll need a hotel room. Your best bet is the InterCity Hotel right across from the Hauptbahnhoff. We've got a deal with them for visiting brass and media. Not free, but dirt cheap for a three star hotel. Let me get them on the line."

He took his Handy (the bizarre German name for a mobile telephone) out of his back pocket, and punched in the numbers. "Hi! InterCity? This is Christian Lehman at the KulturHauptstadt press bureau. We've got a journalist from San Francisco who needs a room with a phone and TV for a couple of days. Can you give him a good deal?" He paused while they calculated at the other end of the phone."Forty-four DM, buffet breakfast included?" Chris covered the mouthpiece, and giggled. "Heh, that's less than twice what the Youth Hostel in town charges, and the breakfast will last you most of the day."

I nodded acquiescence. "O.K. His name is Jake (J-A-K-E) McBride,and he'll show up after we show him a few things and give him a welcome dinner at the Ilmschlosschen. O.K.?" You'll like the InterCity. Not only is it across from the main train station, but they have a gimmick I wish every hotel would pick up--they give you a free ticket to the twelve buses that converge at the train station.

I wish someone would write a guidebook to Weimar using this mass trans network. Take Line 6. At the Northern end is Buchenwald which all serious travelers make a point to visit. And at the Southern end is the church in Gelmeroda which the German American painter (and Bauhaus professor) became obsessed with, and made image after image of it throughout his career. The local architect Peter Mittman has created a light show sculpture at the church. We should call him while you're here to see if he's in town (his firm is based in Koeln, but he has a second office here.)

He's just bought the oldest house (1804) in the village and designed a balcony for the best possible viewing of his 10 p.m. "exhibition". You'll really find Mittmann interesting. One of his partners, Neufort, is the grandson of the first Bauhaus professor to build a prototype house in 1925, and they use that house as their office/showplace in Gelmerodal.

Ernest Neufort, like his contemporary Egon Eiermann, have been under a cloud since World War II because, unlike Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, they didn't flee Nazism to America. They stayed put and now suffer under the onus of being "nice Nazis". But since the "Wende" (change that came with unifying the two Germany's it looks like they may finally get the architectural recognition they've long deserved."

"But come, enough of the blather. Let's go and have a good dinner and talk about what you want to see and learn". We walked a few steps to the Market Square. He pointed out City Hall, the tourist office in a marvelous light green with curious gables that recalled Flemish buildings. "Next to the tourist office is Cranach where the painter lived for several years. You'll want some day to visit Sts. Peter and Paul Church--the so-called Herder Church (he ran things there for decades) to see the Cranach triptych altarpiece. It's one of the finest things in Weimar. Everybody yaks Goethe and Schiller, but Weimar is far more than those two.

There's a great National Theatre troupe here with major performances at the Redoute just North of the main train station, an experimental workshop where they're about to do an Urfaust that will test your avant garde spirit--Mephisto is a transexual who first appears as a Marlene Dietrich figure than morphs into a dwarf hobbling after Faust and then suddenly is a ravening beast biting her own bloody tail and spewing gore all around Hell, which is an industrial steel box which flames and groans at the devil's whims.