Projects of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Thuringia, represented by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, Department of Culture and the Arts.
What do dedications in books tell us about the people who wrote them in? What do we learn about those for whom they were intended? The special exhibition at the Study Centre of the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek presented books with dedications from the first half of the 20th century. In addition to personal backstories, the dedications are placed in their respective historical contexts.
On 2 September 2004, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library burned down. On the 20th anniversary of the fire, Spanish artist Anna Talens presented her two-part artistic intervention “Ars Ignis”. In a poetic way, she explored the destructive and creative energy of fire. The intervention were located in two places: in the historic Rococo Hall and in the modern Study Centre. The artist used the remains of ash books that could not be restored as material.
Six impressive works by the german artist Klaus Fröhlich were prensented, in which he artistically processed his examination of the effects of the library fire in 2004. Fröhlich had already donated his acrylic collages to the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in 2020.
She was the first German writer to have her portrait displayed in the Rococo Hall: Rahel Varnhagen von Ense. In a temporary intervention, her image was once again given a place of honour in the Rococo Hall, together with other objects from the library and archive. The intervention honoured Rahel Varnhagen von Ense as a thinker whose tireless pursuit of education, reason, dialogue, self-reflection and love of truth is more important today than ever before.
The exhibition was dedicated to the famous lifestyle magazine published by Friedrich Justin Bertuch. “The Journal des Luxus und der Moden” (Journal of Luxury and Fashion) was first published in 1786 and had a profound influence on style and taste far beyond Weimar. The exhibition presented the magazine as an outstanding source of information on home decor, fashion and consumer behaviour around 1800.
With Martin Luther’s new translations, the Bible was reinvented as a new book. It became a weapon in religious disputes, spawned competition and generated new points of view. This is substantiated by the 16th-century illustrations contained in Weimar’s Bible Collection. The presentation at the Study Centre was supplemented by volumes from the Herder Church library on display at the Historic Library (HAAB) and in public tours of the “Treasures of the Weimar Bible Collection”.
The presentation was dedicated to an outstanding object from the manuscript collection, the so-called Codex Kentmanus. The 16th-century folio contains several natural history manuscripts written by the Saxon physicians Johannes and Theophil Kentmann, father and son. It is richly illustrated with more than 400 depictions of plants and animals.
In 2019 the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek acquired two private collections of practically the entire series produced by the People’s Association of Bibliophiles (VdB). The presentation included book illustrations, book covers, original prints and other items from the VdB’s multifaceted programme, e.g. a globe or the beautifully illustrated picture book Schlaraffenland by Karl Arnold, one of the best-known caricaturists of the first half of the 20th century.
Nietzsche not only wrote books; he was also an avid reader. In contrast to his image cultivated early on as an old-fashioned, lonely, and completely autonomous philosopher, the books Nietzsche read reveal how closely his thinking was tied to the theories and debates of his time. This exhibition presents digital scans of selected pages of books, in whose margins Nietzsche had jotted interesting notes and commentaries.
The temporary intervention in the Rococo Hall presented two works by the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon at a historic venue: the busts of the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and the singer Sophie Arnould in the role of “Iphigenia” in Gluck’s piece of the same name. The future Duke Carl August purchased the busts at the artist’s studio during his Grand Tour in Paris. The busts are displayed alongside correspondence, sheet music and documents from the historic performances.
Ten years after the devastating fire on 2 September 2004, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek provided an in-depth look at the type and extent of the damage, as well as the restoration of 118,000 books and manuscripts, damaged by fire and extinguishing water. The exhibition presented the current status and the progress achieved as a result of the restoration measures. The exhibition also documented the loss of books which were irrecoverably destroyed in the 2004 inferno.
In 1926 Günther Beyer (1888–1965) opened a photo studio in Weimar which went by the proud name of “Beyer’s Scientific Institute of Projection Photography”. His son Klaus (1922–2007) and grandson Constantin (*1961) continued running the studio as freelance photographers. All three called themselves “light designers” as their professional title. The studio never operated a retail shop nor ever left the town where it was founded. The exhibition “Rooms for Collections” presented numerous photos from the estate of the light-designing Beyer family in Weimar which uniquely portray the changes to the collection rooms in the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek throughout the decades. It also featured works by the photo artist Johannes Heinke.
Apart from photos from the estate of the light-designing Beyer family, the exhibition “Rooms for Collections” featured works by the photo artist Johannes Heinke (*1986) who documented items salvaged from the “Carlsmühle” in 2010, which he entitled “Lost Knowledge”. The series is comprised of nine so-called diptychs. Each photo pair consists of a full-size and a close-up photo of ash books which were packed into cardboard boxes and stacked on Euro pallets after the library fire in Weimar in 2004.
The Study Centre at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek launched its first art exhibition with Hannes Möller’s “Fire Books | Ash Books”, a forty-piece series portraying books damaged in the 2004 library fire. Known for his mixed-media “book portraits", Möller explores the unique character of libraries and salvaged volumes, using ash and pigments to evoke their fragile beauty and history. It was the first-ever art exhibition in the Study Centre.
On the 750th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek dedicated an exhibition to his influential works, especially the Divina Commedia, which redefined the literary portrayal of the Christian afterlife. Presented as an “open book,” the exhibition explored Dante’s multifaceted legacy and its reception during the Goethe era through historical editions, translations, and artistic interpretations.
The exhibition was developed in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the publishing house by the bibliophilic arts patron Harry Graf Kessler. Thanks to Kessler’s international interests and connections, the Cranach-Presse gained renown as an authoritative publisher of early 20th-century English typographical and book art. Working together with distinguished artists such as Eric Gill, Aristide Maillol and Henry van de Velde, the publishing house produced “book artworks” featuring trend-setting designs.
The Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek is home to the world’s largest collection of friendship books (Alba Amicorum) dating from 1550 to 1950. The exhibition featured 80 of these valuable works, providing insight into the origin, tradition and investigation of this literary genre. The works on display included albums in which Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had inscribed their words for posterity.
This exhibition offered insights into the library’s rich and universally-oriented book collection. The exhibition featured 50 exquisite literary works, such as Schedel’s World Chronicle of 1493, the Luther Bible printed in 1534 and Alexander von Humboldt’s American travelogue of 1805.
On occasions such as accessions to the throne, weddings or entry to their castles, palaces or cities, homage was paid to the Dukes of Weimar with a "joyous Vivat" in the form of literary tributes. The homage and the magnificent literary works of homage that were created in this context were presented in the exhibition. The literary tributes were written by a remarkably wide range of authors: from schoolchildren to members of the archery and crossbow club to writers of the calibre of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland.
Projects of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Free State of Thuringia, represented by the State Chancellery of Thuringia, Department of Culture and the Arts.