Language eruptions.

A Walk through Weimar (6. May – 30. September 2022)

„Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.“
Victor Klemperer, Language of the Third Reich: LTI; Lingua Tertii Imperii, trans. Martin Brady, Bloomsbury 2013.

In one square, three cubes with a quotation from Victor Klemperer stand on the station forecourt, behind them is a red bench. — Language eruption with quote "poisonous effect" on August-Baudert-Platz, Photo: Henry Sowinski, Design: Ariane Spanier © Klassik Stiftung Weimar

For a year devoted to the theme of language, Klassik Stiftung Weimar has scattered quotations in the city centre of Weimar – like fragments scattered by ‘Language Eruptions’. On the square outside the station, you see a quotation from the 20th-century German literary scholar Victor Klemperer. The sentence describes the lasting and potentially fatal damage that language can cause. Even apparently harmless expressions or comparisons do people harm, and make speakers into perpetrators.

In the Museum Neues Weimar, once the residence of the Nazi Gauleiter and governor of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel, an audio installation tells about the use of language in the Nazi period, the subject of Victor Klemperer’s study.