Weimar reveals something else about Goethe: he was a garden fan

By Detlef Berg Jul 5, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Weimar, Germany - Weimar is certainly the city of German poets and philosophers. But Weimar is also a city of parks and gardens - or as writer Adolf Stahr put it more than 150 years ago in his travel diary, 'Weimar is actually a park inside which a city lies.'

Synje Jacobsen, a guide from Weimar's cultural heritage foundation, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, likes to cite this quote when she starts out on her tour, showing visitors the city's green side.

Fortunately, to this day the cityscape is largely shaped by three landscaped parks which are lined up for kilometres, one after the other, along the small Ilm river.

'The park on the Ilm, which is often referred to as the Goethe Park, is the largest and best-known,' Jacobsen notes.

Those visitors who start their tour at the castle will soon come across the Ilm, from which an impressive panoramic view of the garden house of writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe opens up. Duke Carl August gave it to the poet in 1776, thereby bestowing Weimar citizenship on Goethe.

'I've got a lovely tiny garden plot outside the gates on the Ilm, pretty meadows in a valley. There's an old cottage there that I'm having repaired,' Goethe wrote at the time.

For the surrounding park, Goethe took his inspiration from the Woerlitz Park which was inspired by the English country landscape style. Existing natural beauties remained preserved, while numerous new prospects were created.

The best-known of these views runs from the house of Charlotte von Stein, Goethe's long-time lady friend, to the poet's garden house. According to accounts, Charlotte would put a lighted candle at a window in the upper floor of her house to let Goethe know that 'the coast is clear' - that is, her husband was away.

'But the high point of the design of the park on the Ilm is the Roman House,' Synje Jacobsen says.

It was Goethe who brought the idea for the house, built between 1792 and 1797, back with him from a trip to Italy. It was Weimar's first Classic-style building and served as the summer residence of Duke Carl August. Today, it is a museum.

Atop the hills of the 'Oak tree lane,' only two kilometres outside of Weimar, there awaits a scenic landscaped park. There, visitors can see the Baroque-style Belvedere Palace with its cavalry buildings and orangerie.

'The ensemble was built as a summer residence on the model of Versailles, with strict geometrically-designed gardens,' Jacobsen explains. Because Goethe and the Duke carried out botanical studies here, there evolved a botanical garden.

The third park, Tiefurter Park, is at 21 hectares the smallest among Weimar's landscape parks. But for many visitors it is the prettiest.

This is due to its stimulating contrast of meadows punctuated by scattered groups of trees and flower beds on one side of the Ilm and the steep slopes on the other side.

When you take a stroll on that side, you are walking at the height of the crowns of the trees down below, and over and again, a broad view of the landscape opens up to you.