Weimar

Weimar lies in the valley of the Ilm between Erfurt and Jena. It grew around the castle of the counts of Weimar, whose lands passed to the Wettins after the Thuringian Counts' War in 1346. Woad trading privileges and the patronage of its rulers helped the town grow. After the Ernestine Wettins lost Wittenberg in the Schmalkaldic War, they made Weimar their residence in 1552. Despite later partitions, it remained the capital of successive Saxe-Weimar states.

The Reformation had reached Weimar in 1525, and Martin Luther visited several times. The court gave the town new importance, although territorial divisions and changing trade weakened it in the seventeenth century. In the later eighteenth century Duchess Anna Amalia and Duke Carl August fostered a remarkable literary circle. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller lived and worked here, and their association with the court made Weimar a centre of German cultural life. The duchy weathered the upheavals of the Napoleonic era and became a grand duchy after the Congress of Vienna. Weimar's modest size contrasted with the influence of the writers, scholars and artists who gathered around its court, a legacy that endured beyond their own lifetimes.