Anna Amalia Library

RESEARCH LIBRARY AND UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library is certainly one of the most sought after attractions. This is not just because the number of visitors per day is limited. With an impressive 1 million volumes, it is considered to be one of the most important libraries both in the Thuringian and in the entire German-speaking area!

Where else can you marvel at the world's largest Faust collection as well as Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, if not here in Weimar? In 1691 the targeted expansion of the library under Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar started. The namesake of this imposing collection of books was demonstrably its biggest patron: Duchess Anna Amalia.

In the eighteenth century it made sure that the library moved from the city palace to the present building and that the collections were constantly expanding. And not only that: As one of the few princely libraries, the building was open to the public. Whoever wanted to engage in literature was welcome here.

A small revolution at that time! And still today it is a publicly accessible library for literature and cultural history around 1850. However, the oval, three-storey Rococo hall has already been part of a big headline: 2004 saw a devastating fire, and many of the high value collections were irretrievably destroyed , Despite this, the Weimar Library is still home to extremely valuable books. Even famous people like Schiller, Herder and Wieland once worked with them - and of course Goethe, who was a librarian here for over 35 years.

There are digitized stocks, e.g. the political-satirical weekly "Simplicissimus", which was founded on April 1, 1896 by Albert Langen. The most famous book of the Anna Amalia Library is the Luther Bible from 1534. The 128 woodcuts and initials are from the workshop of the Wittenberg court painter and friend of Lucas Cranach. The year 2008 especially - the year after the reopening - attracted as many people as never before.

Since 2016, the renaissance hall on the ground floor has a permanent exhibition on the topic of "Restoration after the fire" - books, fragments, models and videos give a good insight into the technical achievements of preserving books from the 15th to the 20th centuries has been possible thanks to many promoters. If you are visiting Thuringia and would like to get to know the cultural history of the city intensively, we recommend visiting other important museums of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, including Goethe's residence, Schiller's house, the Bauhaus sites and the castle museum.