Weimar Classicism

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Weimar Classicism

Weimar's Courtyard of the Muses (1860) by Theobald von Oer. Schiller reads in the gardens of Schloss Tiefurt, Weimar. Amongst the audience are Herder (second person seated at the far left), Wieland (center, seated with cap) and Goethe (in front of the pillar, right).
Years active	1788–1805
Location	Germany
Major figures	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Friedrich Schiller; Caroline von Wolzogen
Influences	Sturm und Drang, Classicism

Weimar Classicism (German: Weimarer Klassik) was a German literary and cultural movement, whose practitioners established a new humanism from the synthesis of ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment. It was named after the city of Weimar, Germany, because the leading authors of Weimar Classicism lived there.^[1]

The Weimarer Klassik movement began in 1771 when Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel invited the Seyler Theatre Company led by Abel Seyler, pioneers of the Sturm und Drang movement, to her court in Weimar. The Seyler company was soon thereafter followed by Christoph Martin Wieland, then Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder and finally Friedrich Schiller. The movement was eventually concentrated upon Goethe and Schiller, previously also exponents of the Sturm and Drang movement, during the period 1788–1805.