Stadtmuseum Weimar

Located at Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 5 in Weimar’s historic centre, the Stadtmuseum Weimar focuses on the city’s history. When its collections were transferred to municipal administration in 1903, it became the first municipal museum in Thuringia to operate under local government auspices.

The museum is housed in the so-called Bertuchhaus, a neoclassical residential and commercial building erected in two stages between 1780 and 1803. The building is named after the publisher and entrepreneur Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747–1822). Parts of the house once served as the Landes-Industrie-Comptoir and as a Geographical Institute.

The museum developed from private 19th-century collections and traces its origins to the Naturwissenschaftliche Museum of the Naturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, founded in 1889. It began in rooms of a school behind the city church, moved in 1892 to the Poseck’sche Haus and was transferred to municipal administration in 1903. Since the mid-1950s the Stadtmuseum has been housed in the Bertuchhaus.

The collections cover the overall history of Weimar. Focus areas include prehistory and early history, Bertuch’s history as a publisher and entrepreneur, and the history of the Weimar Republic. Holdings related to Weimar’s watch production (VEB Uhrenwerk Weimar) were, among other things, the subject of a special exhibition in 2016. In addition, a large portion of the artistic estate of the painter Alfred Ahner belongs to the collection, and the museum’s textile collection is of supra-regional significance.

Friedrich Schiller praised the house and described its garden and usage in detail in a letter. The Weimarhallenpark lies behind the Bertuchhaus. The former workshops, which formed a four-sided courtyard, no longer exist; they were demolished in 1928 to make way for the construction of the Weimarhalle. A well-known person who worked there was Christiane Vulpius. From 2000 to 2005 the museum was not accessible. Since 2006 the Stadtdirektion has operated, via the Stadtmuseum, the Kunsthalle "Harry Graf Kessler" at Goetheplatz 9b. The museum is also associated with the Bienenmuseum and is supported by a Förderverein. Further holdings are documented in the Fotoarchiv Weimar.