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Weimar has as many as three entries in UNESCO's World Heritage List: Classical Weimar fronting 16 buildings and architectural ensembles, the 3 Bauhaus buildings and the Memory of the World, containing handwritten manuscripts by Goethe.

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Award and commitment

The Bauhaus

In December of 1996 the Bauhaus Sites in Weimar and Dessau were included as part of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO on the grounds that "the Bauhaus buildings in Weimar and Dessau represent the so calles "Bauhaus School" of architecture, which introduced revolutionary ideas of archtitecture, building and town planning between 1919 and 1933. The buildings by various Bauhaus professors - like Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Wassily Kandinsky - established the Bauhaus Style, which decisively shaped the architecture of the 20th century. The Bauhaus in Weimar is represented by the former Grand Duke's Saxon School of Fine Arts, the Grand Duke's Saxon School of Arts and Crafts and the "Haus am Horn".

Classical Weimar

The World Heritage Committee designated the ensemble of buildings from the "Classical Weimar" period as being one of UNESCO's Wolrd Heritage Sites at its 24th session in Kyoto, Japan in 1998. The Weimar Classic age coincided with the peak of German national literature (circa 1800). The Weimar Classic period ran from 1775-1832, which was when Goethe lived and worked in this small town. Apart from Johann Wolfgang Goethe also Friedrich Schiller, Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Gottfried Herder contributed to the Weimar Classic period. It could only developed in an intellectual cultural atmosphere created by Duchess Anna Amalia and further encouraged by Duke Carl August. Important European ideas of literary criticism, art theory, aesthetics and teaching evolved in Weimar in that time.

Memory of the World

In 2001, UNESCO featured all of the handwritten work left by Goethe, which is kept in the Goethe and Schiller Archive, into its programme for preserving the world’s documentary heritage »Memory of the World«.

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