Exhibition Language eruptions

"Weimar is built on language", with this bold statement Marcel Lepper, outgoing director of the Goethe and Schiller Archive, outlines the verbal wealth, but also a claim of the city.

Under the title Language Explosions, the city centre will become a parcours of literary interventions from the beginning of May - on streets and squares, but also surprising places in the poets' houses. Goethe's, Schiller's and Wieland's linguistic creations will take centre stage.

Unusual and provocative

Visitors are not only to be reached in museums and exhibitions: Cubic installations in the urban space invite visitors to approach the famous linguistic artists of the classical period in a completely new way as they pass by - interactively and with Sele walls. The artist Ariane Spanier, who works internationally and was born in Weimar, puts the selected quotations and puns of the linguistic geniuses in an unusual setting. These include word creations of which hardly anyone today knows that they come from Weimar. Christoph Martin Wieland, for example, brought a great deal of creativity to the German language in his translations: Staatsbürger, Weltliteratur, Milchmädchen or Steckenpferd are four well-known examples.

Doors open

The format will be "short, playful and deliberately provocative", announces Marcel Lepper, who developed the programme around the theme of language. Language is to become visible, not only with the books on display - "we show them in the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library". Unusual insights into otherwise inaccessible rooms are offered in Goethe's residence: "We are opening up the ground floor with the utility rooms, allowing glimpses behind the otherwise closed doors". Word projections, expressive graphics and animated films can be seen there. The selected passages include erotically charged texts by the young poet. For the first time, Schiller's residence will be visited from Schillerstraße. One of his most famous poems is staged there in a similar way. The interventions in the two poets' houses that are part of the Language Explosions parcours can also be entered without admission. In addition, the Nietzsche Archive and the Neues Weimar Museum will be included in the parcours.