Weimar: An Experiment in Creativity?

Alles Gute was geschieht wirkt nicht einzeln.Seiner Natur nach setzt es sogleich dasNächste in Bewegung.

—J. W. Goethe, "Über die verschiedenen Zweige der hiesigen Tätigkeit"¹

The duchy of Saxe Weimar-Eisenach was poor in resources and had few significant geographical features facilitating large-scale trade. Friedrich Justin Bertuch (1747–1822), financial advisor to Duke Carl August and businessman, characterized the economic situation of Weimar as not suitable for industry other than for commerce in literary and artistic products.² Yet, two hundred years later, the Sonderforschungsbereich Ereignis Weimar described Weimar as a cumulative synergetic effect deriving from a range of forces.³ With this assessment, its research trajectory also unpacked and problematized the older notion of Weimar as a static cultural center, a Musenhof, extending an implied dialogue with Bertuch. As the many detailed analyses in the Ereignis Weimar context show, contributors to this synergistic network around 1800 included not only the men and women at the Weimar court, but civil servants, artists, and writers, and also the middle-class population that served as producers and consumers of cultural products.

In any case, it is clear that Saxe Weimar-Eisenach implemented a cultural program around 1800 allowing it to become a discursive and empirical center of culture. In the four-part analysis that follows, the first section focuses on structural innovations implemented by the court that set the experiment in motion and led to the empirical-material changes. In the process, I illuminate the court's hiring of innovators, the creation of the Freye Zeichenschule, and the unconventional establishment of Bertuch's publishing house and the Landes-Industrie-Comptoir. In the second section, I will elaborate on creativity from Goethe's perspective and explore the discursive construction of the Weimar creative experiment by focusing on Goethe's perceptive assessment of the conceptual conditions in Weimar responsible for sparking the imagination (Einbildungskraft). I closely examine Goethe's understanding of the elements of creativity and the way they foster innovation, exploring his expression of these ideas in several nonfictional texts: the hopeful "Rede bei der Eröffnung der Freitagsgesellschaft" (1791) and "Über die verschiedenen Zweige der hiesigen Tätigkeit" (1795), and the later more pessimistic report on "Museen zu Jena. Übersicht über das Bisherige und Gegenwärtige, nebst Vorschlägen für die nächste Zeit. Michael" (1817).⁴ Following this, I offer several insights from creativity studies, showing how Goethe's rhetorical presentation of Weimar as a creative experiment avant la lettre bears surprising similarities to contemporary discourse about how creativity is fostered, which more sharply focuses Goethe's descriptions of the conditions in Weimar. The final section of this article discusses modes of convergence and nodes of productive encounters. While the term creativity did not yet exist in the eighteenth century, Goethe illuminates important features that foster the vibrant cultural climate that we would currently call the "creativity" of Weimar: dense social networks, the cross-fertilization of ideas and interconnections between the arts and sciences, and groups such as the Freitagsgesellschaft, dedicated to sociable learned exchange.

Structural Innovations

What set the efforts of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach apart from other minor courts with cultural ambitions and from a more conventional Musenhof, is that it sought to become also a material center of culture, in which the cultural achievements would support the economic situation of the region.⁵ To this end, with the aid of the scholars, artists, and writers attracted to the court in Weimar, the duchy not only invested in educational and cultural institutions, collections, and a publishing house, but also in people, primarily those of a certain disposition.

Anna Amalia and Carl August set a process in motion, attracting innovators who created a successful interplay of theoretical and practical initiatives that enhanced Weimar's cultural reputation, which then served to stimulate the relative economic success of the duchy. In Goethe's words, "man blickte nach Persönlichkeiten umher, die in dem aufstrebenden Deutschland so mannigfaches Gute zu fördern berufen sein könnten" (GA 10:839; one looked around for certain personalities who might feel the calling to be able to effect...