Classic Foundation Weimar

Classic Foundation Weimar ; (KSW)
legal form	Foundation under public law
founding	January 1, 2003
founder	Free State of Thuringia
Seat	Weimar
precursor	Weimar Classic Foundation, Weimar art collections
purpose	Preservation of historical sites in Weimar
Chair	Ulrike Lorenz
sales	34,800,000 euros (2019)
Employees	384 (2019)
Website	www.klassik-stiftung.de

The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is one of the largest cultural foundations in Germany. She looks after an ensemble of around 27 historic houses, castles, museums and parks in and around Weimar as well as important research institutions with the Duchess Anna Amalia Library and the Goethe and Schiller Archive .

history

The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is the merger of the Weimar Classics Foundation with the Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar emerged on 1 January 2003. It was initially called the Weimar Classic and Art Collections Foundation until it was given its current name in 2006.

Weimar Classic Foundation

The beginnings of today's foundation go back to the establishment of the Goethe National Museum and the Goethe and Schiller Archive in 1885.

After the formation of the State of Thuringia , the Goethe National Museum, along with a number of other buildings in Weimar from the classical period and the Weimar castles, became the property of the state. In the 1920s, other buildings in Weimar were assigned to the Goethe National Museum. Also in 1918 the State Art Collections in Weimar developed from the former royal property.

In 1953 these were combined in the National Research and Memorial Centers for Classical German Literature in Weimar (short: NFG ). The Dornburg castles were added in 1954, the Nietzsche archive in 1956 , Ettersburg Palace in 1961 , the Thuringian State Library in 1968 (now the Duchess Anna Amalia Library ), and later the Park on the Ilm , Tiefurt Palace and Park and Belvedere .

After reunification in 1991, the NFG facilities and collections were transferred to the newly established Weimarer Klassik Foundation .

Weimar art collections

The art collections in Weimar , founded in 1919, were essentially created in the years 1922–1928 from the museums and collections of the abdicated grand ducal house of Saxony-Weimar and Eisenach . Numerous donations, purchases and loans have since supplemented the historical holdings, which means that the collection also ties in with contemporary art developments.

Structure, financing, master plan

The Klassik Stiftung is a non-profit foundation under public law . Its core tasks and the organizational structure are determined by the Thuringian law on the Klassik Stiftung Weimar of 2009. According to this, a board of trustees decides on all fundamental matters of the foundation, unless they are assigned to the presidium by this law. Hellmut Seemann was President of the Foundation from 2001 to July 31, 2019 . Ulrike Lorenz , former director of the Kunsthalle Mannheim , has been the new president of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar since August 1, 2019 . The Board of Trustees consists of nine members, namely one representative each from the ministry responsible for art and finance , one representative each from the highest federal authority responsible for culture and the federal ministry responsible for finance , two representatives from the city of Weimar , one representative from the House of Saxony- Weimar and Eisenach , the chairman of the scientific advisory board and his deputy. In 2018 they were: Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff , Günter Winands , Silvia Neubauer , Hartmut Schubert , Stefan Wolf , Peter D. Krause , Michael-Benedikt von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach , Werner Frick and Samuel Wittwer .

The amount of public grants is regulated by financing agreements. For 2011 they amount to 19.74 million euros. Added to this are around 3.5 million euros in own income as well as further third-party funds for additional projects. In 2014 it was decided that the foundation should receive a further 14 million euros from the federal and state governments for the creation of commented online editions on Goethe's life and work over a period of 25 years. To this end, a research group called the Propylaea was established. The planned online portal should be freely accessible after the first two or three years of work. The Klassik Stiftung employs around 400 people. (As of January 2017)

In 2008 the federal government and the state of Thuringia launched a special investment program for the Klassik Stiftung Weimar with a total volume of around 150 million euros. With these funds, several large projects are to be implemented as part of the Kosmos Weimar master plan : the reconstruction of the book collections of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library destroyed by the fire in 2004 , the renovation of the Goethe and Schiller archive, the restoration of manuscript collections, a central art depot ( ten million euros are estimated) as well as a new Bauhaus museum. In addition, the Weimar City Palace is to be expanded to become the center of the foundation and include a new permanent exhibition on the Weimar cosmos .

UNESCO world heritage

In 1998, UNESCO added the Ensemble Klassisches Weimar to the World Heritage List. This ensemble brings together several Weimar buildings and parks, most of which belong to the Klassik Stiftung.

As an important document of world literature, the entire handwritten legacy of Goethe, which is kept in the Goethe and Schiller Archives, was included in the UNESCO Register of Memory of the World in 2001.