Nazi Era and Buchenwald (World War II)
The regime wanted Weimar for what its name meant, and it built a concentration camp on the hill above the town. Both facts belong to the same twelve years.
A useful name
National Socialism did not come to Weimar despite its cultural standing but because of it. A regime with an invented pedigree needed Goethe and Schiller, and the town supplied them ready-made. Administration followed the symbolism: the Gauforum was laid out to gather the central offices of a party Gau in one place, with a hall for twenty thousand people standing and a wing into which Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel's Reichsstatthalteramt was to move — and prisoners from Buchenwald were put to work on the building.
Before the gates of the town, 1937–1945
From July 1937 the SS ran a concentration camp on the Ettersberg, the wooded ridge above the town where Weimar had always walked. In the seven years and nine months that followed, 277,800 people from more than fifty countries were deported there and to its satellite camps, and 56,000 of them died.[1] The memorial's own phrase for where it stood is "vor den Toren der Stadt Weimar" — before the gates of the town.
The camp and the town were one economy
The connection was not proximity but payroll. Prisoners were transported down the hill to work in armaments production, notably at the Gustloff plant north of the city, which is why the American raid of 9 February 1945 killed hundreds of camp prisoners and destroyed the Nationaltheater on the same afternoon — by then the theatre too was a factory.
April 1945
The camp was liberated on 11 April 1945, in its last hours by the prisoners themselves. Within days the Americans brought Weimar's residents up the hill and walked them through it. That confrontation is the hinge of everything that came afterwards in this town, and the Buchenwald Memorial on the site is its direct descendant.
Questions visitors ask
- What was Buchenwald?
- A concentration camp the SS ran from July 1937 on the Ettersberg, the wooded ridge above Weimar. Over the next seven years and nine months, 277,800 people from more than fifty countries were deported there and to its satellite camps, and 56,000 of them died.[1]
- Why did the Nazi regime target Weimar?
- Not despite its cultural standing but because of it: a regime with an invented pedigree needed Goethe and Schiller, and the town supplied them ready-made. The Gauforum was built to gather the party's Thuringian administration in one place, using prisoners from Buchenwald as labour.
- What was the connection between the camp and the town?
- Payroll, not just proximity: prisoners were transported down the hill to work in armaments production, notably at the Gustloff plant. That is why the American air raid of 9 February 1945 killed hundreds of camp prisoners and destroyed the Nationaltheater — by then a factory — on the same afternoon.
- When was Buchenwald liberated?
- On 11 April 1945, in its last hours by the prisoners themselves. Within days the Americans brought Weimar's residents up the hill and walked them through the camp.
Sources
- Zahlen und Fakten — Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, retrieved 29 August 2026
What happened
- 1937-05-01The Gauforum is begun
The regime's building programme in the middle of the town, running in parallel with the camp on the Ettersberg.
- 1937-07-15 – 1945-04-11Buchenwald concentration camp is built
The central fact of Weimar's years under National Socialism, on the hill directly above the town.
- 1941-05-24 – 1943-01-02The satellite camp at Kranichfeld
The camp system reached into the towns around Weimar, not only the hill above it.
- 1944-08-18Ernst Thälmann is murdered in the crematorium
One murder among tens of thousands, singled out afterwards for reasons that belong to the period after it.
- 1945The children's block in Barrack 66
The rescue of children inside the camp, in its last and most overcrowded winter.
- 1945-02-09The air raid of 9 February 1945
The day the war reached the town itself, at the plant where camp prisoners were made to work.
- 1945-04-11The liberation of Buchenwald
The end of the camp, and the end of the Nazi period in the district round Weimar.
People of the period
Historical figures
1900–1979 • writer • communist • prisoner
He came to Buchenwald as a political prisoner in November 1937, months after the camp was built.
1928–2016 • writer • witness • Nobel laureate
Brought to Buchenwald at the end of January 1945 on an evacuation transport from Auschwitz.
1846–1935 • archivist • editor • publisher
She received Hitler at the archive several times between 1932 and 1934 and died in 1935 — the archive's part in the Nietzsche cult of National Socialism begins with her.
1918–2005 • communist • block elder • Righteous Among the Nations
Committed to the camp in 1939 as a member of the communist youth league, and there until the liberation.
1883–1942 • librettist • lyricist • prisoner
Arrested within weeks of the Anschluss and moved to Buchenwald in September 1938.
1894–1946 • Gauleiter • Reichsstatthalter • war criminal
The party's chief in Thuringia through the whole period, and from 1942 the organiser of forced labour across the Reich.
1895–1959 • Social Democrat • lawyer • resistance organiser • politician
Convicted of preparing high treason in 1938 and moved from prison to Buchenwald in 1943.
1888–1959 • pianist • composer • cabaret artist
Arrested in Vienna in April 1938 as a Jew, and in Buchenwald from that August until February 1939.
1923–2011 • writer • resistance member • screenwriter
Deported here at the end of January 1944 as a "political Spaniard" and held until the liberation.
1877–1945 • sociologist • scholar
Deported from a French prison in the last transports of August 1944.
1891–1945 • veterinary surgeon • mayor • resistance member
A French mayor removed from office for his colour in 1940 and murdered near Weimar in 1945 — the period seen from the other end.
1904–1992 • communist • resistance organiser • historian
Arrested in Prague in 1939 and held at Buchenwald until the liberation.
Places of the period
Historic sites
Jorge-Semprún-Platz 2, 99423 Weimar
Its subject is the forced labour that ran through Weimar in those years, not only on the hill but in the town's own plants.
Am Oberschloss 1 a, 99448 Kranichfeld
The castle belongs to the period through the satellite camp on its own grounds, not through anything that happened in Weimar.
Park an der Ilm, 99423 Weimar
Converted into an air-raid shelter during the Second World War.
Its dead are the war's, buried in the same months in which the Soviet occupation reopened the camp on the Ettersberg.
Stages and venues
Am Kirschberg 4, 99423 Weimar
The tram depot inside the building holds Rebecca Horn's installation about the camp, built around a cart taken from it.
Goetheplatz 11, 99423 Weimar
From 1937 to 1945 the house held offices of the Reichsstatthalterei and other administrations.
On stage today
On stage
Oper
The group the piece starts from was a resistance group of the Nazi years — the era this period covers.
Kurt Tallert liest
The book Tallert reads from traces his family's persecution under National Socialism and its connections to the camp.
Inszenierung
The crimes it investigates are the National Socialist eugenics programme as it ran in Thuringia.