Schiller Museum
About This Site
The plain concrete-and-glass building beside Schiller's house is, in the foundation's own words, the only new-built literature museum the GDR produced — and it came late, between 1984 and 1988, four years before the state that commissioned it ceased to exist.
Built for Schiller, no longer about him, 1999
It was raised to hold an exhibition on Schiller's life and work, set directly against the house where he lived and died so that the two could be walked as one visit. That is not what it does now. Since 1999 the foundation has used it for temporary exhibitions, and the permanent Schiller display has moved on — so a visitor arriving at the Schiller Museum expecting Schiller has, strictly speaking, come to the wrong door. His rooms are next door.
What is in it now, 2025–2027
The current show is an interactive Faust exhibition, running from 1 May 2025 until 1 November 2027 — a long run by any standard, and worth checking against the dates if you are reading this later. Think of the building as the room where the foundation puts whatever it is currently thinking about, rather than as a memorial. Knowing that in advance is the difference between a good hour and a puzzled one.
A GDR building in a classical quarter, 1980s
Postmodern concrete with a partly glazed facade, dropped beside an eighteenth-century residence, is not an accident of taste: it is a state making a claim about which literature it descended from, in the last decade it had. That makes the museum a document of the 1980s as much as of Schiller, and it belongs to the story of the GDR as much as to Weimar Classicism.
Questions visitors ask
- Is this where Schiller's things are displayed?
- Not any more. It was built to hold an exhibition on Schiller's life and work, but since 1999 the foundation has used it for temporary exhibitions and the permanent Schiller display has moved on. His actual rooms are next door, in Schiller's house.
- What's showing now?
- An interactive Faust exhibition, running from 1 May 2025 until 1 November 2027.
- Why does a GDR building sit next to an 18th-century house?
- Built 1984–1988, it is the only new-built literature museum the GDR produced — a state, in the last decade it had, making a claim about which literature it descended from. It's as much a document of the 1980s as of Schiller.
- Can I visit, and what does it cost?
- Tuesday to Sunday: 09:30–16:00 in winter, 10:00–18:00 in summer. €8 adults, €6 reduced, €3 for pupils, free under 16.
Connected Historical Figures
writer • poet • historian
Raised for an exhibition about his life and work; that display has since moved on.
Visit Information
€8 adults; €6 reduced; €3 pupils; free under 16
Tue–Sun; 09:30–16:00 in winter, 10:00–18:00 in summer
Schillerstraße 12, 99423 Weimar
50.9791, 11.3278
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
A museum of the period rather than a building from it.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.
Postmodern concrete and glass, 1984–1988 — the only new-built literature museum of the GDR, finished four years before the state ended.
For forty-five years Weimar was a provincial town that the state could not afford to neglect, because the classics it kept were the pedigree East Germany wanted for itself.