Weimar by Katja Hoyer review – the town that changed Germany

It was the birthplace of the liberal tradition, but also the incubator for Nazism – what can this historic city tell us about democracy? ‘Weimar is Germany in a nutshell,” 1990s president Roman Herzog once quipped: “a town in which not only culture and thought were at home but also philistinism and barbarism.” The small city (population 65,000) sits at the heart of the nation and acts as a shrine to its sons Goethe, Schiller and Nietzsche. In 1919 the country’s first democratic constitution w...

By Alex Faludy