are terraced for cultivation and in some instances are planted with dwarf pine and scrub oak. It contains some 310 villages and a population of about 150,000. Chinese war-vessels are at liberty to use the anchorage, notwithstanding the lease; and Chinese jurisdiction may continue to be exercised within the walled city of Wei-hai-wei; so far as not inconsistent with military requirements. Wei-hai-wei was made the headquarters of a native Chinese regiment in the pay of Great Britain, and organized and led by British officers; but this regiment was disbanded in 1902. Wei-hai-wei is used by the China squadron as a sanatorium and exercising ground. Its excellent climate attracts many visitors. Wei-hai-wei being a free port no duties of any kind are collected there. The import trade consists of timber, maize, paper, crockery, sugar, tobacco, kerosene oil, &c. Gold has been found in the territory, and silver, tin, lead and iron are said to exist. In each of the years 1903–1909 the expenditure exceeded the revenue (about $70,000 in 1909–1910), deficits being made good by grants from the British parliament.
WEILBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province
of Hesse-Nassau, picturesquely situated on the Lahn, just above
the confluence of the Weil, 50 m. N.E. from Coblenz by the railway
to Giessen. Pop. (1905) 3828. The old town, built on and
around a rocky hill almost encircled by the river, contains a
castle of the 16th century, formerly the residence of the dukes
of Nassau-Weilburg, and later of the grand-dukes of Luxemburg.
It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, the former,
the Stadtkirche, containing the burial vaults of the princes
of Nassau, a gymnasium and an agricultural college.
Its
industries include wool-spinning, mining, tanning and dyeing.
In the neighbourhood are the ruins of the castles of Merenberg
and Freienfels. Weilburg was in the 11th century the property
of the bishops of Worms, from whom it passed to the house of
Nassau. From 1355 to 1816 it was the residence of the princes
of Nassau-Weilburg, a branch of this house.
See C. C. Spielmann, Führer durch Weilburg und Umgebung (Weilburg, 1894); and Geschichte der Stadt und Herrschaft Weilburg (Weilburg, 1896).
WEIMAR, a city of Germany, the capital of the grand-duchy
of Saxe- Weimar-Eisenach. It is situated in a fertile valley on
the Ilm, a small tributary of the Saale, 50 m. S.W. of Leipzig
and 141 m. S.W. of Berlin, on the main line of railway to Bebra
and Frankfort-on-Main, and at the junction of three lines to
Jena, Gera and Berka and Rastenberg. Pop. (1885) 21,365,
(1905) 31,121. Weimar owes its importance not to any industrial
development, which the grand-dukes discourage within the
limits of their Residenz, but to its intimate association with the
classical period of German literature, which earned for it the
title of the “poets’ city” and “the German Athens.”
The golden age of Weimar, covered by the reign of Charles Augustus
(q.v.) from 1775 to 1828, has left an indelible impress on the
character of the town.
In spite of its classical associations and of modern improvements, Weimar still retains much of its medieval character. The walls survive, indeed, only in isolated fragments, but the narrow winding streets of the older part of the town, and the market-place surrounded by houses with high-pitched gables and roofs are very picturesque. Of the churches the Stadlkirche (parish church), of which Herder became pastor in 1776, is a Gothic building dating from about 1400, but much altered in detail under “classical” influences. It contains the tombs of the princes of the house of Saxe-Weimar, including those of the elector John Frederick the Magnanimous and his wife, and of Duke Bernhard of Weimar, a hero of the Thirty Years' War. The altar-piece is a triptych, the centre-piece representing the Crucifixion; beside the cross Luther is represented, with the open Bible in his hand, while the blood from, the pierced side of the Saviour pours on to his head. The picture is regarded as the masterpiece of Lucas Cranach (q.v.), who lived for a time at Weimar, in the Brück’sches Hanson the market-place. In front of the church is a statue of Herder, whose house still serves as the parsonage. The other church, the Jakobs- or Hofkirche (court church) is also ancient; its disused churchyard contains the graves of Lucas Cranach and Musaeus. The most important building in Weimar is the palace, a huge structure forming three sides of a quadrangle, erected (1789–1803) under the superintendence of Goethe, on the site of one burned down in 1774. A remnant of the old palace, with a tower, survives. The interior is very fine, and in one of the wings is a series of rooms dedicated to the poets Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Wieland, with appropriate mural paintings. Of more interest, however, is the house in which Goethe himself lived from 1782 to 1832. It was built by the duke as a surprise present for the poet on his return from his Italian tour, and was regarded at the time as a palace of art and luxury. It has therefore a double interest, as the home of the poet, and as a complete example of a German nobleman’s house at the beginning of the 19th century, the furniture and fittings (in Goethe’s study and bedroom down to the smallest details) remaining as they were when the poet died.[1] The house is built round a quadrangle, in which is the coach-house with Goethe’s coach, and has a beautiful, old-fashioned garden. The interior, apart from the scientific and art collections made by Goethe, is mainly remarkable for the extreme simplicity of its furnishing. The Goethe-Schiller Museum, as it is now called, stands isolated, the adjoining houses having been pulled down to avoid risk of fire.
Of more pathetic interest is the Schillerhaus, in the Schillerstrasse, containing the humble rooms in which Schiller lived and died. The atmosphere of the whole town is, indeed, dominated by the memory of Goethe and Schiller, whose bronze statues, by Rietschel, grouped on one pedestal (unveiled in 1857) stand in front of the theatre. The theatre, built under Goethe’s superintendence in 1825, memorable in the history of art not only for its associations with the golden age of German drama, but as having witnessed the first performances of many of Wagner’s operas and other notable stage pieces, was pulled down and replaced by a new building in 1907. The most beautiful monument of Goethe’s genius in the town is, however, the park, laid out in the informal “English” style, without enclosure of any kind. Of Goethe’s classic “conceits” which it contains, the stone altar round which a serpent climbs to eat the votive bread upon it, inscribed to the “genius hujus loci,” is the most famous. Just outside the borders of the park, beyond the Ilm, is the “garden house,” a simple wooden cottage with a high-pitched roof, in which Goethe used to pass the greater part of the summer. Finally, in the Cemetery is the grand ducal family, vault, in which Goethe and Schiller also lie, side by side.
Wieland, who came to Weimar in 1772 as the duke’s tutor, is also commemorated by a statue (1857), and his house is indicated by a tablet. The town has been embellished by several other statues, including those of Charles Augustus (1875); Lucas Cranach (1886); Marie Seibach (1889); the composer Hummel (1895) and Franz Liszt (1904). Among the other prominent buildings in Weimar are the Grunes Schloss (18th century), containing a library of 200,000 volumes and a valuable collection of portraits, busts and literary and other curiosities; the old ducal dower-house (Wittumspalais); the museum, built in 1863–1868 in the Renaissance style with some old masters and Preller’s famous mural paintings illustrating the Odyssey. In 1896 the Goethe-Schiller Archiv, an imposing building on the wooded height above the Ilm, containing MSS. by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, Immermann, Fritz Reuter, Mörike, Otto Ludwig and others, was opened. Weimar possesses also archaeological, ethnographical and natural science collections and the Liszt Museum (in the gardener’s house in the park, for many years the musician’s home). Among the educational establishments are a gymnasium, and Realschule, the Sophienstift (a large school for girls of the better class, founded by the grand-duchess Sophia), the grand-ducal school of art, geographical institutes, a technical school, commercial school, music school, teachers' seminaries, and deaf and dumb and blind asylums. An English church was opened in 1899. There are a few industries, printing, tanning and cloth weaving.
Various points in the environs of Weimar are also interesting from their associations. A broad avenue of chestnuts, about 2 m. in length, leads southwards from the town to the grand-ducal château- ↑ To be strictly accurate, they thus remained until the death of Goethe’s last descendant in 1884. The house, which had been left to the grand-duke for the nation, was then found to be so structurally rotten that the interior had to be largely reconstructed. Everything was, however, replaced in the exact position it had previously occupied.
