Duchess Anna Amalia Library, Research library in Weimar, Germany
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library occupies the Green Castle, built between 1562 and 1569 by Nikolaus Gromann and Erhard van Mehren, with a pale cream and yellow facade, steep slate roofs, a rounded tower with a conical roof, and a lower annex with a round-arched doorway. Inside, the oval Rococo hall rises over three storeys, lined with white-painted wooden bookcases and narrow galleries with dark metal railings.
Duke Wilhelm Ernst founded the library in 1691 by opening his 1,400 books to the public at the Fürstenplatz. In 1766 the collection moved into the Green Castle, built between 1562 and 1569 by Nikolaus Gromann and Erhard van Mehren. Goethe directed the library from 1797 until his death in 1832, doubling its holdings to 80,000 volumes. A fire on 2 September 2004 destroyed 50,000 volumes, and restoration of salvaged books continued until 2015.
The library is named after Duchess Anna Amalia, who moved the court book collection into the Green Castle in 1766 and hired Christoph Martin Wieland as tutor to her son Carl August; Wieland's Shakespeare volumes formed the core of the library's Shakespeare collection. In the Rococo hall, portrait busts and painted portraits of figures such as Grand Duke Carl August are on display.
The Rococo hall is reached via a separate entrance on Platz der Demokratie; the underground book vaults lie beneath the square between the Music University and the Red and Yellow Castle. The 2005 extension connects the historic Green Castle with the rebuilt Red and Yellow Castle, so allow time to move between the two. The hall's upper galleries are reached by stairs.
The 2004 fire started in the roof truss from a corroded aluminium-copper clamp connection that smouldered behind a wall panel before the alarms sounded. Around 6,000 works were carried out by hand, among them the 1534 Luther Bible and papers of Alexander von Humboldt; 35 oil paintings and Schiller's death mask were lost or damaged.
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