A Brief History of Weimaraners.

Today Weimar is an industrial town in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
in the district of Erfurt on the River lIm.
This is not a very romantic sounding setting for the breed of dog,
the Weimaraner, which was named after the area. However, if we go back much further in time,
to the sixteenth century, we find that in 1547 Weimar became the capital of Saxe-Weimar,
and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was an important cultural centre of a
small principality ruled over by the Grand Duke Karl August (1757-1828). In 1815
it became the capital of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and later was the
capital of Thuringia. It still has a grandducal palace as well as other palaces and a
fine eighteenth-century church in which are buried several famous German painters and poets
including Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), painter and engraver whose best work, Christ on the Cross,
is the altarpiece at Weimar. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Weimar became
one of the great literary centres of Europe and is famous for its musical associations.
Franz Liszt worked in its state theatre from 1849 to 1861. From 1708 to 1717 Johann
Sebastian Bach was court organist and chamber musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar
and it is said that in 1716 he was called upon to accompany his master on a visit to Duke
Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels and compose a cantata to be pefformed after the two noblemen
had spent a day hunting. Unfortunately no mention was made of the dogs they may have used!
However, its title was 'My whole delight is the merry chase' (Cantata No.208) and includes
the well-known air 'Sheep may safely graze' in which the words were chosen to complement
the two listening princely rulers. Goethe and Schiller are two names synonymous with Weimar.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) the German poet and dramatist and Johann Christoph
Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) the poet. Other notable intellectuals at that time
in Weimar were Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), German critic and poet who was
court preacher, and Christopher Martin Wieland (1733-1813), poet and novelist.
After the First World War (1914-18), Weimar became the seat of the new German republic.
Weimar gave its name to the Weimar Republic because the German constitution
(established in 1919 after the defeat of Germany) was signed and drawn up there.
This constitution, drafted by Hugo Preuss, was accepted on 31 July 1919. It established
a federal system with a Reichsrat (house of states) and a Reichstag (directly elected house).
This was a noble but ill-fated German effort at parliamentary democracy and the Weimar
Republic has gone down in history as the monumental failure of the one democratic state
that the Germans ever had up to the time of Hitler. On 31 July 1932 the Nazis polled
37 per cent of the votes cast, the strongest single party in the new Reichstag, and
the Communists emerged second. Thus the majority of the German people voted for one or
the other form of dictatorship. In 1933 the Republic ended and the Third Reich began
with Hitler's assumption of power as Chancellor. The 'Weimar period' stands out as an
era of intellectual ferment; of rich diversity in motivation and idiom, and this ferment
affected all branches of the arts. This turmoil, the burning of the Reichstag, and then
the Second World War no doubt all played a part in the destruction or loss of so many
early Weimaraner breed records and, indeed, the breed itself. For such a noble breed to be
unwittingly associated with such ignominy seems unfair, but then people's memories are
short and today the breed can stand proudly on its own four feet and hold its aristocratic
head high in the world.