London, January 2019. For off-the-beaten track treasures, including some of Europe's most stunning cultural attractions and landscapes, come and see the German regions of Saxony and Thuringia at IMM and sit-UP 2019. Our “Best of Cultural Heart of Germany” includes splendid openings as well as all-time favourites, sprinkled with a generous dose of Bauhaus centenary highlights:

Weimar's new modernist quarter

In April, all eyes are on Weimar when Thuringia kicks off its Bauhaus centenary celebrations with two major museum (re)-openings on one weekend (6/7 April): The new Bauhaus Museum Weimar as a hub for Weimar's emerging “Modernist Quarter” will house 13,000 objects of the world's oldest Bauhaus collection. Also part of the town's “Modernist Quarter”, Weimar's Neues Museum re-opens with a new permanent exhibition on “Van de Velde, Nietzsche and Modernism around 1900”.

Dresden's splendid openings

Over in Saxony, Dresden State Art Collections' “Visionary Spaces. Kandinsky, Mondrian, Lissitzky and the Abstract-Constructivist Avant-Garde in Dresden 1919 – 1932” (2 March to 2 June) exhibition also takes its cue from the Bauhaus centenary, shedding light on Dresden's contribution to the advent of the modern age. Later in the year, Dresden State Art Collections, one of the most important art collections worldwide with 15 museums, will celebrate the opening of the magnificent reconstructed state apartments in the city's Royal Palace (Sep 2019), and in December 2019, the Old Masters Picture Gallery will re-open with a new permanent exhibition including "old" favourites and world-famous masterpieces including Raphael's “Sistine Madonna”.

Musical favourites

The Bauhaus centenary also influences the 2019 programme of both the Thuringian Bach Weeks (12 April to 5 May) and Dresden Music Festival (16 May to 10 June): While the former is titled “Bach, the engineer”, highlighting the composer as a master of functionality who could be seen to foreshadow the ideals of the Bauhaus in a musical sense, the latter commemorates the Bauhaus centenary under the headline “Visions”, featuring visionary precursors of music as well as works inspired by the Bauhaus movement.

Note to the Editor

The Cultural Heart of Germany is a tourism initiative of Saxony Tourism, www.visitsaxony.com, and Thuringia Tourism, www.visit-thuringia.com. The two neighbouring states feature a unique cultural heritage and rich musical tradition that the Cultural Heart of Germany promotes in the UK.

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