FRANZ LISZT · EIN EUROPÄER IN WEIMAR - Klassik Stiftung Weimar

Liszt’s Hungarian passport, 1874
Franz Liszt, statuette by Károly Dosnyay, 1840
And because I showed myself as I was: an enthusiastic
child, a firm believer, in a word everything one
is when one is 18 […], because I did not know how
to play comedy, I gained the reputation – of being
an actor.
Liszt, Reisebriefe eines Baccalaureus der Tonkunst
(Travelogues by a Baccalaureate of Musical Art), 1837
The first part of the exhibition in the Schiller Museum follows
the stages of Liszt’s life from the multicultural climate of the
Habsburg monarchy via Paris, Switzerland, Italy and the virtuoso
tours to Weimar, where most of his major compositions were
written over a period of little more than ten years. These stages are
presented in the form of a pilgrimage with Weimar as the destination
and climax. The exhibition documents not only Liszt’s work
and compositions, but also his significance in Europe’s history of
music and thought.
As a pianist, Liszt’s concert tours in the late 1830s and early
1840s took him all over Europe – from Paris to Constantinople,
from Milan to St. Petersburg. He came to Weimar quite early, where
he was appointed the court’s music director extraor dinaire in 1842.
In Berlin, Liszt triggered an unparalleled “Lisztomania”, the effects