In 1999, the formerly East German. town of Weimar held the title 'European City of Culture, all honour awarded by the European Union. Given the town's rich cultural capital - founded oil its many authentic sites and boosted by frequently recurring anniversaries - the tenth anniversary of the demise of the GDR (and the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation) inevitably struggled for attention during the 'Kulturstadtjahr': institutions in other towns took responsibility for memorializing the GDR past, while ill Weimar itself the GDR tended to be reduced to its artistic products and cultural policies. This essay is concerned with the processes of rhetorical and symbolic figuration at work in recent constructions of 'Weimar', focusing in particular on elisions and conflations in time and place. For all Weimar's exceptionality (as a place that barely qualifies as 'eastern), these models for understanding time and space can be applied to other places in the new Bundeslander.
