Anna Amalia's restored Baroque jewelAP

WHEN the great and the good eat dinner in Weimar's Baroque Stadtschloss on August 28th, they will be celebrating rather more than just Goethe's birthday. The added spice is some €90m ($134m) of fresh finance, split 50/50 between the state government of Thuringia and the federal government, to step up awareness of Weimar's place in German culture and history.

This small city of 65,000 inhabitants is not only the cradle of German classicism but also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement and of the ill-fated Weimar Republic in 1919, as well as the site of the Nazi party's first congress after its foundation. A mere 10km (six miles) away is Buchenwald, one of Hitler's worst concentration camps. “All the threads of our history run through this place,” says Stefan Wolf, the mayor, a West Berliner who came to Weimar almost by accident in 2001. A “master plan” unveiled last month includes a new Bauhaus museum, which will consume nearly a third of the new money. It will also turn the somewhat neglected Stadtschloss into a new gateway for visitors.

There is a lot in Weimar to be ashamed of as well as to be proud about. For example, in 1925 Weimar's conservatives ejected the Bauhaus group led by Walter Gropius, who moved to Dessau. And the Marstall (cavalry stable) beside the Stadtschloss was used by the Gestapo, and later by the early East German regime, to hold and interrogate prisoners. The temporary buildings there were flattened in 1997 and then displayed as a work of art called “crushed history”. “Our aim is to heighten awareness rather than let you relax,” says Hellmut Seemann, president of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, which is handling the master plan. But why is it happening now, nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down and the customary pall of lignite-induced smog lifted from Weimar?

First, there was a growing awareness that not enough had been done to draw the threads of Weimar's history together. Second, the instant help offered after a catastrophic fire in 2004 badly damaged the Anna Amalia library, a Baroque jewel of the city, showed what could be done. And third, a local member of the federal parliament pulled some strings in Berlin and the money was suddenly available.

The historical threads may not be obvious, but here are some. After the chaos of the French Revolution, German classicism—above all, the plays of Goethe and Schiller—put man back at the centre of his universe and offered a new enlightened approach to living. So did the Bauhaus after the trauma of the first world war. Explaining what came later, the years of the Weimar Republic and then of the Nazis, is harder, but it cannot be dismissed as “just an accident”, says Mr Seemann.

Weimar already attracts 3.5m tourists a year. But they tend mostly to focus on only one or two of the city's artistic and historical attributes, not the entire place. Moreover, boosting tourism is not the only goal. Weimar has a lively Bauhaus University offering studies in architecture, a film school and other creative arts. The master plan is as much about encouraging the next anthropocentric wave in Weimar as about showcasing its glorious past.

That makes the debate over where to put the new museum an acute one. Should it be in the central Theaterplatz, to pull in the tourists? Or near the university, to inspire the next generation? Or, as a political statement, in the Gauforum, a daunting square that was once home to the local Nazi administration? A decision should be reached before the end of the year, after which the world's architects will be invited to compete for the project. With luck they will produce something truly 21st century, hopes Mr Seemann.