From Heaven, through the World, to Hell. The first of this weekend's programmes celebrating the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born 250 years ago today. John Tusa goes in search of Goethe the man and the artist and uncovers the chequered history of Weimar, where Goethe lived and worked. Leading historians join Tusa in his search for the spirit which made Weimar a cultural magnet for Goethe and his contemporaries. But Weimar's history does not end with Goethe. Music flourished here in the later
19th century under Liszt, Wagner and Strauss before Weimar descended into a Faustian abyss under German nationalism in the earlier part of the present century. Tusa visits the Buchenwald concentration camp outside the town before returning to Weimar to take his leave of Goethe at the mausoleum where the poet and his friend Schiller lie side by side. Producer Martin Cotton.
Executive producer Wendy Thompson