Reuterhaus Eisenach

The Reuter-Wagner-Museum stands in Eisenach’s Helltal valley beneath the Wartburg. The villa was built in 1866–68 for the writer Fritz Reuter by the architect Ludwig Bohnstedt. Reuter’s friend Ferdinand Jühlke, a royal garden director, designed the terraced garden that once supplied fruit and vegetables. After Reuter’s death his widow Luise left the house to the Schiller Foundation, which sold it to the city for use as a museum. The building now holds the poet’s original rooms and the Richard Wagner collection. The museum is worth the journey for its two main treasures. Fritz Reuter’s Beletage still displays his furniture, including the salon used today for concerts and civil weddings. Nikolaus Oesterlein’s Wagner collection, bought by Eisenach in 1895, numbers more than twenty thousand items. Among them are Wagner’s handwritten scores, over five thousand books, and a 1853 arrest warrant calling him a ‘dangerous individual’. It is the largest Wagner archive outside Bayreuth. Visitors find the villa’s furnished rooms on the upper floor and the Wagner library in adjoining galleries. The garden terraces, though reduced, still frame the house on three sides. Regular events range from readings to chamber concerts in the salon. Outside, the steep path down from the Wartburg trail leads directly to the museum door.