J.W. v. Goethe found the winter unbearable. The "most horrible months" forced him into the "attic cave" of his writing room, while the magnificent rooms of his house had to remain unheated. He did not even enter the renowned "Junozimmer" one single time over a period of many weeks. Goethe needed to economize: firewood was expensive since Germany experienced its first energy crisis around 1800. For this reason, he was interested not only in modern economical stoves from Berlin; he even designed stoves for rooms himself, for which he was able to ignite the interest of the famous architect Friedrich Gilly.



But how did the stoves at that time look and how were they heated? This question is examined based on the example of historical "parlor stoves" in Weimar. The appended catalog provides a detailed list of stoves in Weimar for the first time.