If that don’t beat all! We used to say that a lot. But these days, with so many extreme things surrounding us, I’m not sure how useful the phrase still is.

Except . . . for last Friday. I went to a dentist in Weimar, Germany, my home base between my Smithsonian Journeys’ summer tours. It was my first visit to this dentist and I expected to find her in a small office tucked into one of the 18th- and 19th-century buildings that define Weimar. Instead, to my surprise, her office occupied a full floor of a modern glass building, at the edge of the Old City.

But Weimar’s past was not forgotten. I walked into the reception room and found this:

Filled with chic furniture, the waiting room was accented by a “concept” wall-hanging. It resembled a spread of lush ground cover such as would grow near the Ilm River that runs through the vast adjacent park known as “Goethe Park.”

Goethe was indeed the operative word in this dental office. In the corner of the reception room stood a fine bust of author and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)—Weimar’s Number 1 Superstar. A smaller bust of Goethe graced a hallway connecting the treatment rooms, flanked by two white pedestals on which stood a violin and dictionary printed in Old German script (fraktur).

Each of the treatment rooms had a thick, frosted glass door etched with the dentist’s logo (MARISA). And below that was etched the name of a figure from Weimar’s rich past: the Liszt room (pianist Franz Liszt), the Anna Amalia room (18th-century duchess and Enlightenment figure who lured Goethe to the Weimar court), and, of course, the Goethe & Schiller room. Another door bore the name Bauhaus, evoking the revolutionary architectural style born early in the 20th century in Weimar. The ideas of these bold architects spread throughout Europe and across the Atlantic, taking seed particularly in Chicago. 

If that don’t beat all! That’s all I could think of to say. 

I suppose anyone could decorate a professional office with elements of Weimar Classicism. But only here could they reflect a history still visible along the cobblestoned streets right outside of the windows.  

One of my “mantras” regarding American education these days has to do with the grave lack of students’ historical understanding. Part of the problem stems from the mind-deadening pedagogical materials given to students under the pretense of teaching them history. Another part arises because of a slew of uninspiring teachers (even in my day, history was sometimes a throw-away subject handed to football coaches or the Drivers’ Ed teacher).

But there is one more reason. It is hard for American kids to “see” history.

There are exceptions of course. A child growing up in Williamsburg or in corridors of the  architecturally rich East Coast will be surrounded by vivid expressions of history. But most of those kids live a life spent in cars and buildings, not walking daily alongside regal monuments or historical architecture. 

Forget the big items. Take something far smaller: street names. Yesterday I took a bus to the edge of Weimar. The streets we passed bore the names of Henry-van-de-Velde (Bauhaus pioneer), Paul Klee and Lionel Feininger (20th-century artists), Rainer Marie Rilke (poet), Ludwig Feuerbach (philosopher), and Christoph Wieland (Enlightenment author), all within a four-minute stretch of road. 

Similarly, walking to the church we attend here, we pass streets named for Franz Liszt, Paul Schneider (Protestant pastor murdered in Buchenwald), Richard Wagner (German opera composer), as well as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And these are just two routes. No matter what direction I choose, an intense patchwork of cultural history lies before my eyes. 

My childhood was spent on street called Cedarhurst Avenue in Roanoke, Virginia. It connected to Grandview Avenue and Richland Avenue with Broad Street running alongside. Not much history there. Of course there were streets in Roanoke named for famous people but few of those figures were transformative in national or world culture. We simply didn’t have that kind of history to reflect.

But they do here. Everywhere you turn. And a young person cannot walk by it every day without absorbing at least some of it. The teenagers lounging around the pedestal of the famous Goethe and Schiller monument in front of the German National Theater may not be paying a lick of attention to history. But they are absorbing it, even as they sit hunched over cell phones or eating ice cream cones.

And if nothing else, this tradition looms over them when they go to the dentist! It breathes on them. It doesn’t let them loose, despite the casualness with which they seem to approach their modern adolescent lives. They will grow more serious. I’ve been connected with Weimar long enough to watch a variety of children grow into serious adults who care about their history and traditions. 

I only wish I could transfer this omnipresent aspect of European life to my own country. If only our teens trudged past Renaissance buildings, sat in squares devoted to national poets, or stood beneath street signs saying Kierkegaard and Heine, I am convinced these quiet influences would help them to value their heritage.  

At least, that’s my how it seems from my corner of life.