Weimar was the cultural and intellectual capital of Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the home of poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. This 1822 engraved map by the Weimar Geographic Institute shows provincial boundaries, population centers, and the different nationalities of Siberia. Ethnic Germans from the Baltic region in the service of the tsarist government played prominent roles in the exploration of Siberia in the 18th century and the region remained an object of fascination to many Germans.