Apart from Berlin and a short stop in Magdeburg whole eastern Germany was still a blank map for me and I have always been curious to learn more about our “new” provinces with their famous historic cities and beautiful nature regions. Temperatures were still hovering around the freezing point, so city it was!
I only knew Leipzig as an important historical city, being home to many famous musicians like Bach and Wagner and more recently being one of the main initiators of the massive peaceful protests in East Germany ultimately leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I was however surprised to see that since the German reunification Leipzig has fared much better than other East German cities and turned into a very modern, vibrant and livable place.
Leipzig has a nice historic city center, most of which renovated, mixed up with a few modern touches. Unusual for Germany, the city seems to have a strong preference for malls. And not only the usual anonymous modern collections of chain stores, but also several beautiful historic covered arcades, dating back to Leipzig’s history as important trading post.
The most striking example of historic-modern fusion for me was the Paulinum, an university building constructed on the spot of an old church.
Not only the outside is a fusion of church and university, also the interior manages to integrate the two different worlds
Moving on to more traditional sights, Leipzig can show off two town halls, the old one “Altes Rathaus” (cf. post title) and the, only 100years old, new one “Neues Rathaus”.
The city center has two main churches both worth a look inside, in particular the gorgeous white neoclassical interior of Nikolaikirche.
Even if you can’t be tempted by religious architecture you should drop by for their historic significance.
It is at Nikolai church where the Monday prayers started which later expanded to the famous Monday demonstrations, accumulating in 100’000s of participants and the peaceful fall of the Wall. The church hosts a small exhibition on this special part of German history.
Of very different fame is the Thomas church. Host to the Thomanerchor, a boys choir founded in 1212, it is here that J.S Bach spent the main part of his career.
At the church itself you can only witness his grave and a statue, but just opposite is the Bach museum, which gives an interesting and interactive walkthrough of his life.
One more sight I can strongly recommend is the free museum Zeitgeschichtliches Forum, which has a good exhibition on the history of East Germany during the division. During our visit they also had an excellent temporary exhibition on Germany’s history of the Gastarbeiter, guest workers from Italy, Turkey, Spain etc. who arrived in the 70’s in the 100’000s, with interesting parallels to the current refugee discussions.
Your Christ a Jew
Your car a Japanese
Your pizza Italian
Your democracy Greek
Your coffee Brazilian
Your holiday Turkish
Your numbers Arabic
Your alphabet Latin
and your neighbor only a Foreigner?
]]>