Germany Guide
Lower Saxony
Around Holzmarkt
In the late 1800s, Jerome K. Jerome acclaimed Hannover for "handsome streets and tasteful gardens side by side with a sixteenth-century town where old timbered houses overhang the narrow lanes; where through low archways one catches glimpses of galleried courtyards". A faint echo of this is in Kramerstrasse, off the Markt, and Burgstrasse – the most photographed streets in Hannover are a parade of seductively neat half-timbered houses, gloriously swaying fakes all, rebuilt as Hannover residents hankered after the medieval intimacy that 88 air raids wiped off the map in 1943.
The half-timbering on Kramerstrasse frames Leibnizhaus on Holzmarkt, the rebuilt Renaissance mansion of philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whose facade is fresh-from-the-wrapper neat. Leibniz asserted cheerfully that his job as ducal librarian to the Guelphic dukes in the late 1600s left spare hours for his leisure pursuits: inventing differential and integral calculus independently of Newton; honing theories of metaphysics; idly dreaming up the concept of cataloguing as an offshoot of a utopian universal library of thought; advancing theories of linguistics. His sharp mind also elevated his employer, Ernst August, to an elector after he unearthed tenuous links between the dukes and noble Italian stock of Este. During office hours, the university-owned building is open for a look at the polymath's work – letters to contemporaries such as Newton, Huygens and Bernoulli, plus essays and calculations showcased in the foyer.