Germany Guide
Saxony
Leipzig
"Leipzig is the place for me! Tis quite a little Paris; people there acquire a certain easy finish'd air." So mused Goethe in his epic Faust. The second city of Saxony is no French grande dame – indeed, it's not much of a looker despite efforts to patch up the damage of war. But nor is it as languid. After decades stuck in a socialist rut, LEIPZIG is back in the groove. The architectural prizes that remain have been scrubbed up, and glass-and-steel offices are appearing at lightning pace.
No city in the former East Germany exudes such unbridled ambition, but then none has so firm a bedrock for its self-confidence. In autumn 1989, tens of thousands of Leipzigers took to the streets in the first peaceful protest against the communist regime. Their candles ignited the peaceful revolution that drew back the Iron Curtain and achieved what two decades of Ostpolitik wrangling had failed to deliver. Not bad for a city of just half-a-million people. It's seductive to believe that this was inspired by the humanist call-to-arms Ode To Joy that Schiller had penned here two centuries earlier. In fact, the demonstrations were simply another expression of Leipzig's get-up-and-go. Granted market privileges in 1165, it emerged as a rampantly commercial city, a dynamic free-thinking place that blossomed as a cultural centre to attract names such as Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner and, of course, Goethe as a law student. Even the GDR rulers cultivated the trade fairs, allowing the city to maintain its dialogue with the West when other cities were isolated. In recent decades the same energy has found an outlet through a contemporary arts scene that can hold its own against those in the larger metropolises, and a nightlife that is refined and riotous by turns.
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