Germany Guide
Saxony
The Nikolaikirche
The touchstone of modern history in Leipzig is the Nikolaikirche on Nikolaistrasse, whose sober early Gothic belies a theatrical interior, candy-coloured Rococo, barely tempered by emergent Neoclassicism, with shaggy palm leaves in place of Corinthian capitals. Its place in national history is as the wellspring of the Wende. Monday services for peace held since 1982 (still going strong at 5pm) assumed new significance in 1989 as refugees fled the GDR states. Party stooges ordered to disrupt services paused instead to listen to sermons, then joined the protests. Things came to a head after a brutal suppression of demonstrations on October 7. A two-thousand-strong congregation filed out into the arms of ten thousand sympathizers holding candles – the police were powerless, the momentum unstoppable. A month later, the Berlin Wall fell; as one Stasi official recalled later "We had been prepared for anything, but not prayers and candles." On the church's north side, within the Alte Nikolaischule, a former church school whose alumni include eighteenth-century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and Wagner, is the Antikenmuseum (Tues– Thurs, Sat & Sun noon–5pm; €2) with a collection of first-rate antiquities. Highlights are a sculpted bronze mirror circa 450 BC and its collection of Athenian vases.