German Visa

Music, history, gardens and alternative spaces: just over 150 km from Berlin, the former second city of the GDR is worth a visit. Especially since 2015 is marked by multiple celebrations. Starting with the anniversary of the city, mentioned for the first time in an official document a thousand years ago. Exactly December 20, the day when the festivities will end, with a huge cake covered with a thousand candles, which will be shared on Augustusplatz, in the heart of Leipzig.

Leipzig musical

The Saint-Nicolas church, right in the center, celebrates its 850th anniversary this year. She doesn’t do them, with her baroque style “meringue”, with pale green or white stucco and palm leaves at the top of the Greek columns…

Long before this facelift, it hosted the first representation of the Passion according to Saint John, by Johann Sebastian Bach. He lived in Leipzig from 1727 to his death in 1750: he held the high office of choirmaster, that of the boys of the Church of St. Thomas. This choir, renowned throughout the world, still exists and gives concerts on Friday and Saturday afternoons in the Saint-Thomas church, where the composer’s tomb is located.

The nearby Bach Museum delights music lovers with its interactive multimedia installations, manuscripts and period instruments. Other great figures in music have a strong link with Leipzig. It is the birthplace of Wagner, where he received his musical education.

The house of Robert and Clara Schumann can be visited, the house of Mendelssohn too. From 1835, he was musical director of the famous Gewandhaus concert hall. Kurt Masur was one of his successors: he inaugurated the reconstructed building by conducting a concert in October 1981.

Opposite, the opera house, rebuilt in 1960, also offers a fine program. Finally, the Grassi museum has several sections, one of which is devoted to musical instruments. Thanks to a 3D acoustic system, it is possible to listen to very old models. We can even play on copies in the lab.

Post-industrial Leipzig

The year 2015 also marks the 500th anniversary of printing and publishing in Leipzig. Important activities for the city, where an annual book fair is still held and where small publishers and graphic design companies are flourishing.

The creation also brings a new breath to the old industrial sector, moribund after 1989, by another phenomenon: the abandoned factories are invested by the artists, in particular in the district become trendy of Plagwitz, in the west of the center.

The most emblematic example is the Spinnerei, a cotton mill ten hectares, which was the largest in continental Europe in the early XXth century. It has employed up to 4,000 workers.

Today, a thousand people work there, and sometimes live there, mainly artists installed from the mid-1990s. In total, a hundred studios and a dozen galleries animate the premises, plus lofts for rent, a cafeteria ‘ for a pleasant break during the day, a cinema in the evening and even beehives on the roof!

Entrance to the site is free but you cannot visit everything. The doors open three weekends a year, are ideal to see more. Those of autumn are held on September 12 and 13.

Green leipzig

Leipzig is very green: the parks and gardens represent 60% of the surface, the center is entirely pedestrian. However, under the GDR regime, it suffered from pollution caused by the numerous textile and chemical industries or by thermal power stations. They were supplied by the coal mines dug all around the agglomeration.

These huge craters have been transformed into around twenty lakes, the closest of which is that of Cospuden. Located to the south, its beaches and marina are easily accessible by bus or bicycle, the preferred mode of transport for the people of Leipzig.

Unless you get on a kayak or a boat: the network of canals connects the city to Cospuden. It was created at the end of the XIXth century to transport goods and materials. Then often covered with concrete during the communist era because it served as a dumping ground. And now rehabilitated for leisure.

Unlike Cospuden, north of Leipzig, the zoo is one of the oldest and largest in Europe. No animals running in circles behind bars, the natural habitat of hundreds of species has been reconstructed to give them more freedom. And a huge tropical space was recently created. Another originality is that you can walk by boat or on a path near the canopy.

Rebellious leipzig

Before commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leipzig honored the citizen uprising of October 9, 1989. Party of the Church of St. Nicholas, it was made up of 70,000 people demonstrating peacefully for freedom of speech, of gathering and traffic. Since the early 1980s, the church has already hosted prayers for peace.

A tribute to this movement is paid to the entrance to the Stasi museum, located inside the former East German State Security offices. The other part of the exhibition is devoted to espionage techniques, anti-capitalist propaganda and police methods in the GDR.

With the return to democracy, freedom gained the whole city, and in particular the south. In the 1990s, the Connewitz district became the center of the underground. It still retains its alternative spirit today with cultural places like Conne Island or the KulturFabrik Werk II, programming concerts, DJs, screenings, exhibitions and other artistic expressions outside of commercial circuits. Leipzig may be a thousand years old, but her heart is still beating!

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