Finding Leipzig

Then we come to the area of east Germany, the old German Democratic Republic. Roads are shabbier, concrete block dwellings in dull communist grey are decorated only in ill-formed graffiti. Farms are smaller. Woodpiles, now, are not neat: pieces lie on the earth, haphazard, as they fall from the axe. A farmer is plowing a large field trailing his workhorse who is dragging behind him a simple home-made iron hoe, scouring out a single shallow furrow for this season’s crop. In the next field he can wave to his neighbour who is a day or two ahead: sowing his seed by hand from a cheap tin bucket. 

It is hard, in just these few driving kilometres, to make the mental adjustment needed to realise that this is still Germany. And then we come to Leipzig. 

The outskirts of Leipzig are ugly, ramshackled, unkempt. I doubt there is a pretty route from any direction to drive into the heart of Leipzig. But you do get the sense that things are changing. Downtown, the history of the place makes the trek through the desperate ugly burbs worthwhile. 

Here is the largest railway station in all of Europe, welded to the earth as if built by a giant playing with an unlimited supply of massive mechano pieces. Ugly, yet fascinating. Controlling commerce and communication in all directions. 

Here in this busy platz, in this long thronged thoroughfare of commerce, is one of the most beautiful churches in all of Germany, the Chuch of Saint Nicholas: where Bach was the organist and choir master for nearly a quarter of a century, and where many of his own compositions were first played. Everything in Nicolaikirche is painted white, even the wooden pews; the only soft touch of colour is high overhead: pale green palms topping the colonnades, and soft pink diamond plaster surrounds decorating the ceiling. 

Here, Goethe ate, drank and studied while at Leipzig university; and here he included this place in one of his scenes in Faust. 

Here, one of the most devastating events in Jewish history was played out on a brutal Kristallnacht in 1938. Never to be forgotten. 

Here, a whimsical shop-owner, today attempts to sell his expensive designer menswear by dressing himself up as an extravagant 18c aristocratic fop, wearing full white powdered wig, a beautifully tied cravat, stiff white starched collar points, pantaloons buttoned below the knee and stockings tucked into expensively buckled shoes, encouraging passersby to enter, to take a photo; to shop. Monkey see, monkey spend. 

Still a city of commerce. Still a city with history. And still a city with a sense of humour. 

Beautiful St Nicholas, where Bach played the organ

Plowing in the east of Germany

Leipzig university where Goethe wrote Faust