A Short Trip to Leipzig

Commerzbank building

Here's what I love about living in Berlin: Within an hour or two by bike or by train you can visit destinations that are quite different. We visited Spandau and Potsdam by bike and the Spreewald by train - once just for a day trip. Last weekend we decided on a day trip to Leipzig.

Commerzbank building and street

In contrast to many other German cities, where castles are the big thing to see, Leipzig is - and always has been - the city of commerce. After our pleasant ride in the ICE train, which I used to listen to some Leipzig podcasts, we strolled to the tourist information office to buy tickets for a guided tour. We had 45 minutes for a little more exploration and saw the main square (which regrettably featured a Hare Krishna temple for the day).

Main square in Leipzig

Then our delightful tour "Geschichte und Geschichten" or "History and Story" started. The tour guide was very knowledgable and took us many places that we otherwise would never have seen.

Entrance to stairs in Messehalle, now also home to a cabaret

Behind many unassuming gateways we found ourselves in old Messehalle areas. For hundreds of years, Leipzig - similar to Nuernberg - was a gathering place for commerce, and special fairs were held for certain type of merchandise. All the goods had to be store, so buildings with large courtyards were common - above, a picture from a courtyard (now covered) which now houses a political caberet. And, yes, Leipzig is also the city with the most cabarets in Germany.

Walkway in Messehalle

Many of the former streets linking one courtyard to another are now covered - it creates a feeling of a mall that (thankfully) isn't quite a mall.

Specks Hof

Public art is found in many of the Messehalle areas, such as the mosaic above, commemorating the former owner who was called Speck. Here's a link to a post on a German architecture forum about Specks Hof, with much better photos than mine.

Truth be told, even with a really good camera it's pretty well impossible to do good photos looking up....

Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum

One of the last stops of our wonderful tour was the cafe, one of the oldest cafes serving coffee in all of Europe (since 1711, or quite possibly longer). Many famous German thinkers indulged in their addiction in the cafe, and today the cafe still serves coffee but also houses a museum with coffee paraphernalia and information about coffee culture in Saxony.

Speaking of famous thinkers, Leipzig is well know for the long list of German writers and philosophers who studied here, lived here, or both. We saw the museum where Theodor Fontane worked as a pharmacist before he became a writer, and the bust of Schiller and Goethe. The guide also showed us the famous Auerbach's Keller, which was a well known student hang-out already during Goethe's time. It plays a part in Goethe's Faust as the place where Faust meets Mephistopheles, and a bust of Mephistopheles working on talking Faust into selling his soul is now outside the pub.

Mephistopheles and Faust at Auerbach's Keller

But regrettable we had neither the time to visit the coffee museum nor time for Auerbach's Keller because we very much wanted to attend the Mottete in the St. Thomas Church. This is an hour-long service with a lot of music and a short sermon and prayer in the church where Johann Sebastian Bach was teaching for the better part of his life. The Thomanerchor, which has existed continuously since 1212, always participates in the service and we were eager to hear them.

Organ and singers after the Mottete

Even though we got to the church 35 minutes early, it was already pretty crowded but we did managed to find a place to sit. The service started with a welcome for the new boys that were joining the choir, most of them from Leipzig or close by. Each carrying a sunflower, the walked to Bach's grave at the front of the church, left their flowers, and went upstairs.

The music was varied and wonderful. The big surprise was the (short) sermon, in which the pastor took a stand against the new Lutheran's bishops stand against homosexuality. While the new bishop seemed to have expressed primarily a personal opinion, it still did not go over with the rather liberal people of Leipzig. Another Leipzig pastor had started a petition asking the bishop to consider his position, and the two pastors of St. Thomas were taking a public stand in favor of the petition. Having the Lutheran's come out on the liberal side of things was heartening - and we also appreciated that the sermon was short that the sermon was short and followed by a divine Bach cantata.

After that, we had a little time left for the Bach museum just across the street - then it was time to get on the train again and return to our temporary home, full of new impressions and with beautiful music still in our ears.