Leipzig notes –April 2009
by Elly
I arrived on a beautiful morning in Leipzig, with clear blue skies and nice temperatures. The trip hadn’t been as nice (late arrival of the plane, some problems with a taxi driver, not knowing that the German train system now has (a few) private trains, and a slight case of the flu I think) but Leipzig(has) made up for it.
My apartment is/was wonderful, in the middle of the city, overlooking the Nicholai Kirche, the minister’s house, the Old Nicholaischool (and the Hanse Haus). Both Leibniz (1646-1716) and Richard Wagner (1813-1883) went to this school (and were born in Leipzig). Wagner apparently complained later on that the school was too `loose’. I love looking out on the square and the people sitting on benches and curbs.
Many (German) tourists come by (and I see them on the square), and when I was on a tour of the Nicholai church many had tears in their eyes when the role of the church in the `peaceful revolution’ was mentioned because the `Wende’ was still so important to them. The Nicholaikirche was the center of the 1980s protests that helped change the system
( and still has weekly peace meetings. In terms of its architecture, it started out as a Romanesque church, then Gothic, and then Classical. The organ in this church is amazing (with 6000 pipes) and went through many face-lifts (
Apart from Leibniz and Wagner, Herder and Schiller were here, as were JS Bach and Mendelssohn. I went to a concert at the Mendelssohn Haus ( and some of Mendelssohn’s music actually sounds like Bach. That apparently is because Mendelssohn’s mother had piano lessons from a student of JS Bach. Mendelssohn helped `revive’ Bach when he was the Director of the Gewandhaus. Nobody knew where Bach was buried and they made a guess about some bones and gave these a nicer burial site with a name. The (unknown) skull was used to reconstruct the face so what we think of as Bach’s portrait is reconstructed. He was in Leipzig 27 years!
There is a lot of unemployment and there are a lot of (former) West Germans living and working here. Apparently, after 20 years, this is still an issue. Now, there are many expensive cars and it doesn’t strike me as poor. Food is very cheap: half a loaf of good bread $ 1, mineral water 30 ct, and half a liter of beer 35ct. However, small towns have no doctors left and lack many other essentials. Streets in Leipzig are very clean and even on Sundays does the streetsweeper go by.
The Max Planck Institute (of Evolutionary Anthropology) that I am visiting during April ( is neat. It has a wonderful library of exotic grammars and books on the evolution of humans and there are many talks and opportunities to talk to people. I try to spend at least an hour/day in the library and go to as many talks as I can (Neanderthals in the Crimea, intransitives in Georgian, and arguments in Nu|u). It is also great to be away from my own department. I get very few e-mails from my students and this is good for at least a month.
The MPI is a bright building with lots of empty space, built around water that in turn has an island in the middle with turtles and ducks. There are many dogs around. People can keep them in their offices and the psychologists do research with them (on how they connect blue ball to the actual object and then can pick out objects they don’t know yet). Dogs don’t communicate with other dogs in special ways but they do with people Their presence, however, leads to the necessity of a Dogombudsman since many people do not like to have dogs around…. Now, that not ME. I go around the dog corridor so I get to say hi to the dogs.
There is also a cafeteria with warm meals at lunch of sauerkraut, potatoes, sausage or red cabbage or lentilsoup. Some of these I haven’t had for a long time (I can’t remember today’s English euphemism for what is in Dutch zult, something like `marbled pork’). In the Netherlands, restaurants don’t think it is proper to serve these but I am very glad that really good restaurants here have the genuine cuisine. I also buy products that I haven’t for a long time, persil washing powder and iglo (frozen) products.
Many smaller cities/towns have been incorporated into Leipzig, e.g. Gohlis where Schiller lived, the industrial town of Plagwitz, the rural Thekla. Each has its own character still, and there are expensive neighborhoods (the WaldstraBe) and neighborhoods that must look like what the city looked like 20 years ago: grey and drab. Trams form a wonderful connection between many parts of the city. You can easily spend an hour on one line going from one side of the city to the other. I did that one Saturday.
I also visited an old cotton spinning mill ( originally from 1884 but put to different uses over the years. It is now a place for artists to rent studio space and galleries and hat making ateliers etc. They have tried to not spruce it up too much so it still has a bit of a derelict feel to it. During WW II, it was not touched by bombs since its roofs have grass on it (like Norwegian farmhouses) and couldn’t be recognized. They weren’t spinning cotton then either but were making shells. When the mill started, people worked 7 days, and men 14 hours a day (I seem to remember), women 11 hours and children 10. There was a small hospital but situated next to the graveyard. After the Wende, it was mainly abandoned and artists found space.
I find the contemporary visual arts very much to my liking. It is really painting (and sculpture) oriented with quite some realism but in an expressionist way. It is great not to be bombarded with video and performance art. The main art museum is a huge glass box with loads of empty space inside (more emphasis on the building than on the art!). Inside it is a bit better, but no really spectacular pieces, except a nice Munch but that was in a special collection. This city doesn’t strike one in general as avant-garde: a Schönberg performance I went to was very empty ( and after Der fliegende Holländer by Wagner, I was one of the few in the audience that applauded. It had been too modern! There had been no break either otherwise they would have lost most of the audience.
The Leipzigers are proud that they were/are a city of merchants not politicians and monarchs. The saying is they make the money and Dresden spends it (and now Berlin). The art is typically donated by private citizens, there are no palaces to visit, and the churches are mainly city churches, so quite modest. The Gewandhaus had many locations but is now situated on the Augustusplatz, facing the Opera building. Both are extremely impressive, especially inside. I wondered about who could afford this during communist times and got to talking to a woman from Leipzig sitting next to me, and she said it was affordable `if you could get tickets’, but that they were given away to certain people.
The other two sides of the Augustusplats are taken up by the postoffice (being renovated) on the one side and the UniversityChurch on the other side being rebuilt after having been destroyed by the communists (in the 1960s I believe). There is also a clocktower that is supposed to look like the one in Venice but Leipzig’s motto is `labor vincit omnia’ [work conquers everything] and it indeed seems a `can do’ mentality here.
elly