After our big night at Ernst we were up early and out of the apartment without having breakfast. Which may have led to the error that had us on the express train to the airport – instead of our destination. It wasn’t the special train which looks like the one below – which we surely would not have caught! Rather it was the regular train to Dresden which looked like ours only with a special stop off at the airport. I did notice everyone getting on at our station seemed to have a lot of luggage!
After a flurry of phone calls to let the guide who was expecting us at ten know that we’d be arriving at 11 we settled down for the hour and a half trip.
The train was comfortable and fast – at times going up to 200k an hour. The country we travelled through was very flat and green, dotted with lots of windmills, a few small solar panels installations, lots of woods, very few animals and only one or isolated farms – houses were always grouped in small villages. So quite a different rural scene to the one at home. Bucolic – green plains, woods, a spire in the distance. The journey was express to Leipzig where our guide, Birgit, awaited. She took us through medieval cobbled streets.
And passages that ran through buildings. All containing a mix of different types of shops – some high end ones, clothes, accessories, cookware, furniture, mobile phones and so on.
And arcades.
We had asked to see any parts relevant to Wagner, so she showed us where his family home had been – replaced now by an ugly modern building. Here I am in front of the plaque.
She took us to the school where Wagner was taught; St. Nicholas’s School, the first municipal secondary school in Leipzig opened in 1512. Wagner attended from 1828 to 1830. Other subsequently famous pupils included Gottfried Leibniz, Christian Thomasius and Johann Seume.
Birgit took us down to the exhibition that she told us was normally hard to get into, but we had no trouble. It was mostly panels of information about the different periods of Wagner’s life, all in German, accompanied by photos. Including a picture of his family home here in Leipzig.
I was not familiar with this photo of the young Wagner.
There were also pictures of portraits of his mother, her second husband who is rumoured to be Wagner’s father – he had red hair – and his sister. In the final room alongside an awful, very large bust on a plinth, you could watch and listen to his operas. Later in the town hall we saw Wagner’s piano with attached writing tablet – a gift from Leopold when Wagner was in his fifties.
The school was opposite St Nicholas church, pictured below. It was the congregation here that contributed to the unification of Germany – there was a mural opposite the station depicting the events. These started in the early eighties with Monday prayer meetings by parishioners praying for peace. These events grew to include people wishing to emigrate, environmentalists and young people who’d finished compulsory military training. Over time these peaceful meetings grew larger and police tried to shut them down – blocking access, arresting people, infiltrating Stasi members etc. On 9 October 1989 things came to a head, when two thousand members at the meeting (600 of them Stasi) came out there were tens of thousands of people waiting with candles lit in a massive non-violent protest. The troops called in to break up the movement withdrew. Finally there were hundreds of thousands of people protesting in the streets around the city centre for weeks until the Wall was finally pulled down. This information is from a pamphlet prepared by the Church Pastor between 1980-2008 , he concludes with a quote from Horst Sindermann, a member of the Central Committee of the GDR ‘ We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers. Our guide Birgit had been among the demonstrators.
We later ventured inside – where we found a musical piece was being filmed. Again, from the Pastor’s pamphlet: this church was founded in 1165 but it has been Protestant since 1539 when the Reformation came to Leipzig. Bach’s activity and creativity as master and organist of the choir in the years 1723 through 1750 were a highlight in the history of the church. Distinguished compositions by Bach were performed for the first time here. Those compositions were the St John Passion and part of the Christmas Oratorio. It’s a very beautiful place.
The interior of the church was reconstructed in 1784-97 in French classical style; intended to demonstrate to the world the self-confidence and high cultural standards of the citizens. The columns, designed to resemble palms are especially impressive. They certainly are.
On our tour Birgit explained that streets in the medieval town did not have street numbers so houses were identified by decorative touches like these.
And plaques like this.
We saw lots of beautiful buildings built in Leipzig’s heyday as the centre of flourishing leather and fur industries run by Jewish merchants who were dispossessed by the Nazi regime. For many years these buildings were neglected and run down but now many are being refurbished.
Apparently Leipzig was in the doldrums for a long time and looked very shabby until relatively recently when it has been revitalised by industries moving here. The lack of investment probably saved a lot of the old buildings. Some of which are quite exotic, like this place with its decorative elephants. I didn’t realise it at the time but Riquet is the very shop from which Goethe got his favourite brand of chocolate! It’s mentioned in Jena 1800: The Republic of Free Spirits by Peter Nuemann, which I read – and enjoyed very much – a short time ago. It’s about the German philosophers living in Jena at that time.
We saw prettily decorated covered courtyards containing shops and offices.
And external courtyards, this one had a hippyish feel.
With their ornamented windows jutting out many of the houses here reminded me of those in Istanbul.
Here’s another jutting out window. I liked the beautiful green tiles.
Here’s another interesting, free-standing building. All the streets were cobbled – hard on your feet and shoes! And there were lots of diagonal street endings – reminding me of Paris.
Leipzig also had a thriving publishing industry which led to it being heavily bombed in the war. I was surprised Birgit mentioned Bomber Harris by name – it was his decision she said. I suppose she knows the detailed history in her work as a guide. In addition to Wagner we asked to see places associated with the German philosophers. And so we came to Goethe. Here looking very imposing.
On one side of the plinth was a relief of his long term mistress, Christiane Vulpius with whom he lived quite openly and with whom he had a son. This relationship is referred to in the book Jena 1800: The Republic of Free Spirits. She was uneducated and plain and Goethe’s colleagues couldn’t understand the attraction but it was evidently a love match. They’ve made her pretty on this statue. They were married in the end, after years living together.
And on the other side was a relief of his wife. Evidently not such a love match.
There’s a story – I can’t quite remember it, but Birgit repeated it – about Goethe getting the idea for his Faust story here in Leipzig. And in an arcade there is a coffee shop outside which there are statues relating to the famous poem. The first is of Faust and Mephistopheles, as you can see from the colour, it is good luck to rub the foot of Faust. But only with your left hand! As I found out from Birgit when I rubbed it with my right hand. I noticed she gave it a quick touch as we moved away.
And this one is of a fight that occurred in the cafe that is reached via stairs going down from the arcade – I can’t remember the details!
Birgit took us to a coffee shop famous for being the meeting place for the German philosophers, including Schiller, Schelling, Novalis and Nietzsche. But it was being renovated and covered in a protective awning, so no photo. I did say to Joe we were walking on cobblestones that those famous feet would have walked upon! Finally we come to J.S. Bach. Here is his statue.
And here is his church, while he was responsible for the musical offerings of all of the church’s in Leipzig, St Thomas was him home church if you can call it that. He was Cantor here from 1723 until his death on 28 July 1750.
Inside it is much more austere than St Nicholas. It has been stripped of the Baroque style that dated from Bach’s tenure and converted to Neo-Gothic. That’s a new Bach organ that you see in the middle of this picture – constructed for the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death in the year 2000 in order to play Bach’s works like he intended. This was where St Matthew’s Passion was premiered to a very luke-warm response. According to James Gaines in Evening in the Palace of Reason, the only recorded review [of this work] in Bach’s lifetime was from an aged widow in the congregation who said: God help us! It’s an opera-comedy! A few weeks later Bach’s pay was docked! It was the nineteen year old Felix Mendelssohn who resurrected this magnificent work at a concert in Berlin on 11 March 1829, just over one hundred years after its premiere. Incredible.
It’s claimed that Bach’s mortal remains are held here. The problem for a community that now wants to celebrate Bach is that during his life-time they didn’t. Throughout his working life here he was in constant conflict with his superiors. The correspondence is amusingly feisty. Bach gave as good as he got. But it’s a tragedy his talent wasn’t recognised by them. In fact the authorities at St Thomas’s and Leipzig were relieved when he died; a year beforehand they had auditioned and all but proclaimed a successor. While his remains are meant to be here, they cannot really be sure as his grave outside the city walls was unmarked. When the city sought to reclaim him they had bones dug up from the vicinity where they thought he’d been buried and had them examined. Those interred here are purportedly his! As Gaines writes: Bach never got to hear his Mass in B minor, and for practical purposes it was forgotten for decades, as in a sense he was. More than a century would pass before the B-minor Mass or the Passion According to St Matthew would be heard again. No silence in music could be quite as deafening as this.
But it is said that this portrait is the most accurate portrayal of what Bach actually looked like.
It’s housed in the magnificent old Leipzig town hall – as magnificent inside as outside. So big I couldn’t fit it all in my photo. Inside we learnt a lot about the history of the town. There were panoramas, models, paintings, statues and objects from different periods. An enormous meeting room was a feature – council meetings would have been warmed by fires in two huge fireplaces. It’s here that we found Wagner’s piano – and his death mask which I didn’t photograph because too macabre, but now I wish I had.
The square which the town hall overlooks is huge. We wondered why those demonstrating against the regime in 1989 had not come here – it’s because the protests had always been at the church Birgit told us.
We had lunch at a restaurant in this street – the one with the red flag. A single waiter – overworked.
A traditional Bavarian meal for me. They’re delicious and go so well with a pretzel and beer.
A more adventurous dish for Joe – pork shoulder he was told but it contained some mysteries.
After lunch we visited the Bach Museum which was very modern – inside at least. Very well done, but overshadowed somewhat by what I knew about how he’d been treated by the city burghers. Lots of information about his compositions and also about his family tree which is extensive – so many Johannes and so many Sebastians! It also included musical instruments and scores. I was pleased to see it. Just one more building because it is very pretty and we went past it a few times – the city centre is quite small and we retraced our steps a few times. This is the old Leipzig Stock Exchange.
And one last photo taken after we had finished our tour with Birgit. Here she is with Joe. It was well worth the effort and small expense to have her give us an initial overview of the place.
There was a lot more to see in Leipzig had we the time. It would be worth an overnight stay. But by about five-o-clock we’d had it – so off to the station – Joe desperate to get his phone charged up as our train tickets were embedded therein. No-one in authority able to help but we found a place where people could use their own chargers. We didn’t have one but a young woman kindly loaned us hers for about fifteen minutes. People here have all been very friendly. Situation saved we hopped back on the train and off we sped to Berlin – our tickets unchecked all the while, so our little panic was unnecessary. Overall a very satisfactory day experiencing in a small way medieval Germany! Back in Wedding Joe went and bought us take away Thai for dinner, which while very different from the Thai food we get at home was very good. It was from a place near us called Dan Thai which happens to be named one of best places to eat in Wedding on this list.
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