Leipzig Old City
Atrium of the Academy of Visual
Arts
Porsche Diamond, the customer centre
building of Porsche Leipzig
MDR, one of Germany's public
broadcasters
City-Hochhaus Leipzig
Mädler-Passage, one of Leipzig's
many passageways.
New Trade Fair
Inside Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (Central
Railway Station)
.jpg/250px-Federal_Administrative_Court_Leipzig_at_night_1_(aka).jpg)
The Federal Administrative Court of
Germany at night
Leipzig Neues Rathaus
Leipzig ( , also called
Leipsic in English; ) is,
with a population of 515,459, the largest city
in the federal state of Saxony
, Germany
.
History
Origins
Leipzig's name is derived from the
Slavic word
Lipsk, which means
"settlement where the
lime trees stand".
First
documented in 1015 in the chronicles of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg
and endowed with city and market privileges in 1165
by Otto the Rich, Leipzig has
fundamentally shaped the history of Saxony and of
Germany. Leipzig has always been known as a place of
commerce.
The Leipzig Trade Fair
, which began in the Middle
Ages, is the oldest remaining trade fair in the world.
It became an event of international importance.
The
foundation of the University of Leipzig
in 1409 initiated the city's development into a
centre of German law and the publishing industry, and towards being
a location of the Reichsgericht (High Court), and the German National
Library
(founded in 1912). The philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born
in Leipzig in 1646, and attended the university from 1661–1666.
The 19th century
The
Leipzig region was the arena of the Battle of the Nations
, which ended Napoleon's run
of conquest in Europe, and led to his first exile on Elba
.
In 1913,
the Völkerschlachtdenkmal
monument celebrating the centenary of this event
was completed.
A terminal
of the first German long distance railway to
Dresden
(the capital
of Saxony), in 1839, Leipzig became a hub of Central European railway traffic, with the
renowned Leipzig
Central Station
, the largest terminal
station by area in Europe.
Leipzig around 1900
Leipzig expanded rapidly towards one million inhabitants. Huge
Gründerzeit areas were built, which
mostly survived the war and post-war demolition.
Leipzig became a centre of the German and Saxon liberal movements.
The first German
labour party, the
General German
Workers' Association (
Allgemeiner Deutscher
Arbeiterverein, ADAV) was founded in Leipzig on 23 May 1863 by
Ferdinand Lassalle; about 600
workers from across Germany travelled to the foundation on the new
railway line.
The 20th century
The city's
mayor from 1930 to 1937,
Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was a
noted opponent of the
Nazi regime in
Germany. He resigned in 1937 when, in his absence, his Nazi deputy
ordered the destruction of the city's statue of
Felix Mendelssohn.
On Kristallnacht in 1938, one of the city's most
architecturally significant buildings, the 1855 Moorish Revival Leipzig synagogue
was deliberately destroyed.
The city was also heavily damaged by
Allied
bombing during
World War II.
American
troops of the 69th Infantry Division captured the
city on 20 April 1945. The U.S. turned over
the city to the Red Army as it pulled back
from the line of contact with Soviet
forces in July 1945 to the pre-designated occupation zone
boundaries. Leipzig became one of the major cities of
the German
Democratic Republic
(East Germany).
In the
mid-20th century, the city's Trade Fair
assumed renewed importance as a point of contact with the Comecon Eastern Europe
economic bloc, of which East Germany was a member.
In
October 1989, after prayers for peace at St. Nicholas' Church
, established in 1983 as part of the peace movement,
the Monday
demonstrations started as the most prominent mass protest
against the East German regime.
Leipzig was the German candidate for the
2012 Summer Olympics, but did not make
it to the short list.
Culture
Main sights
Among Leipzig's noteworthy institutions are the
opera house and the Leipzig Zoo, the latter of
which houses the world's largest facilities for
primates.
The Church of St. Nicholas (Nikolaikirche) was the starting point of peaceful
Monday demonstrations for the
reunification of Germany. Leipzig's international trade fair in the north of the city is home to the world's
largest levitated glass hall. Leipzig is also known for its
passageways through houses and buildings.
Music in Leipzig
see also :Category:Music from
Leipzig
Johann Sebastian Bach worked in
Leipzig from 1723 to 1750, at the St. Thomas
Lutheran church
, and Richard Wagner
the composer was born in Leipzig in 1813, in the Brühl. Robert Schumann was also active in Leipzig
music, having been invited by
Felix
Mendelssohn when the latter established Germany's first musical
conservatoire in the city in 1843.
Gustav Mahler was second conductor
(working under
Artur Nikisch) at the
Leipzig Theater from June 1886 until
May 1888, and achieved his first great recognition while there by
completing and publishing
Carl
Maria von Weber's opera
Die Drei
Pintos, and Mahler also completed his own
1st Symphony while living
there.
This conservatoire is today the
University of Music and Theatre. A broad range of
subjects can be studied, both artistic and teacher training, in all
orchestral instruments, voice,
interpretation, coaching, piano
chamber
music, orchestral conducting, choir conducting and
musical composition. Musical styles
include jazz, popular music, musicals, early music and church
music. The drama departments teach acting and
dramaturgy. Advanced students may, after a test,
stand in for members of the
Gewandhaus Orchestra. As at 2006,
approximately 900 students were enrolled at the school.
The city's musical tradition is also reflected in the worldwide
fame of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra and the
choir of the St.
Thomas Church.
Bill and Tom Kaulitz - the founding members of modern rock band
Tokio Hotel - also originate from
Leipzig, although no longer live there.
Till Lindemann, vocalist for the
Neue Deutsche Härte band
Rammstein, also hails from Leipzig.
As for contemporary music, Leipzig has for more than 10 years been
home to the world's largest
electronic
music festival, the annual
Wave-Gotik-Treffen (WGT), where thousands
of electro fans from across Europe gather in the early
summer.
Annual events
Sport
The German Football Association (DFB) was founded in Leipzig in
1900.
The
city was the venue for the 2006 FIFA
World Cup draw, and hosted four first-round matches and one
match in the last 16th round in the Zentralstadion
. Leipzig also hosted the
Fencing World Cup in 2005 and hosts a number of
international competitions in a variety of sports each year.
VfB Leipzig, now 1. FC
Lokomotive
Leipzig, won the first national football championship in
1903.
From 1950 to 1990 Leipzig was host of the
Deutsche
Hochschule für Körperkultur (DHfK), the national sport
university of the GDR.It's sportclub, the SC DHfK Leipzig, is the
world's most successful sportclub in numbers of Olympic and World
Cup Medals.
Two-time World Cup Uneven Bars Champion and Olympic Medalist
(
1976,
1980) in
gymnastics,
Steffi Kraker was born in Leipzig.
In 2004, Leipzig made a bid to host the
2012 Summer Olympic Games.
The bid
did not make the final cut after the IOC paired the bids down to 5,
which eventually was won by London
.
It was
the first Summer Olympic bid by Germany since 1993 when Berlin's
bid to host the 2000 Summer
Olympics were awarded to Sydney
.
Markkleeberger See
is a new lake next to Markkleeberg
, a suburb on the south side of Leipzig. A
former open-pit coal mine, it was flooded in 1999 with groundwater
and developed in 2006 as a tourist area.
On its southeastern
shore is Germany's only pump-powered artificial whitewater slalom course,
the Kanupark Markkleeberg, a venue which rivals the Eiskanal
in Augsburg
for training and international canoe/kayak
competition.
Education
Leipzig
University
, founded 1409, is one of Europe's oldest
universities. Nobel Prize
laureate
Werner Heisenberg worked
here as a physics professor (from 1927 to 1942), as did Nobel Prize
laureates
Gustav Ludwig Hertz
(physics),
Wilhelm Ostwald
(chemistry) and
Theodor Mommsen
(
Nobel Prize in
literature). Other former staff of faculty include mineralogist
Georg Agricola, writer
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
philosopher
Ernst Bloch, eccentric
founder of
psychophysics Gustav Theodor Fechner, and
psychologist
Wilhelm Wundt. Among the
university's many noteworthy students were writers
Johann Wolfgang Goethe and
Erich Kästner, philosophers
Gottfried Leibniz and
Friedrich Nietzsche, political activist
Karl Liebknecht, and composer
Richard Wagner. Germany's chancellor
since 2006,
Angela Merkel, studied
physics at
Leipzig University. The university has about
30,000 students.
The "Academy of Visual Arts" (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst)
was established 1764. Its 530 students (as of 2006) are enrolled in
courses in painting and graphics, book design/graphic design,
photography and media art. The school also houses an Institute for
Theory.
The "Leipzig University of Applied Sciences" (
Hochschule für Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur, HTWK)
is with about 6200 students (as of 2007) the second biggest
institution of higher education in Leipzig. It was founded in 1992,
merging several older schools. As a university of applied sciences
(German:
Fachhochschule) it is slightly below the status
of a university, with more emphasis on the practical part of the
education. The HTWK offers many engineering courses, as well as
courses of computer sciences, mathematics, business administration,
library sciences, museum studies, and social work. It is mainly
located in the south of the city.
The private
Handelshochschule Leipzig ,
or Leipzig Graduate School of Management, is the oldest business
school in Germany.
Among the research institutes located in Leipzig three belong to
the
Max Planck Society (for
Mathematics in the
Sciences,
Human
Cognitive and Brain Science and
Evolutionary
Anthropology) and two are
Fraunhofer Society institutes. Others are
the
Helmholtz Centre
for Environmental Research UFZ, part of the
Helmholtz
Association, and the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric
Research.
Economy
Companies in or around Leipzig include:
Many bars, restaurants and stores found in the "centre city" region
rely on German and foreign tourists. The Leipzig Central Station
itself is the location of one of the largest shopping
centres.
Some of
the largest employers in the area (outside of manufacturing)
include the various schools and universities in and around the
Leipzig/Halle
region. The University of Leipzig attracts
millions of
Euros of investment yearly and is
in the middle of a massive construction and refurbishment in order
to celebrate their 600th anniversary.
DHL is in the process of transferring the bulk of its
European air operations from Brussels Airport
to Leipzig/Halle Airport
. The airport is also a major source of income
for the area and offers many flights daily through Lufthansa
, Germany's main carrier.
Media
- MDR, one of Germany's
public broadcasters, has its headquarters and main television
studios in the city. It provides programs to various TV and radio
networks and has its own symphony orchestra, choir and a
ballet.
- Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ) is the city's
only daily newspaper. Founded in 1894, it has published under
several different forms of government. It was the first newspaper
in the world that was published daily. The monthly magazine
Kreuzer specializes on culture, festivities and the arts
in Leipzig.
- Once known for its large number of publishing houses, Leipzig
had been called Buch-Stadt (book city). Few are left after
the years of the German Democratic Republic
, the most notable of them being branches of
Brockhaus and Insel Verlag. Reclam,
founded in 1828, was one of the large publishing houses to move
away. The
German Library (Deutsche Bücherei) in Leipzig is part of Germany's
National Library
.
- Birthplace of German emo/rock band, Tokio Hotel.
Transport
Leipzig
Central Station is at a junction of important north-to-south and
west-to-east railway lines. An underground connecting line
has been driven along the north-south axis. In the vicinity of the
city are two airports:
Leipzig/Halle Airport and Leipzig-Altenburg Airport
(Thuringia
).Like most German cities, Leipzig has a
traffic layout designed to be
bicycle-friendly. There is a extensive
cycle network. In most of the one-way central streets, cyclists are
explicitly allowed to cycle both ways. A few cycling roads have
been build or declared since 1990.
Quotations
Mein Leipzig lob' ich mir! Es ist ein klein Paris und
bildet seine Leute. (I praise my Leipzig! It is a small Paris
and educates its people.) - Frosch, a university student in
Goethe's
Faust, Part
One
International relations
Twin towns — Sister cities
Leipzig is
twinned with:
- Addis Ababa
 , Ethiopia (since 2004)
- Birmingham
 , England , UK
(since 1992)
- Bologna
 , Italy
(since 1962, renewed in 1997)
- Brno
 , Czech
Republic
(since 1973, renewed in 1999)
- Frankfurt am Main
 , Germany
(since 1990)
- Hanover
 , Germany
(since 1987)
- Houston
 , Texas , US
(since 1933)
|
|
Partnerships
See also
References
- www.statistik.sachsen.de
- Hanswilhelm Haefs. Das 2. Handbuch des nutzlosen
Wissens. ISBN 3831137544
- David Brebis (ed.), Michelin guide to Germany,
Greenville (2006), p. 324. ISBN 086699077417
- The day I outflanked the Stasi BBC +
video
- AMI - Auto
Mobil International, Leipziger Messe
- AMITEC -
Fachmesse für Fahrzeugteile, Werkstatt und Service, Leipziger
Messe
- Promenaden Hauptbahnhof Leipzig
-
[http://www.leipzig.de/de/tourist/leipzig/wissenswertes/buchstadt/index.shtml
Homepage of the City of Leipzig/Buchstadt
External links
Monument): the largest monument in Europe, built to
commemorate the victorious battle against Napoleonic
troops
: built in 1972, it was once part of the university
and is the city's tallest building
: a young Goethe ate and drank here while
studying in Leipzig; it is the venue of a scene from his Faust
(municipal department store): the world's first
sample fair building and today home to offices, retail stores,
restaurants and interim classrooms for the
University of
Leipzig
: Germany's federal administrative court was the
site of the Reichsgericht
, the highest state court between 1888 and
1945
is the oldest botanical
garden in Germany
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