Leipzig Book Fair, Part II: A Walk in the City

Leipzig, after centuries of history as a trading city, became the second-largest city of the German Democratic Republic after Berlin. After 1989, it seems to have rapidly developed in a less piously Communist direction. So when I set off from the main train station to walk around, there was a jumble of Baroque buildings, medieval edifices like the Thomaskirche, grand 19th century buildings and public monuments that carried over stylistically into the early 1900s, GDR buildings, and post-1990s capitalist glitz.

One of the first large buildings that I spotted after leaving a half-hidden western portal of the Hauptbahnhof (1902-1916) was an apartment tower with the logo of the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk broadcaster. It's not an unknown brand, but for some reason mdr reminded me of the French internet acronym for mort de rire. So the City-Hochhaus tower was engraved in my brain, and that was just as well, as it would turn out later.

I had considered planning out a walking route in Leipzig, but in the end briefly looked at a map that had a scale of 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 and only sketched-in names for the largest streets — back in Berlin. I did put the map, which my mother had bought for her pilgrimage route through Brandenburg, in my purse. And as long as I could access the WiFi of the Hauptbahnhof and other public access points I'd be able to look at Google Maps if needed.

Instead I just 'winged it,' and ate the kumquat from my travel provisions before setting off and using the methodology of spotting church spires or older buildings, memorizing how to get there, going off to see them, and then retracing my steps back to where I'd started.

Leipzig's Hauptbahnhof later in the day,
when the grey drizzle had disappeared
and people seemed more disposed to be on the streets

It surprised me how quiet the city was around 7:15 a.m. It wasn't unpleasant, however. First I walked down the Tröndlinring and admired (not for the last time) the well-marked bicycle routes in Leipzig. Vaguely I felt that the city centre must be toward the mdr building, behind a façade of shopping centre. But instead the north seemed more attractive, and soon I'd spotted a church spire that looked post-Baroque (the Michaeliskirche) and walked down the Nordstraße toward it.

It was drizzling lightly. There were pleasant bourgeois house façades nearby, and trees that were going to be beautiful in full leaf.

***

In many ways, Leipzig reminded me agreeably of Berlin, although of course the cities aren't the same. I felt the mixture of building epochs was similar, it also felt strikingly liberal though maybe just because leftwing graffiti and posters predominated while I saw no right-wing counterparts, there were also gold 'stumbling stones' in the sidewalks that commemorated people who had lived there but were persecuted during the Nazi era. Dark green street water pumps sometimes resembled, sometimes did not resemble ones that have survived in Berlin.

It looked like Prussian industry had collaborated across the two cities.

To the west of the Hauptbahnhof there are still a few remnants of the imperial railway's freight industry. (But there were strikingly few residential buildings that looked like they came from the Weimar Era to me, so I wondered if the 1920s had also seen a massive underinvestment outside of the capital city.) The gas lanterns with their 'Dreibündelpfeilermasten' (if I recall correctly; at any rate, basically, fluted columns) were also familiar.

And while there are more onion domes in Saxony, and more stepped gables with scalloped edges, I felt that the underlying principle was the same.

***

First, however, there were modern high-rise buildings, none of them understated. One of them, a grandiose Westin hotel with tinkling fountain that looked almost like post-1989 capitalism had compounded a low, boxy foyer building and a few brand names onto a GDR Plattenbau.

A Leipzig hotel, seen through the columns
of another building that reminded me of the giant mushrooms
in an old film adaptation of Jules Verne's
Journey to the Centre of the Earth. 

Another corner of what I thought of as the 'mushroom building'
It houses a Saxon bank.

Besides the Leipzig Zoo was nearby.

An animal smell — like the kind you'd scent at a petting zoo, or a farm — drifted over the white walls. Reliefs of animal footprints were embedded in the sidewalks for blocks around the buildings themselves. At the main entrance, growths of bamboo leaves were partly desiccated in the Leipzig climate and I wondered if it would feel too mundane to grow plants that are native to Saxon forests there instead.

When I passed other entrances on my way back from the church, zoo security staff and at least one other employee were heading in and out of the parts of the complex to which guests weren't permitted. And a raven sat on the wall.

I thought that the elaborate structure with tower of the Congress Hall was a church, and was mildly disappointed when it wasn't, and turned out to be from the turn of the 19th/20th centuries.

It did make me feel smug to realize that my book research about Berlin's architecture has usually made it quite easy (even outside of its borders) to recognize and concentrate on the buildings that have the longest history. While still appreciating more modern historicist buildings as the aesthetically interesting architectural apparitions that they are.

Finally I reached the brick gates that were clearly some of the oldest parts of the zoo.

The gates of the Leipzig Zoo (1899-1900).

Walking along the Parthenstraße was more melancholy. A concrete channel formed boxy banks, and along one side of it, a subdued turquoise river flowed as willows began to sprout bright yellow-green leaves above it.

Monument to an event of the Holocaust,
near the Parthestraße, with the modern riverbed behind it

On a bank, a dark grey monument commemorated the forced gathering in this riverbed of Jewish people, in preparation for deportation to a concentration camp, in 1938.

But a cheery residential building with yellow and red patterns on the pale façade nearby, blue grape hyacinths growing from the strip of grass around its props, young trees that had been planted as a community initiative on the banks of the Parthe as well and that had little signs with messages about who had donated the trees, and the cars passing in the street, pulled you back into the 'now.'

Then I began zigzagging to the city centre. On the way there, it became even clearer how thoroughly mixed the pre-imperial, imperial, GDR, and post-Reunification architecture including current building sites was.

The tower appears to be of the Nikolaikirche,
Given this church's historic importance during German Reunification
and medieval origins, it's a pity I didn't recognize and visit it

Sic transit gloria mundi:
A pre-war building of the Hotel Astoria
and rapid real estate development occurring around it
as daffodils bloom in front.

Leipzig's pedestrian sections of the historic city centre reminded me of Strasbourg's, and had roughly the same mixture of shops. Again it was quiet, though. The elaborate drain covers were also a direct reminder that we were in Leipzig instead.

A Leipzig drain cover.
Inscribed with "Kanalisation der Stadt Leipzig."

It took a long time to see a shop or restaurant that was open, and then it was a bakery that was just receiving a fresh delivery from a truck outside.

A chandelier:
truly 'bang for our buck'

At the Old Stock Exchange, a whitewashed 17th century building that resembled a galleon to me, with its levels and balustrades and its ornamental waterspouts and its gilded decorations, I began to encounter the truly tourist sights.

The old stock exchange (left)
Based on architectural elements & scale,
I'm positive the building behind it postdates the 1880s,
and this old photograph seems to support that estimate.

I admired the white periwinkles that grew in a massy field behind a fence, as I had never seen periwinkles that weren't purple. And I wondered to whom a statue was dedicated, which was facing away from me. I hoped it was Mozart, and instead it was Goethe — my nemesis ever since Faust first crossed my path, that pompous self-admirer. 😠

To the right, I admired the shop windows, which mingled Easter and Christmas displays.

At the Market Square; the Old Town Hall was first built in the Renaissance.
The U-Bahn station is to the left
(not depicted)

It looked like there was more than one relic of colonial times, like this building that reminded me of Berlin's Afrikahaus and whose sculpted heads underneath the balconies seem like an anthropological allusion to artwork like the Moai. The juxtaposition of a Unicef office was interesting.

Having crossed the market square and the deep red stone of the U-Bahn station — hurrying more because the shops around the square often bore names of retailers I'd worked on for my previous job, and somewhat undermined my sense of relaxation — I stumbled at last on the Thomaskirche.