A Short History of Leipzig

Despite the great variety of important historical events the history of Leipzig is primarily shaped by the city’s self-perception as free trade and citizen town. The ultimate ambitions of Leipzig’s citizens have always been economic independence and the political right of self-determination for more than 800 years of city history.

Leipzig as Exhibition Centre / Fair Centre

Already the first recorded town letter of about 1165 granted Leipzig its city charter and market rights. Later in 1497 and 1507 Maximilian I. awarded Leipzig and its markets special imperial privileges. Thus, in the course of time the city of Leipzig has developed to become the “mother of all trade fairs”. Leipzig has been a central turntable in the East-West trade for a long time. Already in the 18th century the most important German trade fair took place here.

The trade fair was switching over to a sample fair in 1895. The so-called MM (Mustermesse) was arranged as annual universal fair in spring and autumn until the year of 1991. The exhibition spaces were spread among numerous historical fair building situated in the city centre and various halls, pavilions and open spaces around the area of the Old Fair exhibition centre south of the city centre.

In 1996 the 'New Fair exhibition centre of Leipzig was opened in the North of the city. It has five highly modern joined exhibition halls and has been provided with an appropriate convention centre. All over the year the New Fair is now location for a lot of distinguished international fairs, conventions and symposia.

Leipzig as City of Books

Next to being a city of fair and trade Leipzig is also a city of great importance concerning art, culture and science. The university founded in 1409 is the second oldest one in Germany after Heidelberg.

Leipzig has become famous as city of books and publishing. Publishers like Baedeker, Reclam, Göschen und Brockhaus and authors like Goethe, Schiller, Gottsched, Gellert, Klopstock and Lessing, to name just a few, especially added to this reputation.

Both the German National Library / Deutsche Bücherei and the German Library for the Blind / Deutschen Zentralbibliothek für Blinde are based in Leipzig.

The Academy of Visual Arts Leipzigt emanated from the Royal Academy of Graphic Art and Book Trade and is surely one of the most important art academies in Germany and beyond.

Leipzig as City of Music

Leipzig’s reputation as city of music is unquestioned. Bach, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Schumann, Wagner, Lortzing and Mahler worked here among othersr.

The annual Leipzig Bach Festival has developed into a music event of international importance and quality, which attracts visitors from all over the world.

The St. Thomas’s Boys choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra are also to be mentioned. The St. Thomas’s Boys choir performs on a regular basis in the St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach once worked as choirmaster and composer. The Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the oldest and most famous German concert orchestras. It has emerged from a foundation established by wealthy citizens of the city of Leipzig in the 18th century.

Leipzig as Industrial Town in the 19th Century

After the Battle of the Nations and the Congress of Vienna also Leipzig had to face the great upheavals and changes of the 19th century, which was characterized by social and political as well as technical and industrial revolutions. There was hardly ever a time to have altered the face of the city of Leipzig as deeply as the 19th century.

The profound industrialization started in about the middle of the 19th century, when a Saxon-German railway net was built starting with the first German intercity railway from Leipzig to Dresden in 1839. Rural communes, until then independent communities, were gradually suburbanized and Leipzig soon grew to become the large city of today.

Leipzig as City of Architecture

Eine rege Bautätigkeit begleitete die Expansion der Stadt. Ein Höhepunkt war der Bau des A brisk building activity went along with the city’s expansion. A climax was the construction of the New City Hall on the foundations of the old Pleissenburg in the southwest of the Old Town from 1899 till 1905. Here, an impressing architecture was formed, which completely mirrored the self-conception of Leipzig’s citizens not only at that time.

Today Leipzig is the architectural capital of the historism due to the intensive building activity in the second half of the 19th century. During the so-called “Gründerjahre” Leipzig was in search of an own stylistic self-conception and got inspired by a variety of different historical forms in architecture. Those forms included elements from the Romanesque, the Gothic, the Renaissance or the Baroque, which were used, newly interpreted and combined with each other. Most of the 15.000 cultural monuments in Leipzig originate in this era.

Leipzig today

It is due to the great amount of construction work and achievements in renovation of the last years, that the tremendous wealth of buildings from the “Gründerjahre” and the Jugendstil in Leipzig has been brought back to public consciousness.

In Leipzig neither the destruction in World War II nor the extensive demolition works in the years after were as extensive as in other German cities. Thus, an excellent building stock has been preserved here.

Within the city centre the numerous passage ways, yards and arcades of the former fair buildings are especially to be mentioned. They form an own inner city path system which has already been renovated to a large extent and gets the finishing touches in the 21st century.

By now respectable, well-known companies like BMW, Porsche and DHL have chosen Leipzig as location of business. A reason is on the one hand of course the highly modern and excellent infrastructure of the region. On the other hand they are surely conscious about finding a new environment where modernity is combined with tradition and history.

Apart from all the historic places, sights, museums and cultural events taking place in Leipzig one must not forget the special flair the city of Leipzig possesses. As small metropolis with multiple shops, cafés, bars and restaurants it is ideal for shopping, strolling and relaxing.

The Central Station of Leipzig by itself is worth a visit, since it is one of Europe’s largest terminal stations. It has been completely renovated and rebuilt between 1995 and 1997 and is now a popular meeting place housing more than a hundred shops, cafés, restaurants and service facilities with daily opening hours till late in the evening.