Leipzig

Today, we visited Leipzig, the second-largest city in Saxony.  The visit started with going to a history museum focused on East Germany.  Apparently, the country was officially a democracy despite the obvious Soviet control.  However, rather than ballots giving people a choice of who to vote for,  the ballots presented a plan with the socialist party holding 90% of seats and gave people the option to oppose the plan.  In order to oppose the plan, people had to go through a complex and time-consuming process that effectively revealed opponents to the Stasi (secret police). 

The museum also showed what it was like to shop in East Germany.  Customers would have to wait for the cashier to get the day's items, a process that could take hours, and often only essentials were available.  There would occasionally be more "luxury" items like bananas, but they were very hard to obtain if you didn't have connections.  I have to say, I can't imagine needing to shop this way.

The museum had some exhibits on attempts to leave the country as people's lives became worse.  I think it is telling that people decided to leave with just the clothes they were wearing after construction started on the Berlin Wall because they knew it could be their last chance, and life was so much worse in the DDR.

Leipzig was the location of several major protests that helped lead to the reunification of Germany.  While a series of demonstrations and riots in the 1950s were violently shut down, the crowds that formed in 1989 were so large (upwards of 70,000) that the military was afraid to intervene and cause a huge massacre.

Afterwards, we went on a tour of the city of Leipzig.  It originally grew to prominence in the Middle Ages because it was on the crossroads of two major trading routes (the one going between France and Russia and the one going between Italy and the Baltic Sea).  After industrialization allowed mass production of items, they started the first forced-tour market (basically like IKEA).

The old "stock exchange" building

The old city hall was apparently built quickly using some old foundations, so part of the wall is not particularly straight.

One of the more famous buildings is the Thomaskirche.

It had a somewhat famous cantor from 1723-1750:

It sounds like every week, they have a concert featuring music by Bach, a local orchestra, and the church's boys choir.  I am thinking it would be nice to go some weekend.

The city was bombed during World War II, although it was not as badly destroyed as Dresden was, and many buildings, including all of the churches, survived.  Unfortunately, much of the rebuilding followed the DDR's complete lack of architectural style.

A house one of the mayors built by embezzling money from the city

Finally, here is a picture of the Nikolaikirche, the church that launched the major protests.