From about the 7th century, Slavonic migrants settled at the confluence of the rivers Weisse Elster, Parthe and Pleisse. They call this location Lipsk, meaning, "Place of the lime trees".
In about 1165, Leipzig was granted municipal status and market privileges. The so-called "Leipzig Charter“ is considered to be its foundation document.
Leipzig's importance as a trading centre dates back as far as the late Middle Ages. In 1497 and 1507, Emperor Maximilian I granted the town The Imperial Trade Fair Prerogative, which decreed inter alia, that no other trade fair may be held within a radius of 15 miles of the city without the goods having been first offered in Leipzig.
Thus, the foundation stone is laid for Leipzig's economic expansion in the 16th century. We find important structural evidence of this early period in the Old Town Hall. The eight times mayor, Hieronymus Lotter, had this Town Hall built between 1556 and 1557. With its harmonious proportions, it is one of the exceptional architectural gems of the Central German Renaissance period.
Today, in the foyer of the town hall, there stands an 1823 model of Leipzig as it was before the beginning of the industrial revolution. The medieval city layout within the “Promenadenring” remains unchanged to this day. From an architectural point of view, the city centre is one of the most multi-facetted in Germany.
The Old Weighing House was built about the same time as the Town Hall. The revenue from customs duties and weighing charges constituted an essential source of income for the city, which is why it was always a centre of activity during trade fairs.
Surrounding the harmoniously-proportioned Market Square, we find buildings dating from a period covering six centuries, from late Gothic to contemporary architecture.
Koenigshaus
Markt 17, 04109 Leipzig
1706/07 A.: Renovation by Johann Gregor Fuchs
Of particular historic and cultural importance is the Baroque Koenigshaus, which served as accommodation for Czar Peter the Great, August the Strong and Frederick the Great.
Directly opposite the Petersstrasse, the architects Weis & Volkmann succeeded in further developing the Trade-Fair-House on Marketplace in a contemporary style.
Old Stock Exchange
Naschmarkt, 04109 Leipzig
1678 - 1687 A.: Johann Georg Starcke
In 1678, a little more than 100 years after the Town Hall was built, work started on the construction of the Old Stock Exchange, the first baroque edifice in the city. Here, people not only met to conduct business but also to celebrate in a fitting manner thereafter. Its importance for the city and trade is reflected in its façade which, decorated with festoons and garlands, creates a festive impression. Two winged cherubs above the arched portal are holding a gilded Leipzig municipal coat of arms.
It was once called the "Open-air museum of Baroque architecture“. And indeed, since their renovation, the bourgeois town house in the Katharinenstrasse have regained their old grandeur. With their splendidly decorated façades, their extravagantly constructed bays and crowned gables, these buildings reflect the prosperous bourgeoisie of the 18th century.
Join us in our movie and admire the well designed façades of Baroque architecture.
The Romanus House at the corner of the road to Bruehl is of special historic-architectural significance. The client, Franz Conrad Romanus, was imposed on the Leipzig Council as mayor by August the Strong. Soon after his investiture, at the early age of thirty, he had this splendid house built by the municipal master-builder Johann Gregor Fuchs. However, Romanus was not in a position to finance the project from his own funds, so he falsified municipal promissory notes, which, of course, was soon discovered. After 41 years in prison, he finally died in the Koenigstein fortress in 1746.
Today, this building represents an early milestone in Saxon Baroque architecture.
The oldest surviving bourgeois town house at 8, Hainstrasse, dates from the middle of the 16th century. In the course of time, numerous rebuilding works and extensions have altered the house. The wooden box bay, which in today’s condition is so striking, is an outstanding example of Leipzig's early Baroque architecture and the carpenter’s craftsmanship.
May we invite you to Hainstrasse in the movie? You are welcome to visit the Jaegerhof arcade, too.
With 750.000 inhabitants, Leipzig was the fifth largest city in Germany before the 2nd World War, a status that it primarily owed to its primacy as the trade-fair capital of Europe.
In 1945, however, this came to an end. The population had fallen to less than 600,000. The reconstruction of the relatively slightly damaged centre is, nevertheless, painfully slow.
The building of houses in the city centre, still pursued until the beginning of the seventies, ultimately ends with the approval for a green-field house-building project for the mass market. In 1976, the foundation stone is laid for the 100,000 inhabitant satellite town of Gruenau, thus signalling the beginning of the end of central urban habitation.
From 1992 until 1998, there were more tower cranes in operation in boomtown Leipzig than in almost any other German city. Things are again on the up-and-up. Attracted by subsidies and tax concessions, investors help to put a new gloss on Leipzig. After a good ten years, 2/3 of the inner-city buildings have been renovated and the population that had declined steeply in the interim has reached half a million once more, the tendency is still upward. No wonder, since today the city is as attractive as it has seldom been in the past.
› These page numbers
reflect to the book „LEIPZIG Architektur von der Romanik bis zur Gegenwart“
