My postcard and stamp week: Germany: Leipzig

Monday, September 14, 2015

Germany: Leipzig

On Friday and Saturday I visited Leipzig, the largest city of Saxony, and bought some cards for my collection.

Four of them show Auerbach's Cellar. Auerbach's Cellar is the best known and second oldest restaurant in Leipzig. It is known as one of the settings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust I. The cards show the Large Cellar, the two sculptures at the entrance and the paintings of Luther's Secret Meeting with Heinrich Stromer von Auerbach and of Mori Ogai.

In Leipzig I also visited the St. Nicholas Church. Two of the cards I bought there are related to the Peaceful Revolt in the GDR in 1989. On one of them I applied a stamp about the Lutherweg. Another card I bought shows the church's organ, the largest organ in Saxony.

Another church I visited in Leipzig was the Thomaskirche and at the church shop I bought five postcards. Two of them show the St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig, the Thomanerchor. The Thomanerchor is a famous boy's choir and was founded in 1212. There are 92 boys in the choir and they attend a boarding school. The Saxon Boy's Choirs were added to the German Nationwide Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The other cards show the Bach Window, the Keyboard Exercises by Johann Sebastian Bach and the Mendelssohn Monument.

During my stay in Leipzig I also visit the Town History Museum. The Town History Museum shows exhibits about Leipzig's history. I bought a postcard of the main building, the Old Town Hall, at Christmas time and got a postcard of the special exhibition at the New Building about Leipzig's 1000th anniversary.

At the museum I also bought seven cards about Leipzig's famous residents. The cards show Martin Luther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

I also bought two cards about the Leipzig Trade Fair. The Leipzig Trade Fair was first held in 1165, making Leipzig one of the oldest fairgrounds in the World. During the time of the German Division was the Leipzig Trade Fair an important meeting place for businessmen and politicians from East and West. One of the two cards is an old East German maxicard from 1957 and the other card shows the New Fairgrounds.