The history of the architecture of Leipzig extends from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Numerous typical buildings and valuable cultural monuments from different eras are still preserved or have been rebuilt. Leipzig, Germany, begins its architectural history with several buildings in the Romanesque style. An example of Gothic architecture in Leipzig is the late Gothic hall vault of the Thomaskirche (1482/1496). In the early modern period, the Old Town Hall was expanded in the Renaissance style. The city experienced the peak of urban design and artistic development from around 1870 to 1914 with historicism, Reformarchitektur and Art Nouveau. Numerous trade fair palaces, commercial buildings, representative buildings such as the Imperial Court Building and the new town hall and the arcade galleries known for the city were built. After the First World War, Leipzig became known for its neoclassicism. During the air raids on Leipzig in World War II, large parts of the city center, which was rich in historic buildings, were destroyed. This was followed in the post-war period by (socialist) neoclassicism and modernism.
Leipzig was founded on the site of the later churchyard of St. Matthew as “urbs LIPSK”[1] (Lower Sorbian: Lipa, German: Linde, English: Tilia) around 929. The castle urbs LIBZI was first mentioned in 1015 in the chronicle of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg. The Leipzig art historian Herbert Küas conducted research there between 1950 and 1956. The castle was destroyed in 1217 and the later Leipzig Monastery of the Franciscans was built on this site in 1253. The oldest churches, St. Nicholas (1165) and St. Thomas (1212), are of Romanesque origin. The monastery of St. Thomas and the monastery of St. George were built in the 13th century. The later Katharinenstrasse was named after a Romanesque St. Catherine's chapel consecrated around 1233. The later university church Paulinerkirche emerged from the Dominican monastery founded around 1230. Petersstrasse was also named after the Romanesque chapel of St. Petri.
In the 13th century there were four castles, of which only the Pleissenburg remained as a margrave's castle. In 1270 there was a council consisting of twelve councilors. These were subordinate to a margrave mayor from Pleißenburg.
Important Romanesque buildings in Leipzig are or were:[2]
Around 1500 Leipzig had 7,000 to 8,000 inhabitants, but was not as important as Erfurt, which had 13,000 inhabitants at the same time. Through imperial trade fair privileges, the Leipzig Trade Fair was elevated to the status of an Imperial Fair in 1497 and 1507. The provisions of the Leipzig trade fair privilege were particularly at the expense of other regional trading centers such as Erfurt, Halle and Magdeburg, because the privilege of 1507 stated that no trade fair, no fair, no business or sale could be held within a 112km (70miles) radius of Leipzig - first of all to visit the Leipzig trade fair and previously all goods were available in Leipzig. This meant that trade fairs in Erfurt, Halle and Magdeburg were prohibited. Leipzig thus developed into a nationally important trading center in central Germany. In Leipzig grew an important merchant bourgeoisie.
For trade, buildings such as the town hall, the armory, the public weigh house, the stables and the granary were built in the Renaissance style, which flourished in Saxony as the Saxon Renaissance. Hieronymus Lotter gave the Old Town Hall its current facade in 1556/1557. The “Leipzig Erker” (Leipzig square oriel window)[8] has had its own tradition in Leipzig since the 16th century. The first stone oriel window was built in 1523 at the Haus zur goldenen Schlange (Golden Snake House). This type of “oriel window became increasingly widespread”.[9] The art historian Wolfgang Haubenreißer notes that Hieronymus Lotter's Renaissance oriel windows in particular influenced the other homeowners. Lotter's works are the single-story box oriel windows from 1556 at the Old Town Hall, the Pappenheim oriel window in the courtyard of the Pleissenburg and the two-story corner bay window on Lotter's home from 1550 at Katharinenstrasse 26.
Important buildings of the Renaissance in Leipzig are or were:[10]
After the Thirty Years' War, Leipzig achieved a leading role in Central Europe as a trade fair city and, thanks to its own trade connections in all directions, it developed into one of the most important trading centers in Europe. The Baroque period began with the construction of the Leipzig Stock Exchange Building and took on an independent, bourgeois form in this city. Leipzig's Katharinenstrasse, Leipzig's market square and Leipzig's Petersstrasse developed into places with bourgeois, four-story magnificent buildings with multi-story, ornately decorated box oriel windows. Since Leipzig was a leader in printing and bookselling, Leipzig also became a trading center for progressive ideas. Outside the city walls, unhindered by guild barriers, numerous manufactory productions emerged, which marked the beginning of Leipzig's industrial development. Trade fairs and manufactories were run by large entrepreneurs who were also bankers who had immigrated to Leipzig from southern and western Germany. The profit earned was immediately invested in baroque buildings.[15]
The “Baroque Leipzig Oriel Window”[16] was influenced by the two-story corner oriel window on Hieronymus Lotter's house from 1550 at Katharinenstrasse 26. The two-story corner oreil window of the Romanus House at Katharinenstrasse 23 corresponded to the oriel window of Hieronymus Lotter's home. An “important link between the Leipzig oriel windows of the Renaissance and those of the Baroque”[9] was the oriel window of the house at Hainstrasse 3, called Weber's Hof. The oriel window from 1662 is two-story and shows decorations from the early Baroque: festoons, putti, cornucopias. Paul Wiedemann's oriel window on the Fürstenhaus (Prince's House), made of Rochlitz porphyry tuff, was influenced by the Torgau Hartenfels Castle (Johann-Friedrich-Bau) from 1533–1536. “A Leipzig special form from the end of the 17th century”[17] are the box oriel windows at Hainstraße 8 and in the courtyard of the Stentzlers Hof exhibition center at Petersstrasse 39 to 41. These oriel windows are “lavishly decorated with vegetal ornamentation”.[18] The box oriel window at Hainstrasse 8 was described as follows: “The stucco work, floral tendrils and a lion's head holding flower garlands still bear witness to the extraordinary quality of the craftsmanship of the time.”[19]
Important Baroque buildings in Leipzig are or were:[20]
More pictures can be found here.
Gurlitt[38] describes that in the 1830s, Rococo also appeared in Leipzig in the forms that Jean de Bodt, Zacharias Longuelune and Johann Christoph Knöffel used in the neighboring Saxon Dresden.
Gurlitt describes Rococo buildings in Leipzig.[38] The Rococo style was represented in Leipzig by George Werner, who had a preference for grouping the windows on an axis across different floors with lesenes. Rococo buildings in Leipzig are or were:
The Leipzig Trade Fair and the associated market advantages played an important role in Leipzig's industrial development. New exhibition buildings were created for the new form of the sample fair. In addition, Leipzig's extensive banks and financial markets were important for the city's industrial development, for which the Alte Handelsbörse (old trading exchange) was used. Another factor in development was Leipzig's early railway connection to raw material and sales markets. The suburbs became densely built-up mixed areas consisting of working-class residential areas and industrial and commercial facilities. The mixed areas grew together with the newly created industrial suburbs in the former village surroundings of Leipzig. As a result, Leipzig's population increased from 33,000 in 1815 to 100,000 around 1870. Leipzig was now one of the leading industrial cities in Germany.
In those times of a rapid urban development the style of neoclassical architecture was prevalent. Representatives of classicism in Leipzig were Friedrich Weinbrenner, Eduard Pötzsch, Albert Geutebrück, Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe and Carl Gotthard Langhans.
The Old Leipzig Theater,[48] built in 1766, was rebuilt in 1817 by Friedrich Weinbrenner in the neoclassicism style. The plain west side was redesigned by Weinbrenner into a “representative, classicist entrance front”.[49] The front curtain painted by Adam Friedrich Oeser was replaced in 1799 by a curtain by Hans Veit Schnorr.
Eduard Pötzsch designed the masonic lodges Apollo and Balduin zur Linde (1847), the Hotel de Pologne, the Leipzig Dresdner Bahnhof train station and the Leipzig Bayerischer Bahnhof train station in the neoclassicist style.
According to James Stevens Curl, Karl Friedrich Schinkel is the “greatest German architect of the first half of the 19th century”.[50] Albert Geutebrück designed the building using Schinkel's facade design for the university building Augusteum. What remains is the portal of the old university (Schinkel gate). According to Schinkel's designs, Geutebrück also built the three-story, fifteen-axis building of the former Schützenhaus (today Wintergartenstrasse) from 1833 to 1834.[51] Geutebrück also built: Großer Blumenberg, the Post Office Building on Augustusplatz, the Booksellers' Exchange Building and the Royal Palace.
The concert hall[52] [53] was built from 1780 to 1783 in the armory wing of the Gewandhaus under the direction of the building director Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe in the classicist style. The ceiling was painted by Adam Friedrich Oeser, but in 1833 it was painted over with an architectural painting by Johann August Giesel from Dresden. Dauthe designed the banker Löhr's garden house (1772) and rebuilt the interior of the late Gothic Leipzig Nikolaikirche (1785 to 1796) in the neoclassicist style.
The New Leipzig Theater[54] was built on the north side of Augustusplatz between 1864 and 1867 in the neoclassicist style based on designs by the late Royal Prussian Building Councilor Carl Gotthard Langhans, architect of the Royal Opera House (today: Berlin State Opera) in Berlin. The Royal Prussian Building Council's designs for the Leipzig City Theater were based on the Royal Opera House in Berlin, which was also remodeled by Langhans in the neoclassicist architectural style. The façade facing the Schwanenteich (swan pond) showed parallels to the Acropolis of Athens. Like the Erechtheion located there, the New Leipzig Theater had a vestibule facing the swan pond, which was supported by six larger-than-life girl figures (caryatids) instead of columns.
The Roman House was built in 1832/1833 based on designs by Woldemar Hermann for the publisher Hermann Härtel. Although it has neoclassicist elements, it is seen as the beginning of the Neo-Renaissance in Leipzig according to its model and intention.[55] It was based on the Villa Farnesina in Rome, a building of the High Renaissance, and, like this Roman villa, featured a five-arched loggia. The building was known for its paintings, including the seven-panel Odysseus cycle and the six-panel Cinderella cycle. The house became Ernst Ziller's model for the realization of Heinrich Schliemann's Renaissance residential palace Iliou Melathron in Athens.
A garden hall in the Roman house contained the Odysseus cycle. The artist was Friedrich Preller the Elder.[56] The boxes of the Odysseus cycle, created based on the frescoes, were exhibited in the Municipal Museum on Augustusplatz. The Preller frescoes were moved to the walls of the stairwell of the university library before the house was demolished in 1904, but were destroyed in the Second World War.
The ballroom of the house showed six individual pictures of Cinderella in wax colors based on Moritz von Schwind's picture cycle from 1852 to 1854. The artist was Julius Naue, who painted the cycle from 1873 to 1875. When the house was demolished in 1904, the paintings and masonry were sawn out of the walls and installed in the auditorium of the II Higher Girls' School[57] (today the Gaudig School) in 1907. When the Workers and Farmers Faculty moved into the Gaudig School building in 1949, four paintings were replaced by contemporary images. Two of the paintings are now in the foyer of the Leipziger Volkszeitung publishing house.
After Germany's victory in the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent continuous French reparation payments, there was an economic upswing and a construction boom in Germany in the style of historicism. The Victory Monument in Leipzig, which commemorated Germany's victory and was erected on the Leipzig market square in 1888, was demolished in 1946 because it "symbolized militarism".[58] The monument, created by Rudolf Siemering from the Berlin School of Sculpture, consisted of the allegory of Germania as well as depictions of various historical personalities of Saxony and the Wilhelmine Empire: the German Emperor Wilhelm I, the German Emperor Frederick III, King Albert of Saxony, Reich Chancellor Bismarck and Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke.
Between 1871 and 1914, Leipzig's population rose from 100,000 to 625,000. The suburbs were incorporated. It started in 1889 with Reudnitz and Anger-Crottendorf. Thonberg, Sellerhausen, Volkmarsdorf, Gohlis and Eutritzsch followed in 1890. In 1891 came Lindenau, Plagwitz, Schleußig, Kleinzschocher, Connewitz, Lößnig. In 1910 they were Dölitz, Dösen, Probstheida, Stötteritz, Stünz and Möckern.[59]
According to Wolfgang Hocquél, Leipzig's historicism is important: "The largest share of the 1,410 listed buildings in the city of Leipzig is made up of around 700 residential buildings of historicist architecture...". Representatives of historicism in Leipzig were August Friedrich Viehweger, Martin Gropius, Heino Schmieden, Hugo Licht, Paul Richter, Arwed Roßbach, Hans Enger, Karl Weichardt and Otto Simonson.
According to the art historian and monument conservator Wolfgang Hocquél, the Leipzig passages and courtyards are cultural monuments of European importance.[60] There are world heritage efforts in Leipzig to specifically honor this cultural era, which left unique traces in the city.
The empire, which was created when the empire was founded in 1871 after winning the Franco-Prussian War, located its highest court, the Reichsgericht, in Leipzig. The building was designed in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style. After the founding of the empire, the “style of the Italian Renaissance was propagated as a national style ”.[61] The Italian Neo-Renaissance was based on Renaissance architecture. The essential design elements of Classical antiquity were adopted. Numerous buildings were built around the Imperial Court that “took up the formal language of the Renaissance”:[62] the New Concert House, the Municipal Museum, the Reich Post Office Building, the New Commercial Exchange (Neue Börse), the University Library, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Royal Academy of Arts and the School of Applied Arts (design by Otto Warth) and a polytechnic.
The Reich Court Building was created in the style of historicist architecture based on models from the Italian Renaissance. The Reich Court building was built from 1888 to 1895 based on designs by Ludwig Hoffmann and Peter Dybwad. The dome is decorated with the sculpture The Truth. Other figures from German legal history decorate the building, including Eike of Repgow, Johann of Schwarzenberg, Johann Jakob Moser, Carl Gottlieb Svarez (General State Laws for the Prussian States), Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach and Friedrich Carl von Savigny. The interior furnishings, including the figurines and wall decorations, deal with the themes of investigation, judgment, execution and mercy.
The New Concert Hall[63] in the music district was built between 1882 and 1884 based on designs by Martin Gropius and Heino Schmieden and opened on 11 December 1884. The building contained two concert halls, changing rooms and music rooms. The main hall was 37.5m (123feet) long and 19m (62feet) wide. The hall was 14.6m (47.9feet) high. The historicist facade was based on the classical Renaissance: "The facade was designed entirely in the spirit of the Hellenic Renaissance direction cultivated by Gropius and in closer connection to Schinkel's Konzerthaus Berlin."[64] Otto Lessing created the architectural decoration. The structure became the model for the Symphony Hall in Boston, built in 1900. The Mendelssohn Monument stood in front of the building until 9 November 1936, created based on a design by Werner Stein and inaugurated on 26 May 1892. It was demolished at the instigation of Rudolf Haake, deputy of Mayor Carl Goerdeler, during his absence and the statue probably melted down. Damaged during the Bombing of Leipzig in World War II, the ruins of the second Gewandhaus were demolished on 29 March 1968.
The core of the Municipal Museum on Augustusplatz consisted of a work by the Munich architect and professor Ludwig Lange in “Italian Renaissance forms”[65] from 1855. At the end of 1881, an application was submitted to significantly enlarge the building based on a design by Hugo Licht. The design was further supplemented by Baron Heinrich von Ferstel in Vienna and Heino Schmieden from Berlin. The construction costs were financed with 600,000 marks from the assets of Franz Dominic Grassi. In addition, Grassi donated another 99,200 marks to renovate the inner main staircase. The eastern loggia of the old building, which was painted by Professor Theodor Grosse, was built up as a result of the work. Since the loggia no longer received any light from outside, a large skylight room was created in front of the loggia. In a mirror image, a loggia was also created on the western side with indirect lighting through a skylight hall in front of it. The renovation took place from 1883 to 1886.[66]
The facades were made of ashlar, the figurative decorations were made of Istrian limestone. It was built according to models of the “Italian High Renaissance.”[67] The forms were “made to appear somewhat more energetically […] than they were in Lange 's original building.”[67] The main staircase was made of Salzburg marble, Istrian limestone and polished granite. The vaults under the skylights and ceilings showed picturesque decoration.[67]
According to a design by the Leipzig architect Hugo Licht, the Royal Conservatory of Music was built between 1885 and 1887 at Grassistrasse 8 in the music neighbourhood (Musikviertel) in Leipzig-Mitte and inaugurated on 5 December 1887.
The Reichspost building[68] was rebuilt from 1881 to 1884 by Paul Richter in the style of historicism based on models of the Italian Renaissance: “The facades are partly made of ashlar and partly made of fine brick in the special forms of the Saxon school of the Italian Renaissance”.[69] The material of the architectural structures consisted of sandstone. The smooth surfaces were plastered. The Reichspost and Telegraph Administration building had three main floors with large hall-like rooms. The property covered 3920m2, of which 2824m2 was built and 1096m2 was open space. Joseph Kaffsack created six 40NaN0 tall attic statues on the main post office, which were commissioned by the Reichspost and Telegraph Administration and were allegories of postal services, telegraphy, art, science, trade and industry. The allegorical figure with wings represented the most modern form of message transmission at the time, telegraphy. This figure was juxtaposed with a second figure, also winged, which symbolized postal mail. The other four wingless figures in between represented trade, art, science and industry. This arrangement of figures indicated the importance of rapid message transmission.[70]
Towards the end of the 19th century, the era of large universal and specialty department stores began in Leipzig, including the Leipzig fashion store Gustav Steckner and the Leipzig department store Althoff, between Neumarkt, Petersstrasse and Preußergäßchen. The southern entrance to Petersstrasse was adorned on the left by the representative August Polich fashion house, which was demolished during the Nazi dictatorship. Roßbach provided the designs for the Polich department store at Markgrafenstrasse 2/Petersstrasse/Schloßgasse. The building, equipped with an escalator, was built around 1888 and expanded in 1898.[71] August Polich's department store group also had its own mail order business and laundry factories. The purveyor to the court, August Polich, Leipzig, was next to Rudolph Herzog, Berlin; Hermann Gerson, Berlin; N. Israel, Berlin; Abraham Wertheim, Berlin in the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (Association for the Defense of Anti-Semitism).[72] In the 30th volume of Merian, Heinz Maegerlein describes his experiences in the old Jewish Leipzig and the Jewish department store Polich. Maegerlein describes Leipzig as an “extraordinarily complex city”, including Leipzig as a city of the fur trade and “industry”:
The Neue Handelsbörse (New trading exchange building)[73] at Tröndlinring 2 was built from 1884 to 1887 according to designs by the architects Hans Enger and Karl Weichardt in the style of historicism based on models of the Italian Renaissance: “The architecture outside and inside is carried out in the Italian High Renaissance”.[74] On the ground floor there was a 600m2 main hall for the trading exchange and another 280m2 hall for the grain exchange, another 180m2 hall as well as a reading hall and the meeting room of the Chamber of Commerce. The built area was 2400m2.
Numerous residential buildings were also built in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style: the architects Hermann Ende and Wilhelm Böckmann created a two-story villa with a porch in the shape of an ancient triumphal arch. The building, built in 1876/77, was located at Sidonienstrasse 13 and was built for the commercial councilor Julius Meißner.[75] In 1890–1891, the architectural firm Pfeifer & Händel created a large villa at Feldstrasse 3 (today Lützowstrasse 9) in Leipzig-Gohlis for the engineer and founder Adolf Bleichert, owner of the largest cable car factory. The facades were made of Postelwitz and Cotta sandstone.[76] The building was named Villa Hilda after Bleichert's wife Hildegard. The dome and a side projection were destroyed in 1945. Since 1956 the building has been called the Klubhaus Heinrich Budde, after a former technician from the Bleicherts company; Interior renovations were made.[77] [78]
In 1882, Heino Schmieden from Berlin created the four-story, seven-window-wide residential building at An der Pleiße 9–10 for the banker Max Meyer. On the sides of the building there were two-story bay windows with caryatids and a tympanum above. A spacious portal with a balcony above marked the entrance area.[79]
In 1885/86 Max Pommer created the second Villa Meyer at Plagwitzerstrasse 55 (today Käthe-Kollwitz-Strasse 115) for the publishing bookseller Herrmann Julius Meyer.[80] After a general renovation, the building received the Denkmalpflegepreis (monument preservation award) in 2004.
Another building in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style was the Villa Giesecke, built in 1899 by the Berlin government architect Max Hasak for the type foundry owner Georg Giesecke at Carl-Tauchnitz-Straße 37 (today Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 21).[81]
Bruno Grimm created a four-story urban house with 12 window axes in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style in 1880 for the factory owner H. L. Wolff at Täubchenweg 1.[82] The architect Gustav Strauß created the four-story house at Promenadenstrasse 1 from 1881 to 1882.[79] The Architect and professor at the Art Academy Constantin Lipsius built the building at Königstrasse 33 for Ernst Keil's widow in 1861. The three-story building was decorated with an elaborate central Avant-corps and corner core.[83]
Max Bösenberg created two four-story residential buildings in the Italian Neo-Renaissance style on Stephanstrasse in Leipzig. The facades were divided into 15 window axes, the central and corner axes were emphasized like an avant-corps. Bösenberg built the semi-detached house at Stephanstrasse 10/12 for the Naumann brothers between 1882 and 1883.[84] In the years 1881–1882, Bösenberg created the semi-detached house at Stephanstrasse 16/18 for C. A. Schulze.[85] The two buildings built by Bösenberg on Stephanstrasse have been preserved.
Another four-story residential building, which was 17 window axes wide, stood at Stephanstrasse 14 and was built in 1880/1881 for the bookseller Franz Köhler based on plans by Karl Weichardt.[86]
For Moritz Lazarus, the Leipzig architect Steib built a five-story residential and commercial building at Packhofstrasse 11-13 from 1865 to 1866 that was 15 axes wide. The middle part was decorated with colossal columns that supported a gable triangle.[87] Lazarus was an internationally renowned Jewish scholar and champion of Jewish emancipation, co-founder and long-time vice-president of the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund (German-Israelitic Community Association), an umbrella organization of Jewish communities in Germany, founded in Leipzig in 1869 and expelled from Saxony in 1882. Alexander Rapaport (1833–1910), a fur trader, and his wife Maria Rapaport (1841–1912) lived in the building at Packhofstrasse 11–13. The Jewish company Hundert &/ Co., which traded in linen and cotton goods and had a branch at Hainstrasse 5, also had its headquarters in the house.[88]
Arwed Roßbach built a villa for the Leipzig merchant August Louis Davignon in 1880/1881. Roßbach also built a villa with a sandstone-clad facade in the Italian Renaissance style with stairs and terraces for the publishing bookseller Leopold Gebhardt (1880/1881). In 1894 Roßbach built Villa Swiderski for the manufacturer Philipp Swiderski ; well-known residents were Rudolf Swiderski and Hans Heinrich Reclam. The war-damaged villa was blown up in 1947. Roßbach built the building at Weststrasse 15 in Leipzig from 1874 to 1876 for Consul General Alfred Thieme. The construction costs for 1m2 of built area were 230 marks at that time. Roßbach built the Villa Gruner at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 19 (old Carl-Tauchnitz-Straße 35) in the neo-renaissance style for the city councilor R. Gruner from 1886 to 1887. The construction costs for 1m2 of built area were 335 marks.[89]
Max Pommer built the Villa Oelßner at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 13 (old Carl-Tauchnitz-Straße 29) for Wilhelm Oelßner in 1888. The construction costs for 1m2 of built area were 350 marks. Pommer also built Villa Ledig between 1881 and 1883.[90]
The oldest café in the city since 1711 and therefore one of Europe's oldest coffee bars is the baroque house Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum (“ Arabian Coffe Tree ”).
One of the best-known cafés was Café Metz in the Otto-Schill-Strasse 2 building. The two houses on the Dorotheenpassage (Otto-Schill-Strasse 1 and 2) were built in 1890/91 by the Leipzig architect and owner Paul Jacobi in the historicist style with a dome and corner oriel windows. Both buildings look like the gateway to the Colonnade Quarter (Kolonnadenviertel). They were designed to be identical mirror images and were each crowned with an onion-shaped dome in neo-Renaissance style. The café inside was lavishly decorated with stylized flowers. The building at Otto-Schill-Strasse 2 has been preserved and is since 2017 home of several offices of the city administration.[91]
The most famous hotel in Leipzig was the “Hotel Kaiserhof” at Georgi-Ring 7. The owner of the hotel was Robert Börner, a traiteur and Royal warrant of appointment. The building was built in 1889 according to designs by the architect Julius Zeißig in the style of historicism based on the model of “Baroque Renaissance”.[92]
The ground floor contained the porter's lodge, an office, a reading room, a small hall and a grand hall. The stairwell was lit by large windows. The steps were made of Carrara marble. The grand hall showed large paintings of the German Kaiser family.
thumb|German Renaissance Revival architecture: New Town Hall (2011)The Deutsches Buchhändlerhaus (German Booksellers House) was completed in 1888 based on designs by Kayser & von Großheim. The ballroom featured murals by Woldemar Friedrich, as well as a glass painting entitled Leipzig as the Center of the German Book Trade. The Leipzig bookseller's house was created in the style of historicism: "The façade design of the entire complex is an excellent achievement of the German Renaissance Revival style."[93] As a counterpart to the bookseller's house, the Deutsches Buchgewerbehaus (German Book Trade House) was built in the Graphic Quarter, which was also connected to the Leipzig book trade. The Renaissance Rivaval building, built by Emil Hagberg from 1898 to 1901, served to present the products of the graphic industry. Another building in the German Renaissance Revival style was the Villa Wölker at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 15 (old 31), which was completed in this style in 1888 for Consul General Wilhelm Wölker based on designs by Max Pommer.[94] The Villa Rehwoldt at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 29 (old 45) and the Villa Fritzsche at Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 37 (old 55) were also built according to designs by Max Pommer. Hugo Licht also designed the New Town Hall in the German Renaissance Revival architecture style. Gerhard Weidenbach and Richard Tschammer designed the Reformed Church in the style of the German Renaissance Revival Arhitecture (1896/99). The Huguenot cross on the church tower commemorates the origins of the members of Leipzig's Reformed community, who fled Catholic France as Huguenots.[95]
The building “Die Gute Quelle”, Brühl 42, was completed in the Gothic Revival architecture style in 1867 based on designs by the architect August Friedrich Viehweger. The client was the fur trader E. B. Lomer.[96] A sacred building in the Gothic Revival style was the Leipzig University Church of St. Pauli, designed by Arwed Roßbach. St. Peter's Church was built in this style in 1882/1885 according to designs by the architects August Hartel and Constantin Lipsius.
The tower of the Leipzig Central Market Hall was stylized in a Gothic Revival style based on the model of the campanile of the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio between 1889 and 1891 according to plans by the city planning director Hugo Licht.[97]
Hannelore Künzl describes how Otto Simonson mixed elements from different periods when building the Leipzig Synagogue, but all of them came from the Spanish-Islamic or North African cultures. According to Künzl, Simonson used the horseshoe-shaped arcades in the Leipzig synagogue for the first time. The Leipzig synagogue was not just one of many big city synagogues, it was a special synagogue because Leipzig, as a trade fair city, also had many Jewish visitors. Because of the role that the synagogue had in the trade fair city of Leipzig, the history of the Leipzig Jews and the reasons for adopting Islamic styles were particularly important (writes also Hammer-Schenk): Only the Saxon Emancipation Act allowed the Leipzig Jews to have one to found their own religious community. Besides Dresden, Leipzig was the only Saxon city that was allowed to have a Jewish religious community. The Emancipation Act lifted the ban on building synagogues in Saxony, so that a large synagogue could also be built in Leipzig. For Simonson - according to Künzl - the Orient was not only the country of origin of the Jews, but also the motherland in the religious sense, since the Jewish religion originated there. Simonson therefore connected the Leipzig synagogue with the Orient. Künzl explains that Simonson wanted to overcome his teacher, Gottfried Semper. While Semper used Arabic lettering ribbons as ornaments for the Dresden synagogue, Semper's student Simonson only used Hebrew lettering ribbons, for example in the frame of the eastern rose window and as ornamental ribbons in the horseshoe arches of the arcades. Semper student Simonson wanted to characterize the synagogue as a Jewish building more than his teacher. The models were the synagogue in Córdoba and the Synagogue of El Tránsito in Toledo, where Hebrew banners frame ornamental fields and window zones. According to Künzl, the synagogue in Leipzig created a type of synagogue that served as a model for many subsequent synagogue buildings.[98]
In 1903/1904 Oscar Schade delivered the designs for the Brody Synagogue, designed in the “neo-Moorish style”,[99] the interior of which (Torah ark, Bimah) was destroyed during the pogrom night of 9/10. November 1938. The Leipzig Stadtbad at Eutritzscher Straße 21 contains a sauna relaxation room designed in the Moorish style. The rooms were designed by Otto Wilhelm Scharenberg and Mathieu Molitor from 1913 to 1915. The Ez Chaim Synagogue, built in 1922 based on designs by the Leipzig architect Gustav Pflaume, was also orientalizing.
The Leipzig Russian Memorial Church (Russische Gedächtniskirche) was built from 1912 to 1913 in the style of Neo-Byzantine architecture, a style within historicism, based on the model of the Ascension Church in Moscow-Kolomenskoye, based on designs by Vladimir Alexandrovich Pokrovsky (1871–1931) and decorated in the style of Novgorod icon painting.
Steib's Hof at the Dussmann Passage Nikolaistrasse 28-32, Brühl 64-66 is an example of the Baroque Revival architecture in Leipzig. The central axis was particularly elaborately designed: “With its neo-baroque sandstone decoration, the emphasized central axis trumps even the richest town house facades of the 18th century.”[100] The architectural sculptures are allegories of trade and industry. The building was built in 1907 by the Leipzig master builder Felix Steib. Hugo Licht also designed the St. John's Church (Johanniskirche) in this style. Based on designs by Robert Ludwig & Alfred Hülßner, the Café Bauer was completed by Albert Bohm (1853–1933) in 1889/90. The café and restaurant on the ground and upper floors was designed in the neo-baroque style (“in rich baroque forms” [101]).
The villa for the consul Friedrich Nachod at Carl-Tauchnitz-Strasse 43, built according to designs by the architect Max Pommer in 1889–1890, was built in the style of eclecticism in a mixture of Swiss chalet style and Renaissance. The roof with its open rafters and the wooden decorative elements attached underneath showed elements of the Swiss chalet style. This was intended to create the impression of country house architecture. Friedrich Nachod was the son of Jacob Nachod (1814–1882), the head of the Israelite Religious Community in Leipzig and co-owner of the bank Knauth, Nachod & Kühne, city councilor in 1888/1889.[102] [103] [104] [105] The building at Hillerstraße 3 was also designed with elements of the Swiss chalet style. It was built for the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce Dr. Gensel in 1883 based on designs by the architect Heinrich Stöckhardt.[106] The villas in Lößnig are also built in the Swiss chalet style, built in 1890 for the owner Consul Limburger based on designs by the architects Karl Weichardt and Bruno Eelbo.[107]
According to Wolfgang Hocquél, Leipzig's reform architecture and Leipzig's Art Nouveau are important - "Around 700 residential buildings... from the turn of the century account for the largest share of the 1,410 monuments in the city of Leipzig."
In terms of urban development,[108] the construction of the new main train station directly adjacent at the old town center was important in 1915, which strengthened Leipzig's position as an international transport hub. In 1927 there were 294 stock corporations in Leipzig with a total capital of approximately 321 million Reichsmarks. Leipzig became an important financial center and the headquarters of the central administrations of many large companies and a transshipment point for goods. The German Credit-Anstalt, the largest German private bank, had its headquarters in Leipzig. The „Meßamt für die Mustermessen in Leipzig“ (“Trade Fair Office for the Sample Fairs in Leipzig”),[109] which was founded in June 1916, and the „Zentralstelle für Interessenten der Leipziger Musterlagermessen“ (“Central Office for those interested in the Leipzig Sample Fairs”) [109] with the industry and business associations behind it successfully called for a revitalization of the Leipzig Trade Fair. The first technical trade fair took place in the city center from 25 to 31 August 1918. The historic old town was completely changed because the new form of trade, the sample fair (Mustermesse), replaced the historic goods fair. Therefore, historically grown city districts were completely destroyed in order to build exhibition centers such as Handelshof or Specks Hof. The change to an industrial city now took place more intensively. In March 1920, the technical fair was organized outside Leipzig and showed machine tools and vehicles there. The exhibition area was constantly increased, from 6000m2 in 1920 to 130000m2 in 1928. Accordingly, goods exported in 1928 amounted to 400 million RM, which corresponded to one sixth of German exports. At the last trade fair before the Great Depression, 34,420 foreigners attended the trade fair. Leipzig maintained its position as a world trading center. After the First World War, the Leipzig trams were taken over by the city and the trams ran into the suburbs. In 1926 came Wiederitzsch, in 1927 Taucha and Engelsdorf, in 1928 Markkleeberg-Ost and Liebertwolkwitz, and in 1931 Thekla and Marienbrunn. In 1929 a general development plan was drawn up. Accordingly, the old town should remain free of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers should be built outside the established historic old town. The inner city ring road was created specifically for this purpose.[110] [111] The global depression of 1929 ended Leipzig's economic boom.
The Monument to the Battle of the Nations (designed by Bruno Schmitz) is an example of the monumental style of reform architecture around 1900.[112] The monument is of "monumental size" and is the "most colossal expression of the Wilhelmine age".[113]
The outsides show rustication. The material effect (in addition to monumentality) was emphasized in reform architecture. The monument was created from regional building material (“local granite porphyry”). It is a synthesis of building and architectural decoration (“fusion of architecture and sculpture”). The Michael relief was created by Christian Behrens. The colossal figures were created by Franz Metzner. They are located in the Hall of Fame and are almost 10m (30feet) tall figures that represent allegories of bravery, strength of faith, people's strength and willingness to sacrifice.[114] [115]
The Leipzig civil engineer and architect Oscar Schade created the designs for the Richard Lipinski House on 19 to 21, Tauchaer Strasse (today Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse). The house was built in 1910[116] as a publishing building for the “established in 1894”[117] Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ).[118] [119] There was also a Lenin memorial in the building.[120] The house was designed “in the industrial architecture of Art Nouveau”.[121]
In 1912/1913, Schade was also responsible for designing the residential buildings in the garden suburb of Marienbrunn in the reform architecture style.[122]
In 1904, Schade also provided designs for the Volkshaus[123] with a “ neo-Romanesque ”[124] sandstone facade. During the Kapp Putsch, the building was shot at and set on fire on 19 March 1920. In 1928 the house burned down again. On 2 May 1933, the Sturmabteilung (SA) occupied the Volkshaus.
In 1903/1904 Schade also designed the Brody Synagogue in Leipzig, which was demolished in the pogrom night of 9/10 November 1938.
The Workers' Gymnastics and Sports School (ATSB School) at Fichestrasse 36 in Leipzig was designed in 1924/1925 based on designs by the architect Oscar Schade.[125] On 23 March 1933, the building was occupied by the SA and further school operations were prohibited.
Oscar Schade also rebuilt the Villa Schreiber at Beethovenstrasse 16 in 1936. The villa was built in 1891 in the Italian Renaissance style for the banker Walter Schreiber according to plans by Max Pommer. Schreiber was co-owner of the Leipzig bank Herz Cusel Plaut, which was liquidated as part of the Aryanization in 1933. The banking house was named after Herz Cusel Plaut (1783–1837). The founder was his son Jacob Plaut, after whom the Jacob Plaut Foundation and Leipzig's Jacob-Plaut-Strasse are named.[126] After the Jewish bank was liquidated in 1933, the villa was also confiscated in 1935. The 1936 renovation was designed by the architect Oscar Schade. Very rich double doors from the construction period have been preserved inside.[127] [128]
The tomb for the architect Oskar Schade[129] is located in the Leipzig South Cemetery and shows the Masonic badge.
Fritz Drechsler, Raymund Brachmann, Josef Mágr, Paul Möbius, Alfons Berger and Paul Lange are considered representatives of Art Nouveau architecture in Leipzig. Works include the building at Paul-Michael-Strasse 6,[130] the building at Menckestraße 19,[131] the Künstlerhaus, the Riquet House[132] and the Märchenhaus (Fairy Tale House)[133] from 1906/1907.
The Villa Görke at Paul-Michael-Strasse 6,[134] built in 1904 based on designs by Paul Möbius, shows a variety of sculptural shapes and is a “particularly creative variant of Art Nouveau”.[130]
The house at Menckestrasse 19 in Gohlis,[135] built in 1903/1904 based on designs by Alfons Berger, shows a variety of different window formats and is “one of the most interesting examples of Art Nouveau in Leipzig”.[136] In the gable field there are winged, scantily clad elves, which were created using the plaster technique. They carry festoons and flank a cartouche depicting a resting lion.
The Leipzig sculptor Carl Seffner designed Adam with Klinger's facial features in his bronze relief Adam and Eve at the Leipzig Künstlerhaus. The base of the Leipzig Richard Wagner National Monument, created by Max Klinger in 1904, shows themes from the Ring of the Nibelung:
The Brühl department store building was built in the reform architecture style based on designs by the Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel. Hänsel was a member of the Werkbund and was one of the “most original and therefore probably busiest architects in Leipzig”.[137] Hänsel also built the Dresden Residenz department store and the City of Warsaw commercial building, Brühl 76/78 (probably the site of the former “Gasthaus Zur Stadt Warschau”). The City of Warsaw commercial building had a continuous shop window facade and had the following tenants around 1904: wine wholesaler August Schneider, Vienna & Leipzig; Bernhard Schmidt fur trader; F. A. Seiler cloth goods; Arthur Hermsdorf (fur trading store); Wilhelm Moosdorf Restaurant and Cafe Weissenfelser-Bier-Halle.
Messow & Waldschmidt opened the Brühl GmbH department store on 3 October 1908. The managing directors were Heinrich Hirschfeld and Walter Riess. Paul Messow died in 1909 and the managing director Walter Riess married Messow's daughter Gertrud a year later and became the sole director. Otto Mühlstein and Salomon Sigismund Hirschfeld became the new managing directors. As part of the Aryanization, the previous managing directors Riess, Meiser and Pelz were dismissed in April 1936 and from 12 September 1936 the Jewish property finally became the property of Knoop Co. GmbH.[138]
Leopold Stentzler also built the Messehaus Stentzlers Hof buildings at Petersstrasse 39 to 41[139] and the Messehaus Dresdner Hof at Neumarkt 21 to 27 from 1914 to 1916. Messehaus means, that these houses were used as exhibition centers in the context of the Leipzig Trade Fair. The Messehaus Dresdner Hof was built for the entrepreneur Richard Pudor. Stentzler's trade fair palace is comparable to Behrens' work: "In terms of design, Leopold Stentzler's trade fair palace Dresdner Hof is close to the design of contemporary buildings by Peter Behrens, one of the leading German architects of the time, who demonstrated a similar traditional objectivity in the festival hall of the Cologne Werkbund exhibition in 1914."[140] The Mädlerhaus Leipzig and the F. Lindner commercial building were also built in the style of reform architecture based on designs by the Leipzig architect Leopold Stentzler. The Mädlerhaus Leipzig featured a continuous shop window facade.
The Krochhochhaus on Augustusplatz is the first high-rise building in Leipzig and also an example of “ classic modernism ”. The building,[141] which was built in 1927/1928 based on designs by German Bestelmeyer for the German-Jewish banker Hans Kroch, met with both rejection and approval. Critics said that the architectural decoration was inappropriate for a private, Jewish bank: “The proposed roof figures, which are supposed to drum on a fairly large bell in order to elicit the note E several times during the day, are also impossible... After all, the Kroch private bank is not a “city hall, not a public symbol that could be given a privileged effect”.[142] Others also saw the connections to Italy. The model for the Kroch high-rise was the Torre dell'Orologio clock tower in Venice, built between 1496 and 1499, with St. Mark's lions: “The building quotes were applauded in Leipzig, certainly also because of the centuries-old connections to the Italian trading cities and their culture... The result also convinced them, who had feared that the tower house would visually devalue the 'most beautiful square in Europe', as they confidently said at the time."[143] The second high-rise building, the Europahaus, designed by Otto Paul Burghardt (1875–1959), was built in 1928/1929 as a counterweight to the Kroch High Rise on Augustusplatz.
The German National Library building at Deutscher Platz 1 was built from 1914 to 1916 based on designs by Oskar Pusch.
Above the building's main entrance are busts of Otto von Bismarck, Johannes Gutenberg and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the latter signed by the Dresden sculptor Fritz Kretzschmar. On the main facade there are seven larger-than-life sculptures that stand on consoles above the ground floor area. These figures by Adolf Lehnert and Felix Pfeifer are allegories for technology, art, justice, philosophy, theology and medicine, flanked on the sides by the figures of the writer and the reader by Johannes Hartmann with the coats of arms of the city of Leipzig (left) and the Börsenverein (right). The following inscriptions can be read in German language above the main entrance: and The building rejects conventional historicism in favor of reform architecture: “This architecture does not follow a specific stylistic model; rather, the different details are handled completely freely in the sense of adaptations and put together to form a facade design that sets itself apart from models of all kinds.”[144]
The Messehaus Petershof (trade fair building Petershof) at Petersstrasse 20 is an example of “classic modernism”[145] and was built for the publisher Josef Mathias Petersmann[146] based on designs by Alfred Liebig: “ Liebig reduced the structure of the main front with boldly protruding window frames traditional facade architecture in the simplest forms, but avoided the hallmarks of modernity - ribbon windows and insubstantial external walls. Instead, the barrenness is refined with high-quality natural stone (Cannstatter Travertine).”[147]
The Leipzig artist Johannes Göldel (1891–after 1946) created the seven larger-than-life sculptures that are located on consoles above the ground floor area. These are people whose activities are directly linked to the history of the building.The figures, starting from the left, represent: building director Ludwig Fraustadt, commercial councilor Felix Geissler, banker Hans Kroch, who obtained the building loan, mayor Karl Rothe, who was committed to the construction, trade fair director Raimund Köhler, architect of the house Alfred Liebig and trade fair board member Edgar Hoffmann. Through the attached attributes, the figures also symbolize music, decorative arts, trade, drama, trade fairs, architecture and industry. Since Hans Kroch was Jewish, the statues were removed during the November pogroms in 1938 at the “instance of the National Socialists”. In 1994, the Leipzig sculptor Markus Brille created true-to-original copies, which were installed in the old location on the facade in 1995. The facade is a listed building.[148]
An example of a modern sacred building[149] in Leipzig was the celebration hall in the new Israelite cemetery, built from 1926 to 1928 (designs by Wilhelm Haller). The domed building showed “oriental architectural decoration that the architect had gotten to know on various trips.”[150] This orientalizing architectural decoration, including the stalactite vault or muqarnas modeled on the Moorish Naṣrid palaces in the domed building, was linked to the expressionist tendencies of the 1920s. The inscription above the entrance read: (English: love is as strong as death). The building fell victim to Kristallnacht:
Carl James Bühring built a textile exhibition center at Härtelstrasse 16-18 from 1922 to 1924. He also designed the “Bear Castle” with six 10m (30feet) tall towers in the Leipzig Zoo in the neoclassical style. The bear castle, built between 1929 and 1930, stands at the end of a path axis. Path axes with decorative places structure the garden.
At the beginning of the main route to the elephant enclosure is the Jason monument. The bronze group[151] is part of the development plan by Carl James Bühring and Johannes Gebbing from 1927, when the zoo was expanded from 7ha to 12.5ha. The Jason group by the Berlin sculptor Walter Lenck (1873–1952),[152] which received the Grand Prix at the International Exhibition in Buenos Aires, was acquired in 1911 for the Zoological Garden in Berlin. The Berlin sculptor also created, among other things, a 43.5cm (17.1inches) tall bronze model of a naked archer. The casting was carried out by the bronze foundry Martin & Piltzing Berlin. The Leipzig Zoo's Jason monument has been there since 1928 and previously stood in the Berlin Zoo for 17 years. The group of figures at the Leipzig Zoo is 4m (13feet) long and 3.5m (11.5feet) wide.[153]
Max Klinger's bronze “Athlete” is the Leipzig Zoo's “most important visual artistic work” and was installed to the east of the pachyderm house.[152]
After the National Socialists came to power, Nazi neoclassicism determined Leipzig architecture: “After 1933, the repressive policies of the Nazi regime also took control of exhibition architecture.”[154] Jewish architects had their professional licenses revoked; the German-Jewish architect Wilhelm Haller was able to escape. In housing construction, the Leipzig architects “very quickly became attuned to the traditional building forms and to the blood and soil architecture of small settlements [...] The representative buildings of the new rulers gained the upper hand in the field of urban planning and in public buildings in the demands for axiality.”[155] National Socialist architecture was particularly characterized by the timeless and elaborate building materials, including dimension stone, marble, Muschelkalk, travertine and granite. Porphyry has been used in Leipzig since 1951 in the architectural style of socialist neoclassicism.
The Great Depression, beginning with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, had ended further construction of the Leipzig Trade Fair in the spring of 1930. According to Peter Leonhardt, it took seven years before the further construction of the Leipzig Trade Fair could be continued: “It was only in 1937 that the project was taken up again under the changed conditions of the Nazi dictatorship and shows, as in a few places, the breaks in 1933 in architectural history.”[156] Curt Schiemichen had now become a “kind of general architect of the Leipzig Trade Fair”.[157] Instead of using transparent glazing, Schiemichen now worked with stone cladding, for example in the entrance building on Prager Strasse to the exhibition hall (Technical Trade Fair, new Hall 20 - later Hall 2).[158] During recent demolition work at the old technical fair site in Leipzig, the listed stone entrance portal of Hall 2 remained standing.
In 1932, Emil Hipp won the city of Leipzig 's competition for a Richard Wagner monument in the style of neoclassicism, which "enjoyed the special support of the Nazi leadership".[159] On 6 March 1934, the foundation stone for the " Richard-Wagner-Hain " was laid by Adolf Hitler in the presence of Mayor Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. According to Markus Cottin, a “monument complex the size of the Dresden Zwinger”[159] was to be built on the east bank of the newly created Elster flood basin, in the eastern part of the Palmengarten Park.
According to Wolfgang Hocquél, Emil Hipp's reliefs were a neoclassical work with "an imaginative, allegorical sculptural work of timeless aesthetics".[160] The neoclassical sculptor planned 250 tons of marble. By 1944, the execution of the order was almost complete. Hipp's Leipzig Wagner monument had four sides, with each side being 10m (30feet) long and approximately 3m (10feet) high. Resting on a 1m (03feet) high base, the monument was 4m (13feet) tall in total. The four reliefs dealt with destiny, myth, redemption and bacchanal. For the 2.8m (09.2feet) tall and 430m (1,410feet) long wall surrounding the monument square, the sculptor created another 19 marble reliefs with scenes from Wagner's musical dramas, a Siegfried figure and a Rhinemaidens fountain, including the relief Hagen kills Siegfried. Leipzig paid for the 3.6 million Reichsmark work until it was completed. In the post-war period, Hipp's sculptural work was no longer up to date during the GDR era and the monument was sold. A doctor from Bavaria purchased the main reliefs and placed them on the inside of his courtyard wall.[161] During GDR times, the Richard-Wagner-Hain was forgotten. The supporting concrete block for the main reliefs was demolished, floor slabs were removed, and parts were built over and changed.
During the Nazi era, C&A benefited from the Aryanization of Jewish property, promoted NSDAP membership among senior employees and gave expensive gifts to important Nazi politicians.[162] The Polich Jewish department store, acquired by C&A Germany as part of the Aryanization, was demolished and in its place in 1937 the Merkurhaus in the New Objectivity style by Karl Fezer (1900–1984), who oversaw the conversion and new construction of C&A Germany's commercial buildings, was built.[163] The new building is an office and commercial building with three street facades, designed as a six-story reinforced concrete frame structure with elaborate shell limestone cladding. With its two oriel window-like porches, the building follows the Leipzig “bay window tradition” from the Baroque and Renaissance periods:
During the Nazi era [171] Leipzig had a large armaments industry. This was located in the northeast of the city in Leipzig-Schönefeld and Leipzig-Thekla as well as in Taucha. In 1943 there were 221 armaments factories in Leipzig with 154,119 workers and employees, including 43,905 foreigners and Ostarbeiter. In addition to the ERLA company, one of the largest companies was the HASAG company, which produced Panzerfausts and aircraft parts. Due to the ability of many workers to be deployed in the war (“kv. position”[164]) and the increased production requirements, more and more foreigners had to be brought into the production process. Therefore, from June 1944, women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were also hired, and the Schutzstaffel (SS) placed them under the control of the Buchenwald concentration camp from 1 September 1944. A barracks camp at the Leipzig-Schönefeld concentration camp was built for these women on Leipzig's Permoserstrasse.
The workers of the Leipzig concentration camp subcamps, including 4,000 workers employed by HASAG, were driven on a death march towards Wurzen together with 1,500 ERLA workers in April 1945. The women of the Leipzig-Schönefeld (Permoserstrasse) camp who did not go on the death march were sent to the Abtnaundorf camp, where they were murdered[165] by the SS and Volkssturm men.[166]
The Leipzig sculptor Hans-Joachim Förster (* 1929) created the monument, which was inaugurated on 10 April 1970. The concentration camp memorial stone[167] is located at Permoserstrasse 6–14, east of the Torgauer Straße intersection. The memorial stone is 1.83 m high and is made of Cotta sandstone. A plaque made of Löbejün red granite is attached to the memorial. In the upper left corner of the writing plate there are five triangles of different sizes as symbols of the concentration camp prisoners. The following inscription can be read there in German language:[168]
The sculptor Gustav Tesch-Löffler created the memorial, which was inaugurated on 13 September 1958, to commemorate the victims of the Leipzig-Thekla/Abtnaundorf subcamp. The memorial for the prisoners of the Abtnaundorf concentration camp [175] is located on the corner of Theklaer Strasse and Heiterblickstrasse in Leipzig. From 1943 onwards, Thekla was home to the Leipzig-Thekla subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, which became famous for the Abtnaundorf massacre. The material consists of poured concrete, covered with polished porphyry panels. Flames shoot out from the sides of the memorial, with two arms protruding from behind barbed wire. One arm shows an outstretched hand asking for help. The other arm shows a clenched fist, which is supposed to point beyond death. The memorial's inscription is intended to refer to the eighty burned corpses that were found. The SS guards locked Hungarian Jewish women in one of the barracks and burned them alive.
Hans-Joachim Förster also created the synagogue monument, which was inaugurated on 18 November 1966, on the corner of Gottschedstrasse and Zentralstrasse, on the site of the former Leipzig Synagogue. It is intended to commemorate the 14,000 Leipzig Jews who died. Leipzig had the largest Jewish community in Saxony.The dedication on the sides of the Leipzig Synagogue Monument is written in Hebrew letters and reads as follows:[169] [170]
The Bombing of Leipzig in World War II caused great and widespread destruction. This included the attack on the night of 3 to 4 december 1943. Leipzig suffered the loss of numerous trade fair and commercial buildings, almost all cultural buildings, apartments and numerous university facilities. Around 38,000 apartments were completely destroyed, over 52,000 were damaged, and 40% of the city's public buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. Three quarters of all exhibition buildings and halls were destroyed. Of 112 schools, only 6 were still usable. Almost 5 million cubic meters of rubble made large parts of Leipzig impassable. Of the 160km (100miles) of tram routes, only 15km (09miles) were still passable. The population was 700,000, but the number of inhabitants fell by almost 20%.
The New Town Hall was designed by Hugo Licht and decorated with architectural decorations by Georg Wrba. After the city was taken by American soldiers from the 69th Infantry and 9th Armored Divisions, the historic building became the subject of particular interest: “Quickly drive to the town hall before they clean it up […] everything in there looks like Madame Tussauds Wax museum!”. Various historical Leipzig personalities of the time committed suicide in the building on 18 April 1945. In the New Town Hall one found the deputy mayor and city treasurer Ernst Kurt Lisso, his wife Renate Stephanie née Lübbert and daughter Regina "with a Red Cross armband"[171] as well as the mayor of Leipzig (1937 to 1945) Alfred Freyberg, his wife and his 18-year-old “pretty […] daughter Magdalena”[172] with a “Nazi bracelet”[173] as well as the former mayor and Volkssturm battalion leader Walter Dönicke and several of his officers. The personalities were captured in photographs by Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White and Lee Miller. All photographs were published except that of Leipzig Mayor Freyberg and his daughter, known for her beauty and her Nazi badge.
A monument was erected at the southwest tip of the New Town Hall for Mayor Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, who served from 1930 to 1937. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler was sentenced to death on 8 September 1944. The monument consists of a 5m (16feet) deep bell shaft with a diameter of 2.75m (09.02feet). A bronze bell hangs in this. Around the shaft you can find quotes from letters, newspapers and writings by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler in chronological order.
In 1948, architectural, neoclassical redesigns of the Leipzig South Cemetery (Südfriedhof) took place, including the creation of the honorary graves, in the main axis of which Walter Arnold created the sculpture of resistance fighters in the neoclassical style. The redesign extends over the entire avenue from the north gate to the chapel and ends in a large complex made of granite.[174] [175]
The Messehof exhibition center (in German: Messehaus Messehof) at Petersstrasse 15/Neumarkt 18 was built in 1949/1950 based on a design by Eberhard Werner (1911–1981). A “three-story, pilaster-structured central risalit ”[176] in the neoclassical style was built on Petersstrasse. The facade is clad with Langensalza travertine and the wall cladding in the hall is clad with travertine. The so-called mushroom column is decorated with relief-like depictions of working people by Alfred Thiele.
In the spirit of the cultural program at the time, construction was carried out since 1951 in accordance with "The Sixteen Principles of Urban Design” in an architectural style that continued the “national cultural heritage”. The result was an architectural style of socialist neoclassicism. Representatives of the traditional construction method were:
Hanns Hopp and Kunz Nierade created research and teaching buildings as well as cultural buildings with elaborately designed sandstone facades:
Heinz Auspurg, Walter Lucas and Adam Buchner were responsible for the new residential building. From 1950 to 1951, the building complex on Ranstädter Steinweg was completed according to designs by the architects Heinz Auspurg[178] (urban development) and Walter Lucas[179] (project) in socialist neoclassicism (“tradition-bound forms”[191]). Alfred Thiele created the numerous oriel window reliefs.
From 1953 to 1956,[180] the building complex on Hermann -Duncker Street in the Lindenau district of Leipzig built in socialist neoclassicism (“trad. Forms”[192]) was completed. It was the first new residential development area after 1945 in the working-class district of western Leipzig. It was built on former gardens and arable land as well as on formerly rural and agricultural areas.[192] It was part of a new housing program in Leipzig. A new district was created around Dunckerstrasse in Leipzig-Lindenau. Apartment units with 1 to 4 rooms with kitchens and bathrooms, shops, shopping streets, a post office, a laundry and a paddling pool for children were created.
From 1952 to 1954, the building complex on Gruenewaldstrasse, Brüderstrasse and Windmühlenstrasse was completed according to designs by the architect Adam Buchner[177] in socialist neoclassicism (“in trad. arch. forms”[193]). Buildings with “plastered facades with porphyry structure” were created.[193]
Rudolf Rohrer was responsible for the representative buildings. From 1953 to 1956, a seven- to nine-story, curved building complex based on Rohrer's designs was built at Roßplatz 1-13 at the inner city ring road[194] [195] A “plastered building with travertine structure” was created.[196] The collective of architects around Rudolf Rohrer designed the building ensemble with echoes of Leipzig's building tradition. These included oriel windows extending over several floors, as they had shaped the image of the bourgeois house in the Baroque period, and arcades, which were typical in the Renaissance and Classicism.[197] In the middle section is the two-story ring café flanked like a tower with “facades based on the Leipzig Baroque tradition.” It is a “plastered building with travertine structure.” The sculptural decoration comes from Rudolf Oelzner and Alfred Thiele.[198] The Ring Café shows a floor-high arched window gallery that is reminiscent of a Baroque orangery and represents a “return to the Baroque”.[199]
The buildings for the university were designed by the architects Wolfgang Geisler, Hans Pape and Heinz Rauschenbach :
Karl Souradny was responsible for numerous sports and cultural buildings of that time in Leipzig:
A sculptor of that period in Leipzig was the sculptor Alfred Thiele. His works include the column relief on the so-called Pilzsäule (mushroom column) in the Messehaus am Markt Arcade, the relief work on Roßplatz, the sandstone portrait medallions of important physicians on the main building of the Anatomical Institute at Leipzig University and the oriel window reliefs on the buildings on Ranstädter Steinweg.[206] Rudolf Oelzner created full-length sculptures on Roßplatz, on the forecourt of the Deutsche Hochschule für Körperkultur (German University of Physical Culture - DHfK) with bronze sculptures and the large sculptures on the forecourt of the Leipzig Central Stadium.[207] Senta Baldamus created the sculpture Staffelläufer (Relay Runners), bronze (1975), Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Allee, forecourt of the Sports Science Faculty of the University of Leipzig (formerly the Sports Medicine Institute of the German University for Physical Culture).[208]
In the second half of the 1960s, Walter Ulbricht initiated the GDR-specific phase of “image symbol architecture” in the style of Socialist Realism with striking figural buildings. Representatives of that time were:
The City-Hochhaus Leipzig is a strikingly figurative building and was built as university high-rise from 1968 to 1972. The dominant high-rise has the shape of an open book:
The main building of the Karl Marx University, which was demolished in 2005, was built between 1968 and 1974 and was the “political and intellectual and cultural center of the city” during the GDR era:[209]
The seminar building on Universitätsstrasse remains today from the “GDR building from the 1960s/1970s”.[210] The seminar building is a five-story, 2-Mp reinforced concrete frame structure with 22 lecture halls of various sizes.[211]
In 1973, the bronze relief Leninism, Marxism of Our Time,[212] created by the artists Frank Ruddigkeit, Klaus Schwabe and Rolf Kuhrt in the style of socialist realism, was installed. The main building of the university thus became a socialist building,[213] above whose entrance the bronze relief Aufbruch (Awakening) with Karl Marx's head was placed. Werner Tübke created an almost 13m (43feet) wide mural for the foyer on the theme of the working class and the intelligentsia. In the ground floor foyer there was an almost 4m (13feet) tall sandstone epitaph for the rector Caspar Borner, created around 1547 by Paul Speck, which was inserted into the wall. The main building of the former Karl Marx University was demolished in 2007.
The swimming hall at Mainzer Strasse 4 in Leipzig is a copy of the Dresden swimming hall on Freiberger Strasse, which was built according to designs by VEB Projektierung Sport Buildings Leipzig (H. Konrad, G. Nichtitz, E. Kaltenbrunn). The hall has a downward curved ceiling. The concave, curved prestressed concrete roof was constructed as a hanging shell structure with prestressing steel that supports prefabricated reinforced concrete panels. The building was built “when an astonishing willingness to experiment was allowed in architecture in the GDR. This pictorial architecture as a built landscape fits entirely into the trend of global post-war modernism between Brasília and Moscow ... There is also a copy of the Dresden original on the grounds of the DHfK Leipzig (near the Sportforum)..."[214]
In 1969, the architects Horst Krantz,[215] Hans Großmann[216] and Klaus Burtzik built the Leipzig City Information Center (Leipzig Information) with tourist offers, an exhibition area and a conference area. The structure was a two-story building whose roof shape was characterized by “steel trusses staggered like a fan”.[217] The facade was almost completely glazed.[218] On the ground floor there was a mocha bar and a ticket hall with a decorative copper wall design by Bruno Kubas. On the upper floor there was a film hall, as well as exhibition and conference rooms. In front of the building there was a large open space, framed by three pavilions for exhibition purposes on the east side and smaller green spaces and water features on the west side. The three sculptural elements in the fountains, consisting of overlapping basic geometric shapes, were created by Harry Müller in 1972. Today they are on Richard-Wagner-Platz. The ceramic-coated column created by the Leipzig sculptor Herbert Viecenz, which depicted the history of Leipzig, was destroyed during the demolition work (1999) on the information center.
The New Gewandhaus was created from 1977 to 1981 by a collective led by Rudolf Skoda, which included the architects Eberhard Göschel, Volker Sieg and Winfried Sziegoleit. Rudolf Skoda created a building with a large glass front. The Sighard Gilles ceiling painting can be clearly seen through the glass facade.[219] From 1980 to 1981, Sighard Gille painted the 714m2 large and 31.8m (104.3feet) tall ceiling painting Song of Life, which was inspired by Gustav Mahler's Lied von der Erde. It is located on the site of a wall frieze that was created by the painter Wolfgang Peuker, but was boarded up and painted over with Sighard Gilles' ceiling painting. In the dark, the Sighard Gilles ceiling painting in the foyer area acts as an interesting “light architectural effect”[220] in the Augustusplatz space.
The entrance to the hall is through a passage that expands into a small atrium where there is a fountain sculpture by Horst Georg Skorupa. This sculpture is intended to be reminiscent of the former Leipzig alta cappella. Also in the passage is the marble relief Orpheus, made by Johannes Hartmann in 1904 for the St. Louis World's Fair. In the foyer of the smaller hall there is also a bronze portrait of the former Gewandhaus conductor and composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, created by Jo Jastram.
The Beethoven sculpture by Max Klinger is located in the ground floor foyer of the small hall. In the foyer of the second floor, which was built to surround the hall, is the gallery of the New Gewandhaus with paintings by Gudrun Brüne, Dietrich Burger, Ulrich Hachulla, Heidrun Hegewald, Susanne Kandt-Horn, Harald Metzkes, Ronald Paris, Nuria Quevedo, Arno Rink, Willi Sitte, Volker Stelzmann, Walter Womacka, Heinz Zander and Frank Ruddigkeit.[221]
Today you can see the double “M” for the designation Muster-Messe. The 27m (89feet) tall steel skeleton structure is covered with aluminum sheet. The design for the signets, erected in 1965, came from the Leipzig architects Manfred Weigend and Martin Lehmann (born 1934).[222]
A work in béton brut was the Church of St. Trinitatis (Propsteikirche) at Emil-Fuchs-Strasse 5-7, which was built from 1978 to 1982 based on designs by a collective from the Bauakademie der DDR (GDR Building Academy) under the direction of Udo Schultz. The facade consisted of a “concrete box grid”.[223] A high surrounding parapet made of dark slate was built above the concrete honeycomb windows as the upper building finish. The bell tower was 18m (59feet) tall and has no natural stone cladding. There were two steel pylons on the north and south facades, which have led over the roof. In the pylons on the north side, the copper doors created by Achim Kühn (* 1942) stood under the theme of the Path of Faith.[224] In 2018, the church has been demolished.
In 1969, Reiner Grube built a bird-free flight hall in Leipzig Zoo, now a listed building, consisting of a gable wall made of concrete blocks with thermal glazing. The glass roof rises above a free-standing steel structure made of box girders on V-supports.[225] A photograph shows the gable wall made of concrete blocks with the following description:
Under Böhme's leadership, the 5 MP panel construction was developed for Leipzig. From 1963 to 1966, 4-story prefabricated buildings with a hipped roof were initially built in the Leipzig-Sellerhausen WK. From 1966, Erich Böhme, together with Eduard Regula and Martin Winkler, built the 8-10-story prefabricated buildings on Leipzig's Johannisplatz. From 1968 to 1971, Erich Böhme developed the “Leipzig” variant of the apartment type P2/11 together with Thomas Oechelhäuser. This created the residential complex on Straße des 18. Oktober with many architectural details: loggias with colored glass parapets, ceramic mosaics, concrete structures on the gable, concrete form elements in front of distribution corridors.[226] The “Leipzig” variant of the apartment type P2/11 was not only used in 1968/1971 for the residential houses on the Straße des 18. Oktober in Leipzig. The “Leipzig” variant of the apartment type P2/11 was also used in the “Johannes R. Becher” residential complex in Leipzig-Lößnig in 1971.[227] From 1971 to 1975, the Lößnig development area was built east of Zwickauer Strasse with 3,082 apartments in exclusively eleven-story apartment blocks.
To round off the Astoria complex on the northern edge of Leipzig city center, 10-story residential buildings of the central aisle type in 5 MP transverse wall construction with 275 residential units for boarding school use were built on the east side of Gerberstrasse with 320 residential units. The residential buildings at Gerberstrasse 16 / Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse show a facade structure using vertically offset concrete structural elements by Harry Müller.[228] [229] [230]
The Hotel Deutschland (later renamed Interhotel am Ring) on Karl-Marx-Platz was built between 1963 and 1965 by Helmut Ullmann (1930–1991) and Wolfgang Scheibe (1928–2006) based on designs by the architect Manfred Böhme and was the largest of the three newly built Leipzig hotels. It consisted of a flat wing in the form of a reinforced concrete framing and a six-story ward block in 5 MP transverse wall construction. It had a horizontal facade structure and parapets with colored ceramic sculptures. The visual artistic design came from Gerhard Eichhorn (1927–2015).[231] The flat wing along Grimmaischer Steinweg was demolished at the end of the 1990s as part of the renovation and modernization of the house. Today the hotel is called Radisson Blu Hotel Leipzig and belongs to the “Radisson Blu” hotel chain of the same name.
The Messehaus am Markt, Markt 16, was also built in 1961/1963 based on designs by Frieder Gebhardt. The building is a synthesis of modernity and monument protection: “modern construction tasks [had to] be taken into account with monument preservation concerns, such as those arising from the proximity of the old town hall and the Königshaus (Royal house) [...] with the formation of arcades in the entrance area [...] were also “Characteristic Leipzig building traditions have been incorporated”.[232] In the entrance hall there is a natural stone relief by Hanna Studnitzka and Elfried Ducke on the topic “Leipzig trade fair events yesterday and today”.The guest house of the Council of Ministers of East Germany in Leipzig was built between 1967 and 1969 in the International Modernist style based on designs by the architect collective Fritz Gebhardt or Frieder Gebhardt in the Leipzig borough Musikviertel.[233] The house was one of the most representative buildings in the city of Leipzig. Guests included Erich Honecker, Erich Mielke and Franz Josef Strauß.[234] The furnishings were just as elaborate as those in the GDR government's guest house next to Schönhausen Palace in Pankow. The wall relief by Bernhard Heisig in the foyer is well known. Gebhardt also provided the designs for the construction of the Messehaus am Markt (Trade fair building on the Markt (1961–1963), the renovation of the Europahaus (1965) and the construction of the Wintergartenhochhaus (1970–1972).[235]
An example of the International Style in Leipzig”[236] is the Interhotel Merkur. The GDR had been a member of the United Nations since 1973 and established international relations with all countries. Japan was one of the first western industrialized countries with which the then GDR established important trade relations. Therefore, the Japanese construction group Kajima Corporation Tokyo built the Internationales Handelszentrum (IHZ) in Berlin and, as a follow-up order, the five-star luxury Hotel Merkur in Leipzig. The high-rise was built from 1978 to 1981 by the Kajima Corporation Tokyo. The building has 29 floors. Large suspended concrete slabs create the façade. The plates have ceramic facings, in a light ocher color at the base zone or a dark ocher color. The shape of the orthogon determines the floor plan, the surfaces on the facade and the shape of the building.[237]
The Neue Messe was built in the “contemporary modern” style[238] from 1992 to 1996 based on designs by Gerkan, Marg and Partners. It is a 243m (797feet) long, 80m (260feet) wide and 30m (100feet) tall glass hall, which is characterized by “unusual light architecture”.[238] The glass barrel vault consists of an external steel tube construction and glass surfaces suspended underneath. This hall represents the main entrance. Visitors can enter the five square exhibition halls via glass tubes.
The Museum der bildenden Künste (Museum of Fine Arts) at Katharinenstrasse 20 was built from 2000 to 2004 based on designs by the Berlin architects Karl Hufnagel, Peter Pütz and Michael Rafaelian. It is a 36m (118feet) tall glass cube intended as a “crystal”.[239] The building has a double-skinned, glass curtain wall. A stack effect is created between the two glass fronts. This prevents heating in summer and heat loss in winter.
The Petersbogen at Petersstrasse 36 was built from 1999 to 2001 in the contemporary modern style based on designs by Gerd Heise for HPP Hentrich-Petschnigg & Partner. From the 16th century onwards, the University's Collegium iuridicum, where Johann Wolfgang Goethe studied, was located on this site. Today the Faculty of Law with its seminar library is once again located in the Petersbogen.[240]
The publishing house of the Leipziger Volkszeitung was located in today's Richard Lipinski House at Tauchaer Strasse (today Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse) 19 to 21, which was built according to designs by Oskar Schade. In the 1950s, the publishing house moved to another building at Peterssteinweg 19. From 1997 to 1999 the building was modernized according to designs by the architects Heiken and Partner.[241]
The first postmodern building in Leipzig is the Bowlingtreff (Bowling club) on Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz, which was built in 1987 and was designed by Winfried Sziegoleit and can be seen as an example of GDR postmodernism. The Strohsack Passage at Nikolaistrasse 6 to 10 and Ritterstrasse 7 was built from 1995 to 1997 in the postmodern style according to designs by Bernd Appel, Anuscha Behzade and Heike Bohne . The remains of the facade up to the second floor from the Baroque period have been preserved.[242]
The Bauwens House at Burgplatz 2 was built for HPP Hentrich-Petschnigg & Partner from 1991 to 1994 based on designs by Gerd Heise. The colossal pillars with granite cladding combine the ground floor and the 1st floor as a two-story base and therefore imitate the colossal pillars of antiquity. The middle part of the facade pushes forward like a risalit.[243]
The MDR broadcasting center building was built from 1991 to 1994 based on designs by Gerd Heise for HPP Hentrich-Petschnigg & Partner. A 13-story glass high-rise with a concave south side rises above a four-story sandstone base building.[244]
The extension for the German National Library building was designed in the form of a book spine based on designs by the Stuttgart architect Gabriele Glöckler. The building was inaugurated on 9 May 2011.
The architecture of the Leipzig Porsche customer center is based on the shape of a diamond. The building consists of a concrete base and a 32m (105feet) tall tower resting on it, which is shaped like a Spinning top and clad in metal.
The Verbundnetz Gas AG (VNG) administration building at Braunstrasse 7 in Leipzig-Schönefeld was built from 1995 to 1997 based on designs by Eike Becker, Georg Gewers, Swantje Kühn and Oliver Kühn. The facade consists of a 120m (390feet) long glass bar that runs parallel to the street. On the north side there is a glass cubic tower.[245]
The KPMG administration building at Münzgasse 2 in Leipzig-Südvorstadt was built from 1996 to 1997 based on designs by Till Schneider and Michael Schumacher. The six-story building is also known as an “iron house”[246] because of its unusual structural shape. In 1999 the building was awarded the City of Leipzig's Architecture Prize to promote building culture.
The townhouses at Nonnenstrasse 17-21 with a transition to Holbeinstrasse in Leipzig-Plagwitz (at the river White Elster) were built from 1998 to 2000 based on designs by the Fuchshuber & Partner architectural firm. Apartments, office lofts and service units were built.[247] In the immediate vicinity are the historic buildings of the former Sächsische Wollgarnfabrik (Saxon wool yarn factory or Buntgarnwerke), built between 1887 and 1895 based on designs by the architects Ottomar Jummel and Handel & Franke.The Bio City was built at Alte Messe from 2001 to 2003 based on designs by Ingrid Spengler and Fredo Wiescholek . The building has a “North German-looking clinker brick facade”. [248] The term “Bio-City” describes the modern research facility Biotechnological-Biomedical Center (BBZ) at the University of Leipzig.
The central building at the BMW plant in Leipzig was built in 2004 based on designs by the London architect Zaha Hadid. The building was awarded the Architecture Prize of the City of Leipzig and the German Architecture Prize in 2005.
The Paulinum (University of Leipzig)[249] was built to a design by Erick van Egeraat, Martin Behet, Roland Bondzio and Yu-Han Michael Lin. The historicized Gothic rose window and the tracery window are intended to be reminiscent of the historic St. Pauli University Church.[250]
The Marktgalerie at Markt 11-15, built from 2001 to 2005, is intended to commemorate the Bismarckhaus and Stieglitzs Hof. In place of the magnificent neo-baroque buildings that were destroyed in the war, the modern trade fair office was built on the market in the 1960s. The trade fair office was demolished in 2001 and the market gallery was built from 2001 to 2005 based on a design by Norbert Hippler (Rhode/Kellermann/Wawrowsky) with a facade by Christoph Mäckler. The building complex with its roof landscape is intended to be reminiscent of the historical building silhouettes.[251]
The Thüringer Hof was built between 1993 and 1996 as a historic reconstruction of a building partially destroyed in the war based on a design by Alexander von Branca.
The Haus des Buches (House of the Book) at Gerichtsweg 28 was built by Gerd Heise for HPP from 1993 to 1996. The building complex consists of a mix of old and new buildings:
The Trifugium building complex at Barfußgäßchen 11/13/15 was built from 1904 to 1906 based on designs by Arthur Hänsch, but was partially destroyed in the Second World War. In the 1990s, a reconstruction with a partial new building took place: “The corner building No. 15 was burned down to the basement after the bombing in the Second World War and was not subsequently restored. During the reconstruction in 1995 to 1996, the house was built according to old plans in such a way that no difference to the old buildings can be seen."[252]
The facade of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig (Leipzig City History Museum, Haus Böttchergäßchen; 2004) is made of natural stone and is opened at the top by a glass staggered floor (design: Ulrich Coersmeier, architectural firm Ilg Friebe Nauber, Cologne and Leipzig).
(Incorporates information translated from the German Wikipedia)
