The dream hangs on the air and settles amid a varied cityscape. One skyscraper in this city of 160,000 serves the sheer purpose of variety, lest too many black steeples become boring. I take the "monolith" as a message to look to the future. Less modern buildings record a Communist dream with artistic figures in relief; others, mostly blue metal, remind us of the urgency of rebuilding after WWII. Museums, ancient churches and composers’ homes reveal the earlier idyllic perfection of communities with the world’s best music and art. Statuary everywhere serves to characterize the soul of Leipzig in a rare expression of doubt alongside of certainty--both determined to sing out! I’m not trying to wax poetic when I say that this city bares its soul to visitors or that the world must be watching to see what it will do next. The opening (soon) of the new building for the fine arts museum will bring more art out of storage to add to the already impressive collection in a city that seemed to me so full. Baroque sculptor Balthasar Permoser originated from nearby Dresden, and he and Russian painter Kandinsky are well represented.

I visited Leipzig to see its intellectual and artistic past, not its beauty. Without the extreme beauty of Weimar (or its World Heritage designation), 50 minutes away, Leipzig still enchants, thanks to a past replete with famous talent and new ideas. The second oldest university in Germany (established 1409) is here, the magnet that attracted talent from the classical era to the modern, and the Symphony made famous by Felix Mendelssohn, Conductor still impresses.

Quick Tips:

Madler Passage is a covered outdoor pedestrian mall with interesting shops and another interesting restaurant, Mephisto. For more shops, supermarkets, and supplies, the train station has everything. It’s the largest train station in Germany, complete with American-style indoor mall.

Best Way To Get Around:

We needed no transportation in Leipzig. Our Marriott for one night and our Westin for another were both a block from the train station, and all the sites we visited were within the "ring" surrounding the Old Town. Visitor Info at Richard Wagner Strasse 1 has maps of attractions, but we didn’t even visit the tourist office, since the hotel supplied us with a fine map. Leipzig has a good transportation system of buses and even a light rail system for points out of town.

The building exterior was nondescript, and the hotel entrance was not obvious. In the lobby, there was no mistaking that this was a Marriott. In this part of eastern Germany, where Bauhaus or Minimalist style is predominate, we felt transported to an English country house with finer furnishings and plenty of home-style decoration. A huge straw chicken greeted us with Easter eggs just inside the door, and as we walked around his table, we could see the open bar and restaurant area busy with guests.

Check-in was smooth, and in the elevator up, we noticed no deviation in Marriott’s famous color scheme. (It’s their story, and they’re sticking to it!) Rich red, green, and gold in every pattern that can be coordinated with another pattern filled the entire interior. I had to appreciate "the Marriott touch," their comfort and quality when I saw how it transformed this featureless building. If we had seen the outside first, we might not have stayed here, but rest assured, nothing is missing inside. It’s as if the hotel chain over-compensated for the drab exterior with extra-fine furnishings in all the rooms. Every other hotel where we stayed in Germany had more "style"--perhaps I should say more "intellectualizing" of style--but Marriott is the winner of my award for comfortable rooms with quality furnishing.

The concierge was helpful and provided walking maps of all Center City attractions, all within the "ring" and a short walk. On this trip, we also stayed at another hotel in Leipzig, one outside the ring. This one inside the inner circle eliminated the necessity of crossing the busy highway every time we went out. There is an indoor pool, sauna, and spa we didn’t use, since we found our relaxation listening to music at the museums for Bach and Mendelssohn, both a short walk.

We were lured out of the drawing room into the music salon, with rows of chairs facing the grand piano. The flat is used by students at the school, and we were lucky enough to listen to a very accomplished pair of musicians. They recreated for us the excitement of the music scene in 19th-century Leipzig, just as the program at the Bach Museum had for the century before. We had walked here directly from the Bach Museum, where we had enjoyed what we thought was a totally different style, and then, to our surprise, we learned that Mendelssohn had admired Bach’s "frolicking playfulness" and considered it his inspiration for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, his accompaniment to the Shakespeare romp with fairies that culminated in Mendelssohn’s "Wedding March."

When I realized the two composers had lived just a few blocks apart with only 59 years separating their lives, I got the idea of how staggering and continuous is Leipzig’s claim to musical fame. Robert Schumann would live here, too, and study Bach’s legacy while composing his Spring Symphony. Mendelssohn would catapult to fame the Leipzig Orchestra under his direction, as Bach had done for the St. Thomas Boys' Choir.

When the students said "goodbye," we visited Mendelssohn’s study, where he had composed and worked with his students. His paintings and bust of Bach are notable in this very colorful room, an inspirational place for creating those happy compositions (like the Italian Symphony) Mendelssohn is famous for. On the way out, we asked about functions and discovered that the flat can be rented for weddings--how perfect!

The house/museum is open every day 10am-6pm with concerts Sundays at 11am. (Perhaps that is what our students were practicing for late on Saturday afternoon.) Anyone visiting Leipzig should not miss this perfect listening experience. On the walk back through Augustusplatz, one can’t help notice the state-of-the-art Gewandhaus, or Concert Hall, where the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Choir perform. The Mendelssohn Hall and the Great Room here are likely venues for Mendelssohn events.

For concert schedules, check Gewandhaus’ website: Gewandhaus

The first rooms housed paintings of the German Romance school, mostly landscapes--those with misty mountains, waterfalls, and woodlands inhabited by shepherd folk and nymphs. Interspersed with these were a few statues by Rodin and, curiously, a display about sex. I’m still puzzled by this pairing, but this was temporary housing. We continued past more statuary: one exquisite representation in bronze of Flora by Adriaen de Vries, a hanging bust of Medusa, and my favorite, Der Barockbildhauer, or "Baroque Sculptor" by Balthasar Permoser. (Permoser lived in Dresden. His anguished faces are interesting.) His Die Verdammnis, or Gothic bust Damnation, is also here. Max Klinger was born in Leipzig (1857-1920), and the statue of Beethoven he worked on for years is here, along with his bronze bust of Nietzsche.

Most impressive was the painting collection which occupied room after room and included several by Lucas Cranach the Elder, such as his Portrait de Luther en Junker Jorg and many other Luther subjects. Other painters represented were Rubens, Pieter Bruegel (the Elder), Frans Hals, Max Liebermann, Pieter de Hooch, Max Beckman, and others, mostly German and Dutch. Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee were also "naturalized" into this region, thanks to their affiliation with the Bauhaus Movement in design, and both are well-represented here. My most clear memory and newest "favorite" is Frans Hals’ Der Mulatte. The brilliant red clothing, shiny lighted face, open-mouth smile, and carefree cocked head jumped off the wall and drew me right to it in a room full of wonderful paintings, but close up, I was unsure if the painter had intended me to like this character. He has a drunken counterpart I’ve located: Peeckelhaering is slumping and sneering! I also enjoyed Pieter Bruegel’s Der Alchemist.

We stayed a few hours and could have stayed a few more, but we had underestimated the importance of the exhibits here and the extent of them--and we were hungry! An attendant explained that only one-tenth of their collections were displayed in this temporary housing and that the new building (next door) would be opening by December 2003. I’m looking forward to returning and spending the better part of a day. I took notes on the last few rooms we hurried through and keep referring back to them so that I don’t forget any of the details of these important German and Dutch artists.

Inside the door, we paid a small admission and were given a headphone program in English and pointed to the museum rooms on second floor. Several displays of instruments corresponded to the audio program’s explanation of music evolving or coming into favor in Bach’s day, why the composer chose to write for particular instruments and not for others, dialogues he had with other musicians about the direction of music in their day. Some members of the Bach family were discussed and some of the composer’s personal items displayed, but the focus of this program was his contribution to the world of music and his responsibilities as Cantor of the church and Music Director for the city and its four principal churches.

This was absolutely not boring! Every display has chairs facing it where one can sit while listening to the lengthy recorded discussions, and each one is interspersed with musical interludes selected to illustrate each point. We felt at home and relaxed, as though in a classroom lab, but totally on our own, and we learned a great amount, including a new appreciation of the composer’s music, which sounds much sweeter and less "mechanical" to me now! What I think I hear is the perfection that characterized this period in Leipzig’s history up to Bach’s death in 1750.

After the self-guided tour, one can listen in a lab with rows of headphone stations designed for that purpose. Attendants help recommend and locate specific recordings. In addition, the print archive includes the largest collection of Bach’s original work outside of Berlin. There’s more. This home of Georg Heinrich Bose, this Renaissance-era residence of the Bach's friends, formerly housed a famous collection of musical instruments, the deWitt Collection, as well as the Richter Art Collection the poet Goethe so praised. There is also a university collection that includes instruments made by the famous friend of Bach, Johann Christian Hoffmann. Anyone interested in these can ask at the reception desk to be pointed in their direction. We didn’t ask, simply enjoyed listening to "perfect" music in "perfect" surroundings assuring us of a utopian Leipzig past. The narrative took a romantic turn at Mendelssohn Haus.