Overview
By Josie Le Blond, freelance journalist based in Berlin
Leipzig is Germany’s boom-town. Last year, the city’s population went up by 12,000, a rise of 2% taking the number of residents over 550,000 for the first time since reunification. Many were newcomers arriving with dreams of a near-empty, artistic paradise, buzzing with a do-it-yourself entrepreneurial spirit. A place where almost anything is possible.
There’s plenty of room to do it. In the old western industrial quarter of Plagwitz, for example, rows of empty factories wait to be transformed into studios and exhibition spaces along the lines of the sprawling Baumwollspinnerei gallery complex, which this summer celebrates its 10th birthday. Western Leipzig’s latest industrial metamorphosis is the Kunstkraftwerk. Once a crumbling, unsafe ruin, the former power station has been revamped into a mighty installation space now attracting experimental artists from all over the globe.
But with all the recent buzz – referred to sardonically by locals as “hypezig” – some areas are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Plagwitz, long plugged as the beating heart of the city’s underground art scene, is said to be losing some of its edge. “Plagwitz has been the in area for years, but things have already moved on,” says art project manager Angela Straube-Bornberg. She says those disillusioned with Plagwitz now look to the city’s wilder, undeveloped eastern district. “The students all live there now. There are galleries and wild parties and projects everywhere.”
Behind the boarded-up shop fronts and pop-up galleries, clubs and cafes are perpetually opening up, and being shut down, sometimes within a matter of weeks.
“There are a lot of empty buildings around here and rents are still cheap,” says Noriko Minkus, co-founder of the Japanisches Haus, a “post-growth”, not-for-profit community project on Eisenbahnstraße, the district’s core street. “All the young people starting projects makes it a really interesting area. But that means it will soon be under threat from gentrification, too.”
Alongside art exhibitions, concerts and readings, Minkus and her friends organise children’s workshops and communal meals aimed at “bottom-up international exchange” – bringing the local students closer to the area’s relatively large immigrant population.
Eisenbahnstraße is not everyone’s idea of the perfect playground. The street is infamous in Germany as a crime hotspot, disturbing Leipzig’s otherwise friendly, peaceful backwater vibe. But it’s far from being dangerous compared with many global cities. If you visit the Japanisches Haus on a Saturday evening, you can join its VoKü or “people’s kitchen” and, in exchange for a donation, share an informal, home-cooked meal with locals.
Music/clubs scene
By Stefan Kache, owner of Distillery, Leipzig’s long-established techno club
Techno’s still a big part of Leipzig’s music scene. There are four main techno clubs here, including Distillery. The newest is the Institute für Zukunft, which opened about a year ago. Then in Plagwitz, there are Elipamanoke and the Damenhandschuhfabrik.
The east has smaller spots like Ost Apotheke – a squat-cum-hostel with a club built in. Many clubs in the area don’t even have a rental contract. People just help themselves to the empty buildings and get on with it. It’s harder than it used to be for these places popping up, though. In the early 1990s we ran Distillery illegally for two and a half years in a factory we just took over. They’d never last that long now. If you want live music, head to Plagwitz’s Karl-Heine-Straße and look for the pubs, which often have bands playing. Westwerk, a gig venue in an old factory building, is a good place to try. Or down in Connewitz, there’s Die Nato and Conne Island - both are cultural centres hosting gigs and other events.
Leipzig has a certain buzz about it right now because of the really lively scene. The hype means the scene is growing more international. At Distillery, we still have our regulars, but we also hear a lot of different languages being spoken now. Leipzig’s a much better place to live than it was. The city has a certain kind of magic about it which is hard to describe. It comes when you really live here and experience it for yourself.”
Where to eat and drink
By Diana Wernicke, events manager at The Market, a new monthly street food, vintage and design market held at Täubchenthal, a converted factory in Plagwitz
It’s best to jump on a bike and get out of the city centre, which is dominated by chain restaurants – there’s no good reason to eat factory-made food when there’s some little place just opened in Plagwitz making the same thing from scratch. One brand new place is Kaiserbad (Karl-Heine-Straße 93), a beer garden and restaurant serving traditional meals such as schnitzel, along with salads and burgers. It opened in mid-July in a fantastic location at the former Westwerk factory complex. Another new Plagwitz hotspot is Chumumi (Zschochersche Straße 50a) - a little Vietnamese place with great food and lovely decor. Choose from traditional Vietnamese soups (pho) or a wide variety of meat and fish dishes flavoured with peanuts, soy, Thai basil and ginger. It also has an extraordinary drinks menu – try the chrysanthemum and green sencha leaf tea with roasted soya beans.
If you’re vegan or vegetarian like me, you’ve come to the right place. Leipzig was recently named Germany’s most vegan-friendly city. Zest (Bornaische Straße 54) in the southern district of Connewitz is one of the city’s oldest veggie/vegan restaurants and is well-known for its wines too. Choose from dishes such as shiitake seitan with polenta fries and lemon mirin mayonnaise or chanterelle mushroom and lovage ravioli with hazelnut tarator and cognac shallots.
Or try the vegetarian Moroccan dishes at Salon Casablanca (no website) (Karl-Heine-Straße 47). Alongside tagines, it has exotic twists on European favourites such as spaghetti with Arabic tomato, courgette and pepper sauce served with sheep’s cheese. If you’re craving sugar afterwards, Café Albert just along the street (Karl-Heine-Straße 74), makes fresh homemade cakes – on Thursdays they’re vegan. This is one of many places here where local people have put their hearts and souls into making it work.
Leipzig’s a relaxed place and there’s loads of space for creativity – things happen here which would be unthinkable elsewhere. Everyone’s organising their own cultural events, little festivals, just doing it for themselves and for other locals. With The Market, we wanted to bring all those kinds of people together in one place so they could exchange ideas. We also wanted to broaden Leipzigers’ culinary horizons. The stands are all run by the chefs themselves so they can talk directly to their customers about what they’re eating. Like everywhere nowadays, the trend is towards locally and sustainably sourced ingredients. One of our stands sells pizza made from products grown at Annalinde, an urban gardening project here in Plagwitz.
Street food markets, inspired by the ones in London, are taking the whole of Germany by storm right now, not just Leipzig. It started last year in Berlin and this summer has reached Munich and Hamburg. Now they’re springing up all over the place. We wanted ours to be more like an event that people would hang around at after they’d eaten. As well as art and design stalls, we’ve got street artists, fire shows, DJs and bands in the evening. We’re hoping people realise it’s not all about shopping. They can relax and soak up the laid-back Leipzig atmosphere.
Arts/creative
By Candace Goodrich, a New Yorker who is art director at the Kunstkraftwerk in Plagwitz, a former heating plant transformed into an exhibition space
Head east if you’re looking for underground culture. They’re doing some amazing things around Eisenbahnstraße. They aren’t established galleries, but I’d say just go and discover, especially in the evening. There’s interesting nightlife going on there too. Try this colour-coded map, which will give you an idea of various art projects in the east.
In Plagwitz, visitors should go to the D21 gallery. It’s part of the Lindenow artists’ network, which recently helped kick the far-right NPD party out of its headquarters here. Then down on Karl-Heine-Straße, above a junk shop, you’ll find Delikatessenhaus, a gallery showcasing the work of young graphic artists.
For visitors to the city in October, there’s the Designers’ Open, a design fair with satellites throughout the city. But there aren’t many designer boutiques in Leipzig – shopping’s not really part of the lifestyle. At the weekend everyone’s out in the park. That’s confusing for tourists, though, wandering into neighbourhoods and seeing empty stores. It can be eerie walking down the street and finding no one’s around. When I first moved here, I thought it was like being in a film the whole time. But space means if you want to start something, there’s nothing stopping you. In other cities, New York say, it’s expensive, highly competitive and the turnover rate is high, artists have to make their mark quickly. Here, someone just buys an old factory, renovates it and starts planning their exhibition programme.
At Kunstkraftwerk, I’m looking to inject some multiculturalism, which is still missing in the arts here. Despite all the hype, Leipzig’s still a very German city, with a strong classical tradition. But our factory space here dominates the scene. Against that, only new, bold art forms really work. Over the next year, we’ll be hosting installations, video, photography and large-scale sculpture by artists from all over the world.
Readers’ tips and Instagram
There’s no better guide to a city than word-of-mouth recommendations – from people who live there and people who have visited. We asked our readers to share their favourite experiences and Instagram pictures of Leipzig. These are just a few, with more here:
Angela Merkel’s old student club
There are lots of good restaurants and bars on Barfussgässchen right by the Marktplatz. And nearby is the historic beer cellar Auerbachskeller. If you’re feeling like going out and celebrating with local people, there are lots of places you can go. How about a beach party with fresh cocktails at the La Playa beach bar? Or dancing alongside Leipzig’s beautiful people at Club L1? If you are into alternative or indie sounds, the right place to be would be surely Elsterartig, which has free admission. Visitors should also check out the cultural centre and former student club Moritzbastei, set up within historic vaults that were originally part of the old fortifications of Leipzig. When she was a student at Karl Marx university, chancellor Angela Merkel was among those who helped restore the structure to create a club for students.
Andy Schulze
Do the Lokomotive stadium
The Bruno-Plache-Stadion (nicknamed “das Bruno”), in Probstheida, the home of the FC Lokomotive Leipzig football club, is a must-see for any football fan with its 93-year-old stand (kept almost as it was when it opened). The club was a European Cup Winner’s Cup finalist in 1987, losing 0-1 to Ajax, and is well known for its UEFA Cup matches with the likes of Tottenham Hotspur, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Ipswich Town. The beer and bratwurst, fair prices and fair play will appeal to traditional football fans.
Uwe Emmrich-Kießling
Puppet theatre
Westflügel Lindenfels is located in the very arty west of the city at Hähnelstrasse 27, in Plagwitz. Neo Rauch’s studio is just five minutes away and numerous galleries and cafes are dotted all over the area. The building houses Leipzig’s foremost puppetry theatre with plays being put on nearly every week by Westflügel’s own players or international ensembles. The building itself is full of character – it opened as a ballroom in 1900, and became a factory for decades thereafter and only narrowly escaped total desolation by being lovingly resurrected in the last 10 years. It is still inhabited by the character of lost places while coming to life on performance nights and every Friday as a cheap and cheerful bar with free concerts, impro theatre and great people.
bluemelh
Take a Trabant tour
We did a trip around Leipzig in a Trabant, the car that’s such a symbol of the former East Germany, and with it you can do a fantastic city tour – much cooler than with a touristic bus. Leipzig is a great city and we had a nice time touring through with “our” Trabi.
Dick Schiferli
Through the forest to the lake
The Riverside Forest almost splits Leipzig in two, meaning that you can get from one end of the city to the other without using roads. Register with the public bike hire company Nextbike, get a map and plan a good hour to cycle through the woods to the lake Cospudener See, to the south of the city. The lake is good for swimming and has a cool harbour with restaurants. The cycle around the lake takes around 20 mins. If you are daring enough to get your kit off, there is the beautiful Sauna im See on the lake next to the harbour.
Veraplums
