Björn Carius

But we must take our leave now and simultaneously leave the Old Town behind on our left, because the No. 89 carries us on to the northern edge of the city centre. The latter is traversed by the Brühl, the former centre of the fur trade whose Jewish character was brought to an end by the pogroms of November 1938. At its western end, beginning in the 1960’s an ensemble of blocks was created. The new building of the Museum of Fine Arts and its sole L-shaped companion also fit in harmoniously. The ten-storey apartment blocks, however, and their long-term companions, the low buildings used for commercial purposes, are threatened by demolition, bringing the idyll to an abrupt end. And just here, surprisingly, there is a cosmopolitan touch, when, at the very moment a calm female voice prepares us for the last stop Hauptbahnhof – Main Station – Gare Principale, the letters on the roof of one of the blocks announce Bienvenue a Leipzig – Welcome to Leipzig – Добо Пожаловатъ в Дейлциг. Back on the Ring, thousands of peaceful revolutionaries are approaching us, or so it seems, from the main station on their way to Friedrich-Engels-Platz, which is today called Goerdelerring.

Finally we reach our destination with a view of another octagon, the high rise on Wintergartenstrasse, at 32 storeys and 300 feet, the highest apartment block in the GDR. After the building and many of its occupants had suffered a loss of prestige in the course of the 1990’s, the Olympic spirit finally opened its purse – to ensure that it would appear as clean and safe as the main railway station. Because at the end of our journey we are without fear. So far there are only three security cameras in constant use in public places in Leipzig. Successfully, according to the police: One can say, that those areas, in particular the railway station, the station forecourt above all, were under intense closed circuit camera surveillance, and that really no criminal acts occur there anymore.