The Leipzig contrast
The Leipzig contrast is a blog about one of the most beautiful cities in Germany; Leipzig. In this weekly blog I will tell you all about the contrast between the former east German culture and the culture nowadays. I have loads of personal stories and I’m happy to share those with you.
Imagine walking in a street while seeing old, historical buildings and new architecture combined. Leipzig is a former East-Germany city, which also means that a lot of inhabitants have known poor times. After the second world war until 1990, Leipzig has been suppressed by communism. When you are walking through Leipzig you can still see these communistic influences everywhere.
Just to freshen up your memory; Germany is divided in 16 provinces, or in German Bundesländer. Leipzig is located in the province of Sachsen. Which is located under Berlin and Brandenburg. Sachsen was before the second world war one of the richest provinces of Germany, unfortunately this all disappeared when the wall came down.
After the second world war, Germany was divided in two parts; East and West Germany. The two parts were separated by a big wall, also called the iron curtain. This wall was guarded 24 hours a day and people who tried to escape from the communistic east by climbing over the wall were shot to dead by the guards. People from west Germany could travel to east Germany, but the people from east Germany couldn’t travel to the west of Germany. There was an exception for east-German inhabitants above the age of 60, they were allowed to travel to west Germany one time a year for only a short period. Confusing right? I was told that this was because the ‘old’ inhabitants weren’t valuable for the rulers.
This is how my grandparents met an old lady from the city of Leipzig. My grandparents always went on vacation to a little village in Germany called Edenkoben. They always went to the same accommodation, which was especially for nature lovers. The old lady from Leipzig also went to that same village. After a few years of seeing each other every year in Edenkoben, my grandparents and the old lady became such a good friends that from then on my grandparents would visit the old lady and her family every year.
My father used to call the old lady “oma Leipzig”, which means grandmother from Leipzig in Dutch. My father and the son of oma Leipzig became really good friends as well during the yearly visits and they still visit each other every other year.
My grandparents had to face a lot of obstacles to visit the oma Leipzig. In that period the roads weren’t roads like we know now. They had to drive through little villages when there was no highway.
Now Leipzig is only an 7 hour drive from Amsterdam, but in that period they had to drive for 3 days to arrive in Leipzig. Nowadays you still have to go through a little village called Bad Oeyenhausen when driving from Amsterdam to Leipzig. My father tells me every time that they are building a highway since he can remember, but it still isn’t finished. It is only a small piece of the total journey, but it really does delay the rest of the trip. Everyone who is going in the same direction has to leave the highway, go straight through Bad Oeyenhausen and has go onto the highway again.
My grandparents also had to pass the big wall that separated the east from the west. They had to drive through the western checkpoint, where they had to unload the car completely. The bottom of the car was also checked with mirrors, because they couldn’t take western stuff like newspapers to East Germany. They were also interviewed as they were at the American customs. My grandparents had to answer questions like; what is the purpose of your visit?, how long are you staying? Etc.
In this picture I found on the internet, you can see what the first checkpoint looked like. This was the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint. This was the first checkpoint my grandparents had to pass before they could continue their journey to Leipzig.
Next week I will tell you more about my grandparents’ journey and I will show you an example of the contrast with pictures I took myself when I visited Leipzig.