Bach accompanied us on our hour and a half bus ride to Germany this morning as his music resounded through the motor coach. What a great way to start our trip to Leipzig! Besides being the producers of Porsche and BMW (no, I didn’t bring a souvenir for you Nelio!), Leipzig had an important role to play in the Reformation.
At the time, Luther said Leipzig is like Sodom and Gomorrah. Since it was at a crossroads of two major routes, there were many people who stopped there for a good time. It was a route along the Camino de Santiago where pilgrims stopped as well as a big university town. In Luther’s time, the population of 8,000 residents outnumbered Wittenberg by 4 times. Now Leipzig boasts 500,000, the biggest state in Saxony. But there were some people of good repute who lived there, many of whom were Luther’s friends. Of course some were not. John Tetzel, the traveling indulgences salesman, made his home in Leipzig. He coined the phrase, “As soon as the coin in the coin box rings, another soul from purgatory springs.” And here's the coin box with a sketch of him selling indulgences.
Leipzig played a few different roles in the Reformation. Most notably, it was the place where Martin Luther debated John Eck for three weeks in 1519. Opening services for the debate were held at St. Thomas Church June 24, 1519.
The actual location where the debate happened is now a government building and not open to the public.
When Luther left Wittenberg to travel to Leipzig for the debate, he was accompanied by 200 students and others who journeyed with him. While Luther was there, he had a friend who owned a restaurant. He ate and drank there during his three week stay.
I also had the fortune of eating in this same place who had on the menu the Luther meal that he would eat when he went there.
Since I wasn’t up for pickled pork, I opted for the leg of lamb.
They also displayed a letter Luther wrote to a friend about the owner and restaurant.
A manuscript was made of the debate, each side claiming they had won.
Eck travelled to Rome and convinced the Pope to excommunicate him. The Papal Bull of excommunication came out the following year in 1520.
Leipzig was ruled by another Elector than Wittenberg, George the Bearded. He forbid the Reformation from taking hold in his territory. But when he died in 1539, the people of Leipzig asked Luther to come and preach and start the Reformation there, which he did.
Over 500 people stood (there were no pews or chairs) packed like sardines inside the church, just to hear him preach. With the windows open, several hundred more stood outside straining to hear. Leipzig was on its way to be a Reformed church and community.
Those are Leipzig’s connections to Luther. But they city is known for much, much more. I’ll mention three more claims to fame.
1. The Auerbachs Keller is the famous place where the legend is told of Faust, a
contemporary of Luther’s, who met Mephistopheles (the devil) at the cellar restaurant, got into an argument with three students, and Mephistopheles and he escaped on a barrel.
Goethe heard of this legend and wrote the famous book/play. It is said if you rub the shoe of the Faust statue with your left hand, you will find fortune. Hey, can’t hurt!
2. All you music fans are crying out by now, what about Bach!! Yes, Leipzig is known
as the Town of Music. So many musicians gathered in this city, Bach being the most famous.
Bach was the Cantor of St. Thomas Church from 1723 to his death in 1750. Surprising to us, he was not their first choice…or their second. They were not only looking for a musician but also a teacher for the boys’ school. A teacher was required to know and teach Latin which Bach did not know. He offered to pay out of his own pocket for a Latin teacher for the kids should he get the job, which became the compromise. It is said, the comment was made when they hired him, “We will have to take someone mediocre.”
I found the contract Bach signed in 1723 when he took the position.
His grave is also prominently located in the church.
Our group had the opportunity to hear a Bach Motet in St. Thomas Church where he spent most of his professional life. What a treat!
He is now the most played composer in the world. He and his music friends would gather for coffee at the Coffebaum, the original Starbucks.
There is a room where they met often to compose and talk together.
In fact, Bach even wrote a Coffee Cantata and performed it in the coffee shop.
That same shop still exists, serving coffee over 300 years. It was fun to have an apple strudel and hang out with new found friends at the same place Bach did.
Of course, there were many other famous musicians, like Felix Mendelssohn, who lived and worked there.
3. The final claim to fame of this town is much more recent, from 1946-1989, when it
was known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). We have now heard three different speakers tell us first hand experiences of these difficult times. Life in East Germany was hard. One person described it as being in prison. The church was barely tolerated in that time and always under suspicion. This part of the country went straight from Nazi rule to Soviet rule which didn’t seem much better. The churches had to do something. But what? They began the Peaceful Revolution, founded on the non-violence movement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It began in prayer and every Monday the St. Nicholas church opened for prayer.
Even atheists came to pray and talk and vent and dream of a better country. The church was a safe place and open to all. Spies were sent by the Stazi (like the secret police) to keep an eye on the churches. I can’t share all the stories of impressions, but after the Easter German governments support of the actions in China’s Tiananmen Square, the people escalated the Peaceful Revolution. Recordings and video tapes were confiscated of these demonstrations, except for one camera that was positioned on top of the Reformed Church.
This tape was smuggled to West Germany and once the world media got ahold of it, people not only in the world but also in other parts of the GDR knew what was happening in Leipzig. The numbers joining St. Nicholas got bigger and bigger until the government issued an ultimatum. October 9, 1989 would be their last demonstration. Troops were brought in with machine guns. Yet thousands upon thousands of peaceful demonstrators poured into Leipzig. One brilliant move was for each person to have a candle. They had to hold the candle with one hand and shield it with the other to keep it from extinguishing. So no one had clubs, sticks, signs or anything else. The police weren’t counting on so many people and such a peaceful demonstration. They tried to provoke the people with verbal taught, but there was no violence. The guy in charge tried to get ahold of his superiors to ask him what to do. Gunning down 10,000 peaceful demonstrators did not seem like a good idea, especially after the world’s outcry at Tiananmen Square. So they backed up and let the people peacefully protest the communist government. It was called a true miracle. It was only a few weeks later that the borders were opened and the road to Reunification was underway. It was a New Reformation, not reforming the church, but led by the church to reform the country.
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