IT GOES TO SHOW YOU NEVER CAN TELL

For over a thousand years, Leipzig has been one of Europe’s leading trade and cultural centers.
St. Nicolas Church was first built in 1165. Subsequently transformed into a giant Gothic Cathedral, it was where Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) had several first performances. The famous Leipzig Opera was founded in 1693. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the world’s oldest symphonic orchestras established in 1743.
Yet when I was first here in 1990 shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, all of these magnificent structures and every other in the city were encrusted with black sooty grime. Everything was an ugly mess after 45 years of Soviet Communist rule.
What Leipzig has become today would have been unimaginable to the people I met in 1990, in a total daze after living most all their lives amidst the cultural wreckage of Soviet Communist tyranny. It’s now the Boomtown (“boom-stadt”) of Germany.
This was far from inevitable. There is no “Arc of History” bending towards progress or justice or anything else – that’s just Marxist invented claptrap.
Here’s what history really is:













