Die Eisenbahnstraße in den letzten 500 Jahren: Ein historischer Stadtteil-Rundgang

Eisenbahnstraße Over the Last 500 Years: A Historical Neighborhood Tour

Eisenbahnstraße in eastern Leipzig is notorious as a place of crime, danger, and deviation from bourgeois norms. A look at the history of the Magistrale and the surrounding neighborhoods of Neustadt-Neuschönefeld and Volkmarsdorf reveals: For centuries, it has been a neighborhood of outsiders and outcasts, of the underprivileged and disadvantaged, but also of those who think differently, of fighters and resistance activists, of those who don’t belong and those who don’t want to belong.

On this walking tour, you’ll learn:
– what the “Prince of Poets” Goethe and Emperor Napoleon were doing here;
– how Germany’s first long-distance railroad cut through a former red-light district made up entirely of blackberry thickets;
– how the 19th-century bourgeois women’s movement gained momentum here, as well as homeopathy and handwriting analysis;
– how communists and labor leaders shaped Leipzig’s “Red East”;
– how Lene Voigt came up with the idea here to adapt classical poems into the Saxon dialect;
– why the forgotten creator of “Feuerzangenbowle,” who grew up here, was forgotten;
– what is being done here to ensure that drug-related deaths and the dignity of those who died are not forgotten;
– that without Leipzig’s East, neither the Diercke World Atlas nor the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 would have existed…
… and much more!

The tour will be led by Dr. Uwe Krüger from the Neustädter Markt Citizens’ Association.
The tour starts in front of the Aldi at Konradstraße 27.
The tour ends at the Volkmarsdorf Market (on Google Maps: Ernst-Thälmann-Platz).
The number of participants is limited to 20 people per tour. Therefore, registration is required.
You can easily purchase tickets via this link or register by emailing kontakt@poege-haus.de. You will then receive a registration confirmation as well as the bank account information or PayPal account details for transferring the participation fee. The fee is 6–10 € per person (based on your own assessment).

This tour is funded by the district budget of the Leipzig-East District Advisory Board.