Sep 09, 2008 - 04:05:18 CDT
LEIPZIG - It's been a long day in Leipzig, a city with more than 800 years of history based in commerce, trade, education, music, repression and peaceful protests.I've spent the day inside museums, learning about East Germany and the city's most recent history, which one tour guide and history-maker herself describes as a true lesson in democracy.
"This is the place where you can really learn how valuable freedom and democracy is," said Irmtraut Hollitzer, standing in the hallways of the Stasi Museum.
Hollitzer works at the Stasi Museum, a pieced-together exhibit about the Stasis - the former secret police of East Germany, from the word Staatssicherheit - set in a single hallway on the first floor of the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig.
The original hallways were retained with the yellowing linoleum tiles and the stark lighting; a bell edges the top of a wall outside of an office door, apparently used to inform others when someone was leaving or entering an area. In an entry room, a large, 30-year-old security camera points menacingly at a door.
The museum was put together by a citizens committee, many of whom were involved in a the peaceful protests the city has reason to be proud of.
Many from the committee participated in the Monday protests that started with 70,000 people and grew to 350,000 people circling the headquarters while tanks and restless soldiers with armed weapons circled them.
"That's what they call the wonder of Leipzig," Hollitzer said. "That 70,000 people demonstrated and kept it peaceful."
Not a single person dared throw a stone, she said, for fear it would give the Stasis the reason to fire.
But they never did, and the Monday protests - started on Sept. 4, 1989, in a church, later spilling into the streets - eventually amassed enough peaceful power to enter the Stasi building and prevent the soldiers inside from destroying files.
"I didn't have a big one," Hollitzer said. "There was only a little report on me."
Once they'd entered the building, she grabbed a bag of papers that were set to be burned, and found a few copies of letters addressed to her husband. He had a huge file, one that revealed to him who his friends and enemies had been.
Stasis often enlisted unofficial workers to collect information on people of interest; these workers could be friends or even family. They used wiretapping, security cameras and searched letters to create files on people of interest, including, as is displayed in the museum, children.
Perhaps more telling of East Germany times are the city streets, some lined with buildings stained with filth from the polluted East German air, which one guide said was 75 percent worse than air quality today. Most of these buildings are now cleaned and the city is under what seems to be a neverending construction cycle - like most former eastern cities - but an occasional black eye remains.
Hollitzer tells our group of journalists, all American, we should take this brief look into Stasi and Leipzig history to tell the world about the wonder of Leipzig. While I'll oblige, we should also take it a step farther to remember that Leipzig has history beyond its peaceful protests:
n It was home to Johann Sebastian Bach, where the famous composer taught school children in one of the city's famous churches. And composer Richard Wagner was born in the city.
n It was host to the world's largest trade fair, which eventually turned into a "sample fair." The fair continued even during its time as a Soviet state, and some form of it remains today.
n Birthplace of Germany's first labor party.
n University of Leipzig, known for law studies, was where current Chancellor Angela Merkel received her degree.
So New Leipzig, N.D., has its ancestors to thank for adopting such a proud name for its town.
(Tribune reporter Crystal R. Reid is reporting from Germany. She's on a two-month International Center for Journalism fellowship in Berlin. Visit her blog at www.bismarcktribune.com.)
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