Leipzig

Leipzig is one of the historic commercial centers of Germany, located where the Holy Roman Via Regia and Via Imperii met. The old Town Hall, above contains a top notch history museum.

Leipzig has lots of fun buildings, like this one housing a Viennese cafe.

The GDR destroyed Leipzig's oldest church, the Paulinerkirche (built in the 13th century), in 1968. After the fall of the GDR it was replaced by the Paulinum, the church of the University of Leipzig.

Leipzig's new town hall, built in 1899.

Bach worked in Leipzig from 1723-1750.

Another interesting Leipzig building

Auerbachs Keller is one of the oldest restaurants in Leipzig, and the first place Mephistopheles take Faust in Goethe's Faust.

The Mephisto Bar next door is excellent.

An odd housing development next to Leipzig's main park

Leipzig is located next to a large forest-park.

The Sixth Coalition inflicted a decisive defeat on Napoleon at Leipzig in 1813. 100 years later a massive memorial was built by the German Empire to promote German nationalism.

Some of the last fighting between the Nazis and U.S. forces occurred here at the end of World War II.

Part of a cavalryman's uniform from the battle

The battle involved a good deal of urban fighting.

The inside of the monument is... interesting.

The monument has great views.

The Leipzig City Museum has some interesting pieces, like 1574 Lutheran painting making fun of Calvinists for doing communion wrong.

That seems unpleasant.

Martin Luther's wife's wedding ring. One of the thirteen pieces of it is caricature of a covetous Jew.

Leipzig citizens were expected to bear arms to protect the city, and they had no standing army until 1866.

A dress made up from worthless marks from the 1930s.

The GDR is not remembered fondly here.

Lutzen and Breitenfeld

Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish King and Protestant champion during the 30 Years War, fought his greatest battles at Breitenfeld and Lutzen near Leipzig. He died at Lutzen, and a memorial was erected there in his honor.

The town of Lutzen built a cover for the Schwedenstein, the stone left at Lutzen in 1632 to mark where Gustavus Adolphus died, on the 200th anniversary of his death.

In the early 1900s the Swedes funded the chapel built adjacent to the stone. The chapel was one of the GDR's most popular private tourist destinations.

The chapel's interior is built in Swedish style and contains 100 year old memorial banners.

The memorial overlooks Lutzen battlefield.

The Battle of Breitenfeld, fought in 1631, was Gustavus Adolphus's greatest victory. All that remains to mark its location is this stone cube.

Who knows what remains under the field at Breitenfeld.

Nietzsche's grave is also located in Rocken, just outside of Lutzen. This is a modern art installation next to it.

This is Nietzsche's grave.

You have to walk down this unassuming path to an old church get to it. You'd never guess it was there.

Jena

Napoleon won a decisive victory against the Prussians at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806. There is a small museum here now.

The battle is famous for General Davout defeating the Prussian main body without reinforcement at Auerstedt, while Napoleon and the rest of his forces engaged a slightly smaller Prussian element at Jena.

Artillery techniques of the Napoleonic Era

An average sized artillery piece and caisson took seven horses to pull and five men to operate.

The Napoleon Stone marks the site of the battle and denotes other important places from Napoleon's life.

The Battlefield at Jena

Weimar

Weimar is the home of the German Enlightenment. It is also home to the Nietzsche Archive, originally founded by Nietzsche's sister to profit off Nietzsche's work.

They have Nietzsche's mustache friendly teacup!

Weimar still has some interesting cultural events today.

The Weimar Theater and Weimar's two greatest denizens, Goethe and Schiller

Part of Weimar Palace

Part of an old church in Weimar's Park an der Ilm

Buchenwald concentration camp was just over the hill from Weimar.

Steel poles in the forest mark where the Soviets murdered prisoners here after WWII.

Flossenburg

Flossenburg was founded as a Hohenstaufen stronghold in 948. It is located on the Czech border.

Flossenburg has a large granite quarry, which was used to build the castle.

The castle was destroyed during the 30 Years War by the Swedes.

The town of Flossenburg

Flossenburg Concentration Camp was founded by enterprising SS leaders who wanted to use slave labor to mine the granite and sell it to the Nazi government to build Albert Speer's monumental projects. The SS even had their own business, the German Earth and Stone Works Company (DESt).

The Nazis wanted the German populace to think the stone used in monuments like the Nuremberg Rally site were mined by noble German stonemasons, not slaves.

You can see Flossenburg castle in the background.

SS officials were willing to sell labor assistance to locals in the area for the right price, and the local community was integrated into the fabric of the camp. After WWII a great forgetting occurred about the complicity of the populace with the crimes occurring at their doorstep.

As the Soviets liberated Poland, Flossenburg was flooded with prisoners from other concentration camps. This is when the majority of prisoners died at the camp. The Poles built the first memorials here to remember their dead.

The church at Flossenburg Concentration Camp has stained glass windows of the nations and peoples most effected by the Nazi's disregard for non-German human life.