Information on Excursions
(1) Guided Tour of the Bach-Museum Leipzig and St. Thomas Church
The museum presents the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his family in an interactive multimedia exhibition covering an area of 750 square metres. One of the highlights is the treasure room, where original Bach manuscripts and other precious items are on display. The showpieces include the console of an organ inspected and approved by Bach himself in 1743 from the erstwhile St John’s Church, a casket containing relics from Bach’s tomb, and a recently discovered cash box once owned by the Bach family.
(2) World Famous City of Music – A Walk on the Leipzig Music Trail
Hardly any other European city can boast such a rich musical heritage as Leipzig. As the birthplace of Richard Wagner and the place where Bach, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, the Schumanns and Mahler worked, Leipzig is a must for music lovers. The musical journey also informs you about the cultural centres, the Gewandhaus and the Opera. The St. Thomas Choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra continues the magnificent musical tradition. Walking tour around the old town includes a visit to the St Thomas‘s church.
(3) Peaceful Revolution – The Fall of 89 in Leipzig
In 1982, when the first idealists came together in St. Nicholas to pray for peace, no one expected these gatherings to be the beginning of a never before seen revolution: the peaceful protesters of the Monday demonstrations went down in history. Our tour will take you to the hot spots of the events of the fall of 1989; e.g. St. Nicholas Church, Augustus Square and the Round Corner, the former regional office of the Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi.
(4) A City Stroll
The tour will lead through the city’s colourful past and lively present. We will show you the historic city centre: The market place with the impressive Old Town Hall, medieval St. Thomas‘s Church, where composer Johann Sebastian Bach worked, the oldest coffeehouse in Germany – the “Coffebaum” – from 1711, St. Nichola‘s Church, where the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 started, and the unique passage and courtyard system including the legendary traditional restaurant “Auerbachs Keller”. Each place will help you discover more about the diverse traditions, personalities and history of Leipzig.
(5) Guided Tour of the Botanical Garden of Leipzig University
The Botanical Garden of Leipzig University is a green oasis in the heart of the city. Covering an area of 3.5 hectares, it is home to around 10,000 different plant species. It is the oldest of its kind in Germany and, along with the gardens in Pisa, Padua, and Florence, ranks among the oldest in Europe. Founded in 1542, the garden was relocated several times before settling at its current location on Linnéstraße in 1876. The tour takes us through the outdoor areas and greenhouses, providing insight into the garden’s various functions: as a place of education and research, a place of encounter between the university and the public, and a place of recreation.
(6) Guided Tour of the Grassi Museum’s Repository
The Leipzig Museum of Ethnography, also known as the Grassi Museum of Ethnology, houses one of Germany’s largest ethnographic collections, with over 200,000 objects. Only a small fraction of these items are on display in the exhibition rooms, while the majority are kept in storage. Our tour will take us to this rarely seen part of the museum, offering insights especially into the collection of objects from Buddhist cultures across Asia. We will explore the conditions under which these objects are stored, as well as the challenges the museum faces in their care and conservation. Participation is limited, so we kindly ask you to register in advance.
(7) Tradition and Innovation in a Cup: Buddhist Scholastic Tea Party
Buddhism and tea have almost always been closely tied together. The very first record of the tea ceremony was found in Buddhist monastic settings, where members of the Buddhist community were not only tea drinkers but also active tea producers, developers, and transmitters of tea processing techniques. In this workshop, the history and evolution of one of today’s most popular tea culture practices across East Asia—the “Gongfu tea ceremony”—will be introduced, clarified, and demonstrated in relation to religious and socio-political factors. Participants will have the opportunity to become acquainted with traditional ceremonial tea brewing techniques and to taste some innovative types of tea found in today’s ever-expanding tea market. In a way, we will be reviving the tradition of tea parties, which were popular among scholars and Buddhist monks in medieval China, celebrating the blend of old traditions and modern adaptations with fellow scholars of Buddhism.
(8) Guided Tour: Jewish Life in Leipzig
Before 1933, Leipzig as a trade city had the sixth-largest Jewish community in Germany and the largest one in Saxony. This tour will address Jewish life in Leipzig before, during, and after Nazi Germany and visit important places connected to Jewish history and culture in Leipzig.
(9) Guided Tour: Leipzig and Colonial History
This tour will add a postcolonial perspective to Leipzig’s official history as a traditional trade fair city by visiting and learning about places, that have been entangled with colonial and post-colonial history in diverse ways, such as Baumwollspinnerei, Café Riquet, Zum Arabischen Coffe Baum, and Zoo Leipzig.
