Photo © Maxime Ballesteros
Leipzig, a city of broken promises, of discrepancies in the form of historical international flair and current provinciality, discrepancies in the form of grande Renaissance architecture and dire Communist apartment blocks, a city of just over half a million inhabitants located south of Berlin now involuntarily goes by the name of “Hypezig.” The reason for this hype of becoming the “new Berlin” is quite simple: its abundance of empty spaces available for next to nothing, creative housing projects, close proximity to Berlin and most importantly a growing number of artists that are turning the wounded city into their playground.
Not so much new but still relevant is the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei, a former cotton mill that became the largest European company of its kind at the beginning of the 20th Century, where internationally relevant contemporary artists such as Neo Rauch work and exhibit. The property houses galleries, a cafe and a gigantic art supply shop, and is so large that it was worth using our Mercedes-Benz E 500 Coupé to discover it. Then there is Karl-Heine Strasse, that leads you from the Spinnerei towards the city’s center; a street slowly filling up with cafes, vegan food options and specialized stores with the most notable structure being the West Werk – another former industrial space now filled with studios, exhibition and performance spaces. Next we headed to the end of the close-by Zschorchersche Strasse, where a set of completely abandoned industrial buildings stand untouched – untouched, that is, if you don’t count the abundance of graffiti tags, that are surely just waiting to be seized by young artists much like the rest of the city.
Read more about Sleek’s trip from Berlin to Vienna via Leipzig and Prague in the Winter issue of Sleek, publishing this month. Find out more information on The Search at mb! by Mercedes-Benz.