Leipzig in the context of "Fall of communism"

The Monday demonstrations (German: Montagsdemonstrationen in der DDR) were a series of peaceful political protests against the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The demonstrations began in Leipzig on 4 September 1989, starting the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the government, and German reunification.

The demonstrations took place in towns and cities around the GDR on various days of the week from 1989 to 1991. The Leipzig demonstrations, which are the best known, took place on Mondays. The protests are conventionally separated into five cycles.

Erfurt (German pronunciation: [ˈɛʁfʊʁt] ) is the capital and largest city of the Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide valley of the River Gera, in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest, and in the middle of a line of the six largest Thuringian cities (Thüringer Städtekette), stretching from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena, to Gera in the east. Together with Kassel and Göttingen, it is one of the cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants lying closest to the geographic centre of Germany. Erfurt is 100 km (62 mi) south-west of Leipzig, 250 km (155 mi) north-east of Frankfurt, 300 km (186 mi) south-west of Berlin and 400 km (249 mi) north of Munich.

Erfurt's old town is one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. The Gera is spanned by the Merchants' Bridge (Krämerbrücke), one of the rare bridges with houses built on it. On the Erfurt Cathedral Hill is the ensemble of Erfurt Cathedral—which houses the world's largest free-swinging medieval bell—and St Severus' Church. Petersberg Citadel is one of the largest and best preserved town fortresses in Central Europe. Erfurt's Old Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in Europe, and together with the Erfurt Mikveh [de], which was only rediscovered in 2007, and the Stone House [de], forms the UNESCO World Heritage Site Jewish-Medieval Heritage of Erfurt.

Dresden (/ˈdrɛzdən/; German: [ˈdʁeːsdn̩] ; Upper Saxon: Dräsdn; Upper Sorbian: Drježdźany, pronounced [ˈdʁʲɛʒdʒanɨ]) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne), and the third-most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Radeberg, and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has over 1.3 million inhabitants.

Dresden is the second largest city on the River Elbe after Hamburg. Most of the city's population lives in the Elbe Valley, but a large, albeit very sparsely populated, area of the city east of the Elbe lies in the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands (the westernmost part of the Sudetes) and thus in Lusatia. Many boroughs west of the Elbe lie in the Ore Mountain Foreland, as well as in the valleys of the rivers rising there and flowing through Dresden, the longest of which are the Weißeritz and the Lockwitzbach. The name of the city as well as the names of most of its boroughs and rivers are of Sorbian origin.

Glottolog is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials (grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-date language affiliations based on the work of expert linguists.

Glottolog was first developed and maintained at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Its main curators include Harald Hammarström and Martin Haspelmath.

Weimar is a city in the German state of Thuringia, in Central Germany between Erfurt to the west and Jena to the east, 80 km (50 mi) southwest of Leipzig, 170 km (106 mi) north of Nuremberg and 170 km (106 mi) west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouring cities of Erfurt and Jena, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia, with approximately 500,000 inhabitants. The city itself has a population of 65,000. Weimar is well known because of its cultural heritage and importance in German history.

The city was a focal point of the German Enlightenment and home of the leading literary figures of Weimar Classicism, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. In the 19th century, composers such as Franz Liszt made Weimar a music centre. Later, artists and architects including Henry van de Velde, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Walter Gropius came to the city and founded the Bauhaus movement, the most important German design school of the interwar period.

Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing for producing many copies by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against individual sheets of paper or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.

In practice, letterpress also includes wood engravings; photo-etched zinc plates ("cuts"); linoleum blocks, which can be used alongside metal type; wood type in a single operation; stereotypes; and electrotypes of type and blocks. With certain letterpress units, it is also possible to join movable type with slugs cast using hot metal typesetting. In theory, anything that is "type high" (i.e. it forms a layer exactly 0.918 inches thick between the bed and the paper) can be printed using letterpress.

Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

The Bach family had already produced several composers when Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a city musician, Johann Ambrosius, in Eisenach. After being orphaned at age 10, he lived for five years with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph, then continued his musical education in Lüneburg. In 1703 he returned to Thuringia, working as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen. Around that time he also visited for longer periods the courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertory, and the reformed court at Köthen, where he was mostly engaged with chamber music. By 1723 he was hired as Thomaskantor (cantor with related duties at St Thomas School) in Leipzig. There he composed music for the principal Lutheran churches of the city and Leipzig University's student ensemble, Collegium Musicum. In 1726 he began publishing his organ and other keyboard music. In Leipzig, as had happened during some of his earlier positions, he had difficult relations with his employer. This situation was somewhat remedied when his sovereign, Augustus III of Poland, granted him the title of court composer of the Elector of Saxony in 1736. In the last decades of his life, Bach reworked and extended many of his earlier compositions. He died due to complications following eye surgery in 1750 at the age of 65. Four of his twenty children, Wilhelm Friedemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christoph Friedrich, and Johann Christian, became composers.

A Polyphon is a disc-playing music box. The machine was invented in 1870; it was first manufactured by the Polyphon Musikwerke, in Leipzig, Germany, full-scale production having started about 1896 and continuing into the early 20th century. Polyphons were exported all over the world; music was supplied for the English, French, German markets, as well as further afield, with pieces cataloged for the Russian, Polish, and Balkan regions. Polyphon is also a record label as registered by German Polyphon Musikwerke AG in 1908. Polyphon traded under the Polydor label since 1913 with their trademarks Polyphon Musik and Polyphon Record.

Gera (German pronunciation: [ˈɡeːʁa] ) is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the Thüringer Städtekette, an almost straight string of cities consisting of the six largest Thuringian cities from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena to Gera in the east. Gera is the largest city in the Vogtland, and one of its historical capitals along with Plauen, Greiz and Weida. The city lies in the East Thuringian Hill Country, in the wide valley of the White Elster, between Greiz (upstream) and Leipzig (downstream). Gera is located in the Central German Metropolitan Region, approximately 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of Saxony's largest city of Leipzig, 80 km (50 miles) east of Thuringia's capital Erfurt, 120 km (75 miles) west of Saxony's capital Dresden and 90 km (56 miles) north of Bavaria's city of Hof (Saale).

First mentioned in 995 and developing into a city during the 13th century, Gera has historical significance as being one of the main residences of the Ducal House of Reuss and subsequently the capital of the Principality of Reuss-Gera (1848-1918) and of the People's State of Reuss (1918-1920), one of the many microstates the Thuringian region consisted of, before they were unified to form Thuringia in 1920.