Why Germany's Most Fascinating City Is... Leipzig

In the German metropolis where Bach wrote cantatas and Martin Luther challenged the church, Jeff Chu finds a new generation of cultural provocateurs moulding this city into one of Germany’s most dynamic and welcoming destinations.

- Jeff Chu

Outside the Spinnerei, all I saw were stolid brick walls. But when I walked through the entrance and into the heart of this massive complex, which fills 25 acres in western Leipzig, I began to sense its story. Stylish young Germans bounced by on bikes, scarves fluttering in their wake. They popped into and out of a café in one building and a large art-supply store on the ground floor of another, stocking up on fuel for their creativity.

The Spinnerei has long been a place of imagining and making things destined for homes and bodies elsewhere. This was once central Europe’s largest cotton mill, where, from the late 19th century and into the early 20th, hundreds of thousands of spindles produced countless yards of thread. As industry faded with the fortunes of East Germany, the buildings emptied—until they were rediscovered by a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Manfred Mülhaupt was one of the first to recognise the Spinnerei’s potential. He arrived in the early 1990s, squatting with starving-artist friends in one of the Spinnerei’s many disused buildings. They rode bikes up and down its wide hallways, painted by day, then danced all night. “The first two, three, four years, we didn’t pay anything,” he said. “Nothing was happening, so you had enough time to do your work. If you had a party, everyone would come because Leipzig had no bars. No nothing.”