We stay close to the downtown area but not in it. As such we have a short walk towards the pedestrian zone but it is already quite a scenic one. The high school for music and theater is housed in what looks to be a palace and nearby is another quite impressive building. Quite a nice start to our visit!
At a corner we notice a popular site and we walk ourselves there to investigate. We find out that this was the location of the Stasi in the downtown area and that it was called Rundes Ecke/Round Corner and that it was taken over by the protestors against the Communist regime. Now it is a museum and we decide not to visit it as we have lots of things planned today.
And then we enter the pedestrian area close to the first goal of our day “Zum Coffe Baum” cafe. While it is full of cafes most of them are closed at this time of day or so it seems but we hope that at least Zum Coffe Baum is open.
The facade is impressive and we are happy that it is open even though most rooms are cordoned off. But we are not here to eat we are here to see the coffee museum and the interior of this old cafe. In fact as coffee has been served here since 1711 it is one of the oldest continuously operating cafes in Europe along with Café Procope in Paris.
Besides coffee it also serves sweets and quite a few of them. If we didn’t just eat we would be tempted but we are full at this point so it is time to find the museum.
The museum is at a higher floor and after an exhausting climb we finally find it and we are ready to learn about the history of coffee in Leipzig and Germany.
The first thing that we learn is something that we knew at a certain level already that coffee was brought to the Western world by Turkish traders. And this is where the story of coffee in Europe begins at least in the museum.
Then there is a section about famous guests to the cafe. And there were quite a lot from Bach to Schumann to Wagner to Goethe, if they came to Leipzig they visited the cafe. However something to keep in mind is that cafes at the time were rowdy places and didn’t have the best reputation.
There is a section with porcelain cups used for coffee and then another section with machines used to produce coffee.
Throughout the era coffee came from different regions to Germany like Ethiopia, India and then Thailand. Obviously the source countries changed quite often depending on political and economic constraints.
For some time Germany had their own colonies but they actually didn’t produce coffee even though the government tried to give that impression. And then during the DDR era during a failed harvest in Brazil there was a coffee crisis leading to massive shortages in the DDR and forcing the production of coffee from chicory and other substitutes. And then the museum ends and it is time to exit and walk to the Thomaskirche our next goal.
