by Sitting in the penthouse bar of the Congress Hotel in Chemnitz, looking down on the bleak modern cityscape below, you get a good idea of what Western Europe would look like if the Cold War had been won by Russia.
Beneath this ugly socialist skyscraper are rows and rows of brutal apartment blocks – soulless, nameless, unicorns – and in the middle of this concrete maze, glittering like a grim prophet, stands a giant bust of the man who gave his name to the communist dystopia this. , Karl Marx. “Workers of the world, unite!” reads the proclamation on the wall behind him.
Whatever happened to Karl-Marx-Stadt? When I was a schoolboy in the 80s, looking at maps of Eastern Europe and wondering if I would ever get the chance to travel there, Karl Marx’s East German City seemed strange. What did he do to earn that terrifying title? Did you have to be a Marxist to live there? If you went there and you weren’t a Marxist, would they let you out again? Even as a child, I could sense that there was something sinister about imposing a single person’s name on an entire city. And then the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and Karl-Marx-Stadt disappeared.
The actual city was not gone, of course. It was simply a return to its old name, Chemnitz. But for anyone outside of Germany, it might as well be obsolete. After German reunification, in 1990, tourists from the west flooded into East Germany, but they led Chemnitz’s wide and unsurprisingly wide berth. By all accounts, there wasn’t much left to see.
Next year, however, the city formerly known as Karl-Marx-Stadt will be the European Capital of Culture. I have to admit, when I first heard the news, it sounded like a very funny German joke. Has this forgotten city had an unlikely revival? I came here to find out.
I came to Chemnitz for the first time in 2010, 20 years after German reunification. I traveled all over East Germany and was impressed by the rapid pace of change, but here in Chemnitz it felt as if the Berlin Wall was only there for a few months. “All power to the Five Year Plan!” read a faded slogan on the wall of an abandoned factory. It wasn’t just a massive break with Marx, or the proletarian housing schemes that surrounded it. Above all, it was the air of listless indolence. The city center looked deserted. Where did everyone go?
In 1900, Chemnitz was one of the wealthiest cities in Germany, the home of an industrial boom, the engine room of the Second Reich. It was not only famous for its factories. He was also famous for art and music. Remarkably, it came through the Second World War relatively unscathed, until 5 March 1945, when the RAF flattened its handsome, historic Altstadt (Old Town).
When Germany surrendered, most of Chemnitz was in ruins, but other German cities suffered even worse damage and have since undergone significant restoration. The reason so little of Chemnitz survived is that its new communist rulers decided to create a brand new city among the rubble, a futuristic citadel of faceless tower blocks. In 1953, this new city was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt. Chemnitz was no more.
Ironically, Marx never set foot in Chemnitz (he was born and raised in Trier, in western Germany, 350 miles away). It was renamed because the Communists wanted to turn it into a proletarian utopia, a workers’ paradise built in a brand new Soviet style.
After reunification, the inhabitants of Karl-Marx-Stadt voted unanimously to restore the city’s old name. For all those oppressed by the old regime, this was an important symbolic change – under the Communists, even referring to your hometown as Chemnitz was a black mark on your name – but it took much more longer to filter the practical benefits. .
More than any other city in East Germany, Chemnitz represented the painful transition from communism to capitalism. If you were young, it was a great opportunity. If you were middle-aged, you often ended up redundant, left behind. Old rust-belt industries collapsed, and the high-tech ones that replaced them required far fewer workers. The population dwindled as young people moved back in search of work. Germany’s new far-flung party, Alternative für Deutschland, attracted significant support.
Returning here after 14 years, Chemnitz is clearly much improved. New smart buildings are emerging, old ones have been improved. There are more people in the shops, and on the streets. Unlike my last visit, in 2010, it feels like somewhere you could make a future.
But it’s still a million miles away from what most Brits would consider a typical holiday destination – and probably always will be. Even for a weekend city break, it’s quite a stretch. If you are interested in modern art or modern architecture, there are various sites of interest scattered around the city, but less than what you will find in Leipzig, an hour away.
If you’re curious about what happened behind the Iron Curtain, a walk around the city center is an interesting cautionary tale – this is what happens when urban planners erase centuries of history and replace it with a new ideology. effect on a powerless stricken community. For students of history or sociology it is very interesting, but even if you are particularly interested in East Germany, there are many other cities you should see before you come here (such as Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar and Potsdam).
Why, then, is this sprawling city to be the European Capital of Culture? Because this EU scheme is about boosting struggling regions and cities, rather than emphasizing cultural places that are already on the map.
Sometimes, this initiative can transform the reputation of the ailing city. He worked for Glasgow and Liverpool, but these are two great cities, despite all their problems. Chemnitz is more like Coventry or Croydon.
After all, I hope that its year as Capital of Culture will give Chemnitz a boost, but potential visitors need to know that this place is a work in progress rather than a finished product. If you want to know what became of Karl-Marx-Stadt it is well worth a short visit, but I would recommend staying in Dresden or Leipzig and making it a day trip.
On the green edge of the town where many bombs fell, some of the old Chemnitz is still there: large old houses with leafy gardens, remnants of antiquity. It is poignant and rather eerie wandering these elegant ways, thinking about what a pleasant, rich place this was, before the disasters of Nazism and communism, the Holocaust, the two world wars…
Will Chemnitz be beautiful again? I do not think so. Too much has been lost, and much of what has been replaced is bland and anodized. But among the people I met here I found a sense of local pride and a discreet optimism that is often missing in tourist destinations. The last time I came here, the specter of Marx loomed large over Chemnitz. Now it seems a harmless curio, a beautiful relic of the brutal philosophy that a generation sarcastically criticized.
Chemnitz has had the worst weather, a century of caves, and he came out smiling, which is, in his own small way, encouraging.
Advantages of Chemnitz
If you are not a big fan of Cold War history, the best way to visit Chemnitz is a day trip from Dresden or Leipzig, only an hour away via Deutsche Bahn. If you want to stay the night, the Chemnitzer Hof is the smartest hotel, four stars comfy and atmospheric that served the VIPs of the Eastern Bloc during the communist era. Doubles from around £100 per night, excluding breakfast.
Eating out in Chemnitz is generally good value and quality, but I haven’t found anywhere that I particularly want to recommend. There are plenty of decent chains. My favorite is Nordsee, a cheap and cheerful fish restaurant that serves delicious take-out and sit-down food.
It is amazing that, for a relatively small city, Chemnitz has a wide range of excellent museums. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz comprises five art galleries, in various scenic locations around town. Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz is the main one, with a great range of German Expressionists. The Gunzenhauser Museum has a smaller collection, but the pictures are just as good. Villa Esche is a stylish modern house built and furnished by the great Belgian architect and designer, Henry van de Velde. The Schlossbergmuseum has a modest collection of local history, but it’s the building that shows best – a medieval monastery on a wooded hill, overlooking a tranquil lake. The Saxon Industrial Museum, in an old factory, surveys the heyday of Chemnitz as an industrial city. The most notable exhibit is SMAC, the state archaeological museum of Saxony, housed in the prestigious Art Deco Schocken, founded by a German-Jewish family and later captured by the Nazis.
I flew to Berlin with British Airways (which flies there from Heathrow and London City) and traveled on to Chemnitz by train: two hours from Berlin Brandenburg Airport to Leipzig, then another hour to Chemnitz. Ryanair flies to Leipzig from Stansted, and to Berlin from Birmingham, East Midlands, Manchester and Stansted. EasyJet flies to Berlin from Luton, Bristol and Edinburgh.
For more information visit chemnitz.travel or germany.travel.
