Word: leipzigers
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Still, the issue of identity nags: Is the G.D.R. a nation, a state, part of a country yet to be unified? "For 40 years we were just letters," says Christian Fuhrer, pastor of Leipzig's Nikolai Church. "G-D-R. But not German. Not democratic. Just letters. We are Germans, certainly. But our German history is submerged: 1917 is when it begins for our students. The people must develop an identity. Only then can we discuss reunification...
...real democracy does come to East Germany, much of the credit should go to Leipzig (pop. 567,000), which has emerged as the driving force for reform. Through more than a month of spontaneous, peaceful demonstrations, which often brought more than half the city's population into the streets, Leipzig's workers precipitated the ouster of repressive party leader Erich Honecker and helped inspire the historic breach of the Berlin Wall. "They call us 'the Leipzig Miracle,' " says Alfred Richter, 38, a supervisor in a hotel kitchen whose wife and two small children joined in the protests...
Karl Marx would have understood their revolt. Just outside Leipzig's jumble of medieval churches and high-rises lies one of the most dismal landscapes in Europe. This is the heart of the rust belt: mile after mile of blackened smokestacks spew sulfurous coal smoke into the yellow sky; workers labor in ramshackle chemical and textile plants under Dickensian conditions of dirt and noise. To the east stretch crumbling tenements built 100 years ago; to the west sprawl ugly new developments virtually devoid of stores, cinemas or restaurants. Average monthly incomes would buy just $30 of goods in the West...
...days after a state visit by Mikhail Gorbachev. Ever since, Krenz has had to scramble to find concessions that might quiet public turmoil and enable him to hang on to at least a remnant of power. He has been spurred by a series of mass protests -- one demonstration in Leipzig drew some 500,000 East Germans -- demanding democracy and freedoms small and large, and by a fresh wave of flight to the West by many of East Germany's most productive citizens. So far this year, some 225,000 East Germans out of a population of 16 million have voted...
Meanwhile, West German television estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 pro-democracy activists demonstrated in Leipzig, in the center of the country, pressing for continued change to prolong the spirit of hope sweeping the nation...