New Town Hall (Leipzig)

The New Town Hall (German: Neues Rathaus) has been the home of Leipzig's city government since 1905. It is located in the Mitte district of Leipzig, sitting on the southwest corner of the city's "ring road," just across from the beautiful Propsteikirche. The most striking feature of this grand building is its tall tower, which rises to 114.8 meters or 377 feet—making it the tallest city hall tower in all of Germany. It even beats out Hamburg’s famous tower by a whole eight feet!

This amazing building isn’t just tall—it’s also huge! The New Town Hall has more rooms than any other city hall in the world, with a total of 1,708 rooms. It is a place where important decisions for the city are made every day.

History

At the end of the 1800s, the Old Town Hall at the Markt square was too small for the growing city of Leipzig. In 1895, the city got a place to build a new town hall from the Pleissenburg, given by the Kingdom of Saxony. They held a contest to pick a design, and in 1897, Hugo Licht, the city's building director, was chosen. He said his design idea was "Arx nova surgit - a new castle emerges." The artist Georg Wrba was hired to make sculptures for the building.

The first stone for the New Town Hall was placed on October 19, 1899.

Architecture

The New Town Hall in Leipzig was built in a style called historicism. It is made from light-grey limestone. The building has a special five-sided shape and is very big.

There is a tall tower. You can climb up 250 steps to see over the city from the top.

On one side of the building are five statues. They stand for Crafts, Justice, Book Art, Science, and Music. The large clock on the front glows blue at night. Above the clock is a statue of Truth. On the west side, there is another statue.

The Goerdeler Memorial

Near the New Town Hall in Leipzig, there is a memorial for Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. He was an important leader who stood against unfair treatment during a difficult time. He served as Leipzig's Mayor from 1930 to 1937. The memorial was made by artists from New York, Jenny Holzer and Mike Glier. It was shown to the public on September 8, 1999. The memorial has a deep bell shaft with a bronze bell inside. Quotes from Goerdeler’s letters and writings are displayed around it.

Culture

The Israeli writer Yosef Agnon won a big award called the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. In one of his stories, a young man from Galicia went to a new town hall in Leipzig in 1915 to get permission to stay there.

The town hall can also be seen in the background of a movie called Torn Curtain directed by Alfred Hitchcock.