Leipsic
lip'sik, one of the most important commercial towns in Germany. Altitude, 387 feet; population, about 450,000. It is situated in a wide plain near the union of three sluggish streams. When the German Empire was formed, 1870, Saxony was propitiated by fixing the seat of the imperial supreme court at Leipsic. In architecture the town has nothing of which to boast. A fine open marketplace has been preserved in the middle of the city. The old walls have been leveled and the ditches filled up, providing a ring of wide streets and promenades quite surrounding the old town and separating it pleasantly from encircling suburbs.
Leipsic is the seat of an ancient and renowned university much frequented by American students. It is the center of the book trade of Germany. There are 300 booksellers' shops and eighty printing presses in the town. Publishers in other cities aim to keep their books in stock at Leipsic. Once a year many hundred booksellers gather at the Leipsic book fair to buy, sell, exchange, and settle accounts. Leipsic is also the world's fur market. Several million dollars' worth of furs change hands here each year. The price paid the trapper in British America and the cost of a lady's sealskin coat are based on the price of fur at Leipsic.
Since the year 1180 at least, Leipsic has been noted for fairs. Goods were formerly brought by pack trains from every direction. Where the camel caravans of the Far East left off, the pack horses of the West resumed the carriage of goods. Twice a year files of merchants guarding their pack trains converged at Leipsic for sale and barter. Emperors and diets outlawed the robber barons who attacked and plundered. Risks were great; profits were high. Although these fairs are declining in importance, being replaced by traveling salesmen, from 20,000 to 40,000 people in all imaginable garbs still center at Leipsic at the time of the fall or the spring "messe." Lodgings are at a premium. The city is literally crowded, thronged. At the spring fair of 1908, 3,501 firms exhibited goods. Over 10,000 firms were represented by buyers. Mountains of chests of goods brought mainly by rail are heaped up in the freight depots. Thousands of "knock-down" wooden booths are taken out of storage and set up in rows across the marketplace and along the boulevards after the fashion of lemonade stands. Merchandise of every description, toys, carvings, gingerbread, jewels, precious stones, inlaid work, crockery, porcelain, exquisite glassware, furs, silks, ribbons, embroidery, shoes, leather goods, linen, woolens, garments of every sort, standard goods, and knicknacks, are temptingly displayed. During the fair the crowd of sightseers and buyers is like that at an exposition or state fair. After two or three weeks of bargaining in a score of dialects, the motley throng suddenly disappears; the booths come down and are stowed away; the chests are carted off to the depots; the fair is at an end, and Leipsic renews its usual staid appearance. An enormous amount of business is done. Goods to the value of $50,000,000 change hands in a single year at these fairs. A shabby exterior is no criterion of a merchant's financial standing.
During the Napoleonic and other wars Leipsic and its immediate vicinity was the scene of many bloody conflicts. Possibly no less than half a million men, first and last, have perished under arms within an hour's walk of the old Leipsic marketplace. A number of small monuments mark important events.