30th International Conference on
Software Engineering ®
Leipzig, Germany, 10 - 18 May 2008

Leipzig - a dynamic city

Leipzig is one of the most dynamic cities in Europe. Over the centuries, the city and the second-oldest university of Germany have stimulated economic and academic life in Europe. Nobel laureates Heisenberg, Hertz and Ostwald have taught here, Leibniz, Lessing, Goethe, Wagner and Nietzsche studied here. Today, 31.000 students from 140 countries are enrolled in the university's 14 departments.

Leipzig combines tradition with progress, high culture with high tech, smart innovation with Saxonian sociability. The compact, historic center is the lively heart of the city, surrounded by a green promenade ring that marks the perimeter of the ancient fortifications. Here, mass demonstrations of Leipzig's citizens led to the peaceful revolution of 1989 and gave decisive impulses to the German reunification.

City of Books and Literature

The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther provided Leipzig with the first-ever boom in book printing and selling - in the 16th century. 1650, the first-ever daily paper was printed here. And when in 1825, the Market Group of German Booksellers was founded on the banks of the River Pleisse, the Leipzig Book Fair had long since seen off its main competition from Frankfurt. Important publishers such as Baedeker, Reclam und Brockhaus, Insel and Seemann had their offices in the artists' quarter, where one of the conference hotels, the Renaissance Leipzig Hotel is located. Today, place names are the only witnesses to this past, since in 1943, the area was reduced to rubble overnight by bombs. All the main publishing houses still have branches in Leipzig. Now you can find the House of Books, in which debutants and literary heavyweights take turns to show their prowess in Leipzig.

To collect, permanently archive, comprehensively document and record bibliographically without gap all German and German-language publications from 1913, The German National Library contains over 13.2 million media units - 1.200 more are archived here every day. The Frankfurt site of the library helds roughly 7.8 million books.

Leipzig's most famous taproom is Auerbach's cellar, where the myth of Faust's barrel ride in 1525 and old-fashioned tavern tradition combine to form a heady brew. Goethe, who studied in Leipzig (1765-1768), was so impressed by Auerbach's aura, that the tavern was being used as an arena in his 'Faust I'. The atmosphere is just as mystic nowadays, even though the vaults have undergone an impressive renovation.

City of Music

The concert house Gewandhaus was inaugurated in 1981, and is at its most impressive in the evenings, when the light floods from the glassed foyers out onto the Augustusplatz. The ceiling painting, Sieghart Gilles' 'The Song of Life', which spreads over 700 sq m, is the most eye-catching aspect. This was the first concert house to be built in the former East German Republic and enjoys excellent acoustics in the large hexagonal concert hall with its mighty Schuke organ (which has 92 registers and 6638 pipes). Among the most famous choir masters were Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, who was thrown out by the Nazis in 1933, and Kurt Masur, who was in charge during the reunification. Since September 2005, Ricardo Chailly took up the position in the dual capacity of Music Director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and General Music Director of the Leipzig Opera.

The Church of St Thomas' reputation extends far beyond the country's borders and is inseparably linked with the Thomaner, one of the best boys' choirs in the German-speaking world, and their most famous choirmaster - Johann Sebastian Bach. He was the cantor of St Thomas Church from 1723 until his death in 1750. The composer's mortal remains were brought to the church in 1950. When the Thomaner choir is not touring or on school holidays, a small donation will allow you to enjoy their motets and cantatas (Fri 6pm, Sat 3pm).

Today, Bach's heritage is kept alive by the annual Bach Fest, the Bach Archive and two ensembles who are world-renowned not only for their Bach repertoire - the already introduced Thomaner Choir, and the Gewandhaus Orchestra.

City of Trade

Chartered in 1165 and endowed with the imperial trade fair privilege in 1507, the city has been a trade center since many centuries. Leipzig hosted the world's first samples fair, in 1895. Today, many historic fair houses and courtyards tell their stories about that time.

In 1996, the new state-of-the-art trading and convention centre "Neue Messe" opened in Leipzig's North. The focal point is the gigantic semi-circular glass/steel construction - 240m long, 80m wide and almost 30m high. The 5,500 panels of the Trade Palace are cleaned by a special robot, and glass bridges lead over to the exhibition halls. In the Conference Center, the International Conference on Software Engineering 2008 will take place.

City of History

In 1989, the weekly Monday demonstrations after the then traditional prayers for peace at Leipzig's Church of St Nicholas became part of the public conscience in 1989. These demonstration processions across the city centre ring-road first shot to prominence with the cries of "We are the people", which had transformed a few months later into "We are one people" as German reunification neared. Around 100,000 people took to the streets of the city when the peaceful revolution was at its peak. And their famous motto "open to all" still stands above the churches' entrance, and attracts people from all over the world.

More than 200,000 sightseers visit the enormous Battle of the Nations memorial every year. It was inaugurated in 1913 - 100 years after the European Allies had made Napoleon take flight after the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig. In the crypt, 16 stone warriors hold a wake. The colossal figures in the hall of fame represent courage, belief, self-sacrifice and the power of the people. Rising up 10 metres, they make the 324 virtually life-sized horsemen in the cupola look tiny.

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