Leipzig, Meissen, and Berlin, Germany – Samantha Brown’s Places to Love FULL 4K EPISODE

Travel Itinerary for This Episode: https://samantha-brown.com/episodes/season-8/berlin-leipzig-meissen-germany/

We’re visiting a country near and dear to my heart – Germany! My mother’s side of the family is German, and I was even a Grand Marshall at the NYC German-American parade back in 2011. I have such fond memories of visiting this country through the years and filming these episodes was no different. In this episode we’re visiting three very unique destinations. The first is a musical city that managed to (peacefully!) alter the course of history. The next is a small town with a 300-year-old porcelain reputation. And the last one is its capital city and a center of creativity for all of Europe. Come with me as I explore why Leipzig, Meissen, and Berlin, Germany, are Places to Love.

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Chapters
0:00 Cold Open
0:53 St. Thomas Church
3:34 Meissen Porcelain Manufactory
8:23 Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History
12:59 Berlin on Bike
16:59 Hackescher Markt
17:25 Otto Weidt Museum
19:54 Die Inklusiv Manufaktur
21:45 Hasir Turkish Restaurant
22:30 Outro

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♪♪ -I’m traveling
through Germany. First up, a city that peacefully altered
the course of world history and was shaped musically by one of the greatest composers
who ever lived. Then, to a small town that happens to have
a 300 year reputation in the finer things in life.
There will be purchases. And finally, on to the most excitingly
diverse city in Germany, and center of creativity
for all of Europe, I’m in Leipzig,
Meissen and Berlin. Hi, I’m Samantha Brown, and I have been
traveling the globe for 25 years. Here’s a great episode of my
Emmy-award winning travel series, Places to Love. Like and subscribe to join
me on my adventures! Okay, let’s go! ♪♪ -Leipzig is a
very important city in Germany, but also in the world. It’s also an old city. Here we are
on Saint Thomas Square, and there’s probably been
a house of worship here for well over a thousand years. -And yet it’s
a pretty unknown city for Americans.
-It is. -When you say
“Oh, I’m in Leipzig,” you kind of get this, “Huh?”
-I get that. -“What are you doing in
Leipzig?” I mean, you know, and they’ll
even say, “You’re Lutheran.” I’m going, “Excuse me,
this is a Lutheran city.” -Right.
-It’s Saxony. We’re all Lutherans. -And Martin Luther actually came
to this church. -He actually was here probably
more times than we know. But here, Saint Thomas Church,
had the Augustinian monks, and they said, what we need to
make this city into a real city is we need to have a church,
a school, and we need to have a choir. And that set the tone
for what this city has become as a city of music. -But the reason why people are
coming here in droves is because of this man. ♪♪ When we see a person
like Johann Sebastian Bach, of course, these figures
just loom so large, right? They’re not even real anymore. And yet, he was an employee
of the church. He had a job and
Saint Thomas was his office. -His job was titled
Thomaskantor. He was responsible for all
of the music in this city. Inside the wall.
-For all the music of the city? -All the music of the city. -Did they realize who he was, or was he a nobody at the time?
-Yes. They knew who he was, but they didn’t treat him
with any awe, the way we do in our time.
-Sure. -They did not recognize
that something earth changing was going on in this place by what Johann Sebastian Bach
was doing through his compositions. ♪♪ -Robert, it is amazing
being in this space, understanding that Bach composed
music specifically for it. He would have known
what this room sounded like and how to really
reach the people with his music. How long was he the cantor? -He was here for 27 years
and died in Leipzig, still in office. -Bach is also buried
in the church. So does that mean that his
greatest masterpieces were composed while here? -Yes.
-Wow. -He saw himself as called
to what he was doing. It was he who had these talents. And he knew how he wanted
to apply them and what for. -One thing you may
not know about me is my love
for porcelain teacups. I even travel around the world
with one. And Leipzig is close to a 300
year old porcelain manufacturer. So I took a day trip to Meissen,
Germany, where they spilled the tea
on how it’s made. -This is our raw kaolin.
-This is it. -This is it.
-This is how porcelain, this is the baby.
-Be it in a cup or a large animal figurine, it all starts with this, well, at first glance,
rather unspectacular whitish, porous mass. I’m Heidi Deisonem. I was born
and grew up in Meissen, and now I work as a tour guide
in the porcelain manufactory. -Porcelain was
once considered white gold, and every king in Europe
wanted the recipe. The king wanted to make money. -He wanted to make money.
-Okay. -But he had this
special illness. He called himself
porcelain sick. “I am obsessed with porcelain.”
-Oh, he loved porcelain! -It was also something that
had a lot of prestige to it. All the other
European princes and kings had to import porcelain
from China. So how do you transport these
fragile goods long distances? Auguste wanted to have
his own porcelain production, and he remembered, “Oh, I have
an empty castle in Meissen!” -And so work began to discover
a formula for porcelain. And after many years
of failed attempts, they did it. In 1710, Meissen became
the very first porcelain manufacturer
in Europe. The porcelain is all
handmade here and the handicraft, artistry,
and mastery has remained largely unchanged
for 300 years. -People do not really
respect manual work anymore, but here they see how much time,
how much expertise, how much passion goes into
the production of a simple, simple mug or a simple plate. -Then there’s the
not so simple, like this four foot vase that takes three men
continuously pouring three porcelain filled buckets,
each weighing 50 pounds. -And then we have to fill it
in one after the other. Then when you stop,
you get a mistake, so you have to fill one after. -Jonas Beyer is a fourth
generation Meissen craftsman. -When we open up the mold, then it’s maybe the problem
when it’s a start to shaking. Shaking?
-Yes. -And then it’s possible
to fill in, and then we have to start
the process anew. -All over again.
-Yes. -So when you remove
that plaster mold, was there a moment
where you’re like, “Whew!” -Often, yes.
[ Samantha laughs ] ♪♪ -Just as impressive as
the artisans’ work is the history
this factory holds. -We are here
at the Mold Library. It keeps the molds of
300 years of this manufactory. -Lena has 700,000 molds
going all the way back to that of Saint Peter,
created in the 1740s, to draw inspiration
in designing new pieces. 300 year old company?
[ Chuckles ] No pressure. -This is a very special place where I come to when it’s very
when I need a quiet time. And I found forms that
I did not know that existed, and we revive them. So it inspires me every day. -Lena is finalizing a new
collection called The Original, based on an iconic design
known as the Onion Pattern. Do you have an original
of that so we can compare? -Yes. This is a plate
that comes from the museum that is the
painted onion pattern. -So what is the date of this? -1733 to 35. -Oh my gosh! And you’re holding it
with one hand?! [ Both laugh ] The 290 year old pattern
is getting a makeover. -Now we modernize it
by mixing it with very fresh and young and, um,
and new colors. We have 10,000 recipes at the
color laboratory at this moment. It’s keeping a lot
of recipes alive so we can go back
and recreate all the colors that have been created
in the archive. But every day
we are creating new colors. -So did I pick up
a new porcelain teacup for my collection? Well, after passing
my rigorous standards, this beautiful cup and saucer
join me back to Leipzig. ♪♪ Most everyone knows about the
Berlin Wall and when it fell. But it’s less well known that
the brave citizens of Leipzig and their peaceful protests were directly responsible
for bringing down the wall and the Iron Curtain. And the fascinating history
of East Germany is here at the Leipzig Forum
of Contemporary History. -World War II ends, and
Leipzig, where we are now, became part of the
Soviet zone of occupation. The GDR,
the German Democratic Republic, was founded with a government,
but that government was never independent.
-Ah. -They always got their orders
from Moscow. I’m Yvonne Walter, I’m Head of Visitor Services here at the Leipzig Forum
of Contemporary History. East Germany became
a dictatorship. There was no independent
judicial system, no freedom of speech. There weren’t
any free elections. In fact, this is
the first ballot of the first
East German elections, and as you can see–
-This is the ballot? -That’s the ballot.
-Okay. I don’t see like a check. -You can’t.
-Okay. -Because the lineup
of representatives was decided in advance. So people just went to
the polling place, folded the whole thing
and put it in the ballot box. So to vote became known
as to go folding. -The museum breaks up
the history and decades with key historical moments
in each, from Stalin’s death and protests
being violently put down, to the ’60s and ’70s,
where life gets a little better. -Life became a bit easier for
people and a bit more colorful, but the economy in East Germany always lagged behind the
West German economy, and that was quite obvious
for people when they went to work
every day. -What does the West get
wrong about everyday life in eastern Germany? -Most people didn’t
think about dictatorship in everyday life,
even though it was always there. And there was free childcare
in East Germany to get the women
into the workforce. 90% of all East German women
worked in the 1980s. Another misconception that the Americans had
about East Germany was that we were starving and
there wasn’t anything to buy. You could buy everything
in the shops. However, there wasn’t
a big variety, so you had one brand
of everything. When I went to
the United States, right after the Wall came down,
as an au pair, my host mom took me shopping
and she said to me, “Choose your cereal.”
-Mm-hm. -And I stood in an aisle full
of, like, 50 different boxes. And I was just,
I was overwhelmed. It was too much.
There was too much choice. -In the ’80s, Gorbachev ushered in reforms
with glasnost and perestroika, but the East German government
wanted to keep their strict reign, and this frustrated
the people of Leipzig. -Starting
from the early 1980s, there were peace prayers
at Saint Nicholas Church, one of the churches here
in Leipzig. And as the years went by, there were more and more people
coming to the peace prayers. And on the 9th of October 1989, there were between 130
and 160,000 people. After the peace prayers
in the streets of Leipzig. -Then, on November 9th, 1989,
a press conference was held. The exhibit showcases
a single piece of paper with scribbled talking points
that changed the world. -When he announced
a new travel law that would give East Germans
the chance to travel wherever they wanted to.
-Okay. -And a journalist asked him, “When does this go into effect?” And there weren’t — he didn’t
have any information about that. So he looked into the camera,
a bit puzzled, and he said, “Immediately.” And that brought the wall down. -That’s amazing.
-Because immediately people, East Germans went to the
checkpoints in Berlin, and a couple of minutes
before midnight, the first checkpoint
actually opened the barrier. And that was
the end of the Wall. -This wall coming down,
people on top of it. I mean, the images are just
sort of ingrained in our mind. It’s people, in the end —
-Absolutely. -Saying, “No, this is how we
want to live.” And it will always be
that symbol. -Everybody has an idea about what the Cold War was
and looked like. For many people,
that is something they can still remember
watching on TV. And there’s still a lot
of people in Berlin for whom this is part of their
own personal history as well. Like me,
like growing up in the West, having to pass
a checkpoint every time we wanted to go on a holiday, even if that was technically
in the same country. I’m Sasha Melling.
I’m born and raised in Berlin, lived here almost all my life, and have been a tour guide
for the last 15 years. -How many different sites
are there that really represent
and honor the Berlin Wall? -This is by far the biggest and most extensive
in terms of documentation and what’s to see here. The official memorial
for the Berlin Wall. Right.
-So if we’re looking at this, this is the border
of East and West Germany. And that basically,
that construct appeared… -’52 or ’53.
-’52, ’53. -At the end of World War II, Germany was occupied by the
winners of World War II and Berlin found itself in the
middle of the Soviet zone. The East’s standard of living
didn’t really improve that much. And on top of that,
it was a one-party state with no freedom of press. So thousands, hundreds of
thousands of people ran away, left the country —
doctors, nurses, engineers. And East Germany
really faced a decision — So either we give up
on this idea of socialism and another way for Germany, or we just close down
the border. -And to secure that border, the 70 mile long Wall
was constructed with the primary purpose
to keep East Germans from escaping to the west. This memorial sculpture
pays tribute to some of the people who tried. -Günter Litvin. 24 years old,
was the first person to be shot, just like 11 days
after the border was closed. -And so he marks
the first person killed because of the Berlin Wall. How many other people
do we see here? How many people?
-Around 150. -This is so powerful. I didn’t expect to see
so many young faces. -In the end, the whole
system was based on distrust. Brothers spying
on their siblings. Wives spying on their husbands. Kids on their parents. You never knew who
you could trust. I was 15
when the Wall came down, so I lived like the majority
of my forming years with an open border. -And were you
on the East side? -I was in the West. -So I guess the question always
is for a visitor coming to Berlin, wherever I am, I want to ask, am I on the west side
or the east side? Is that still a prevalent
question today within Berlin? -For tourists it is, but people under 30,
they don’t even care. -Taking a bicycle tour
is a great way to enjoy Berlin. There aren’t as many cars
as in most major cities, and the 75 degree sunny day
doesn’t hurt either. -And there it is!
[ Samantha laughs ] Our symbol of unity.
-Wow! You didn’t tell me
that we were coming upon the Brandenburg Gate.
Oh my gosh. ♪♪ So the Brandenburg Gate
is absolutely a center of the universe.
You really feel that energy. Everyone wants to come here. For me, this is the place
where the Berlin Wall came down, because I vividly remember
sitting at home with my mom, watching TV. She just turns around and pulls
out a 20 from her purse and said “Go. You will regret it for the
rest of your life if you stay at home tonight.” So when we arrived,
there were already a couple thousand people dancing and singing Beatles songs
on top of the wall. -Okay.
-And just the next day, they started taking out
pieces of it and creating an open border. For me,
even after all these years, it still feels special to be able to just
cycle through it. -One thing I love about Berlin
is that not everything is
on the street, right? There are these courtyards, and you access them
from the main streets. But then these buildings
just sort of open up and they create
little alleyways almost, that you just sort of wander and take in this
almost hidden part of the city. And that is where we find
the Otto Weidt Museum. -Otto Weidt tried to help
blind and deaf Jews here in this workshop. And he had an agreement
with the Wiemar so that his workshop was
important for the war. His idea was to save as many
disabled Jews as possible. -Small brushes to large brooms
were made here in this small factory,
now a museum. A large photo of the workers hangs over the machines they
would have worked at. The Gestapo know they’re here. -Mm-hm. -How does Otto Weidt
protect them? Why aren’t they taken
and deported or brought
to concentration camps? -The Gestapo want to deport
them, but Otto Weidt could save them
with bribing the Gestapo. -Oh, okay. -The Helper’s Room
highlights the fact that for every
one person hidden, there would need to be
5 to 10 people helping. -One person was organizing
or making false identity cards, another person find
new hiding places, if a person needed to change
their hiding place. We have a doctor, he came to the hiding places
when someone was ill. In the beginning of 1943,
he needed to change the tactic because they don’t want to have
Jewish forced labors anymore, they want to deport them
to the concentration and extermination camps.
-Mm-hm. -Now he tried to find
hiding places for the people, and one of the hiding places
was here in the workshop. Open the closet —
-Oh, wow. -And then we have a small room, and one family with four members
lived in this room for around nine months. But this hiding places
was betrayed and the people were arrested and the whole family
was murdered in Auschwitz. After the war,
he founded a house for children, for Jewish children
who lose their families. So he was still a helper
after the war. And then two years
after the war, he died. -Does the museum know
how many people he helped save? -We don’t know all
the names of all the workers, but we are still researching
for them. -The Otto Weidt Museum is free and has a tactile path
for the vision impaired. It’s where an unknown story
of tragedy, empathy, and bravery
are told in six small rooms. [ Rhythmic thumping ] -Brushes are
very important all the day. You use brushes
for cleaning your shoes, for cleaning your room,
to put makeup on you. -I’ve come to the shop of DIM
or Die Inklusive Manufaktur. All of their products are handmade here
in the same building, and feature the works
of 30 different workshops for furniture making, ceramics,
paper, and yes, brushes. The name of the workshop
is Die Inklusive Manufaktur. -That’s right.
-So what does inclusivity mean? -People with disabilities
and people without disabilities work together and build these beautiful things
that we make. -This workshop has
a very long, wonderful history here
in Berlin. -That’s right.
-When was it founded? -It was founded
in the year 1864 as a school. -Okay. -And was changed into
a spot for, for blind people to live
and work in 1902. -100 different types
of brushes are made here by 60 employees. Sabrine has been here
for 12 years. What is she making right now? Do you know what type of brush? -Yeah, that’s a duster.
-It’s a duster, okay. -Yeah, made of goat hair. She’s done the work to
put the goat hair in, and now she cut it
in the right form. She has to hear
because the cut makes sound. -Tiny little hairs. And she is literally
shaping that brush so that it looks
like no hair is out of place. -That’s right. -So they are putting out work
that is of a very high level.
-That’s right. Yeah. -DIM is a manufacturer known
for inclusivity and quality for over 160 years. Just around the corner, I am here to right a wrong. Most people that go to Berlin
think that their most famous
street food is currywurst. But if you ask a Berliner, they would say you have
to have a Döner kebab. Kreuzberg is
the most famous Turkish neighborhood here, and this is one of the best
places for kebabs in the city. Slices of seasoned meat and pita loaded with vegetables
and sauce. What’s not to love? – Sauce, chili, garlic. -Yes! [ Laughs ] Berlin now has a
thriving upscale culinary scene, but no European city
does mouthwatering fast food better than Berlin. [ Speaking German]
A chai tea? Alright. Danke schön.
-Thank you. -Berlin is a city where you need
to earn to love it. You’ve got to work
a little bit for it. It doesn’t,
like open itself up instantly and releases
all your secrets. So you gotta — you gotta hustle a little bit
for it. -I’ve already seen
some challenges. I’m going to have to create
a bib-like protection because I’m known
as a messy eater. -I love living in Leipzig.
It’s a great city. It’s very green,
it’s full of culture. And it’s also not far away
from Berlin or even Munich is just
a train ride away. -I’ve got this. -Meissen is
a wine growing region. We have a beautiful
medieval town, as well. We have the river here,
and of course, we have the porcelain manufactory. -Mm!
Das Wunderbar! When a city vibrates
with energy, when traditions are mastered, but continually grow, when what was unknown to you
becomes known — that is when we share
a love of travel. And that’s why Leipzig,
Meissen, and Berlin, Germany are all places to love. Hey, thanks for watching this episode
of Places to Love! What was your favorite scene? Be sure to leave a comment! Now, for a full itinerary of this episode click here! It is a great travel planning tool. And here if you want to watch
more full episodes And, of course, subscribe
to my channel to see new episodes as they
are released. Hope to see you out there!