Bangkok

Bangkok, 14.11.2010: Leipzig? Never heard of it!

 © Leipzig © Foto: Punnee Amornviputpanich Leipzig? Never heard of it. – I had already realized that my hometown is practically unknown in Thailand during the stay by my colleague Punnee Amornviputpanich in Leipzig in September.

Yet, the central German city and its more than 500,000 inhabitants earn just a little attention even in Thailand over 8,000 kilometres away. After all, minds in Leipzig – of people who lived or left behind distinct traces in the time-honoured, almost 1,000-year-old trade fair city – have influenced the arts and culture in many countries and some of them even world history. Just a few examples I can name are the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg, the founder of Protestantism Martin Luther and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

We can even take it so far and construct a direct link between Leipzig and my present host newspaper, Khom Chad Lueg. The world’s first daily newspaper was printed in Leipzig in the year 1650. The Einkommenden Zeitungen had four pages sized approximately 13.5 by 17 centimetres. About 200 copies of each issue appeared six times a week. The father of the world’s first daily newspaper was the Leipzig printer and bookseller Timotheus Ritzsch (1614–1678), who set the mother of all newspapers in metal type and printed it by hand on a wooden printing press. The Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ), for which I have been working over 15 years, is among the oldest German dailies to have been brought out practically uninterruptedly. Its first date of sale was 1 October 1894. It was one of the very few newspapers during the division of Germany from 1945 until 1989 into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the very Soviet-influenced socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) that was not given a communist name and therefore has been published under the same name ever since its founding.

Today, the LVZ is one of the largest German newspapers. Its circulation is nearly 220,000 and it belongs to the Madsack publishing group, which also distributes the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Freie Presse (Hanover), the Göttinger Tageblatt, the Ostsee-Zeitung (Rostock), the Lübecker Nachrichten and the Kieler Nachrichten. The LVZ is the media corporation’s largest newspaper by far.

Yet another link between Leipzig and Thailand is little known both here and there: both cities are homes of a factory of the German automobile manufacturer BMW and the series 3 BMW is assembled in both factories. Only my first few days in Thailand have revealed that the relationships – economic and cultural – between the two nations are far more significant than are generally perceived (see the adjacent article). Perhaps my stay Bangkok as part of the "Close-Up" exchange project of Germany’s Goethe-Institut will contribute a bit to more Thais saying "Leipzig? That’s the city with..." when faced with the corresponding question.

Martin Pelzl
published on 14 November 2010 in Kom Chad Lueg.

translated by Faith Gibson-Tegethoff

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