How two contrasting cities tell the German story
Rothenburg ob der Tauber is fairly well-known among visitors to small-town Germany but Chemnitz, a European Capital of Culture for 2025, is also worth your time
“You’re going to Chemnitz?” say my German friends in surprise. “Why?”
But, as the promotional team in the converted factory now functioning as Chemnitz’s reception centre explains, the point of the programme is not to give further profile to either the pretty or the pretty successful, but to promote the diversity of European culture, especially that which is undeservedly less well-known. All the more urgent for a city that has come to be known in recent years for anti-immigrant protests and some of Germany’s staunchest support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party.
And despite its pre-reunification history as the decaying East German state’s Karl-Marx-Stadt, a hard-to-love centre for technology that lagged ever further behind the West, Chemnitz turns out to have no shortage of culture of its own to present.
The slogan of Chemnitz’s vast programme of cultural events for 2025, with visiting orchestras, art exhibitions, a bike race and much else still to come, is “C the Unseen”, to be read both as an admission that the city remains little known and an exhortation to discover what’s been missed.
