The story of this place
From 1982 the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig held weekly Monday 'Peace Prayers', a small gathering that by autumn 1989 had become the seed of a revolution. On 9 October 1989, after weeks of swelling crowds and mass arrests, some 70,000 East Germans left the prayers and marched around Leipzig's ring road carrying candles and chanting 'Wir sind das Volk' — 'We are the people'. The regime had prepared armed forces and hospitals for bloodshed, but the sheer peaceful mass gave the order to shoot no chance; the police stood down. Within a month the Berlin Wall fell. A former Politburo member later admitted, 'We had planned for everything, but not for candles and prayers.' A palm-topped column outside marks the miracle.