Leipzig is the centre of the German hook trade, and is famous for its book-making industry. Other of its leading industries are wood-carving and paper-making. Still other products are machin ery, leather. textile goods, pianos, tobacco and cigars, chemicals. and foodstuffs. Leipzig leads in the book-selling and publishing trade of the world, over 500 publishing firms having their headquarters here. The city is also very prom inent in the art and music trade of Europe. Its commercial importance is due in part to its favorable situation between the Elbe and the Rhine basins, and between the Thuringian moun tains and the Erzgebirge. It holds famous fairs at New Year's, Easter, and Michaelmas, with furs, glass, cloth, and leather as the principal lines of trade, the fur sales alone amounting an nually to some $5,000,000. Leipzig is in fact a world-market for furs. These historic fairs rep resent a large volume of business, but are not so important or celebrated as in former centuries. Among the countries importing from Leipzig the United States ranks first. The American imports embrace furs and hides, books, leather gloves and leather, chemicals and volatile oils, bristles, woolen goods, carpets. and musical and other instruments.
Leipzig is famous for its educational advan tages. Besides its university (see LEirzio, UNI VERSITY or), there are a municipal gymnasium founded in 1221, among whose celebrated 'cantors' was Bach; another municipal winnasimn, dating from 1511; also a royal and a 'real' gymna sium; a royal art academy; an industrial school; a royal builder's school; and a municipal indus trial school. The first commercial high school in Germany was founded in 1898 in Leipzig. Be sides the university library there is the munici pal library with over 110.000 volumes and 1500 MSS. The museum of the book trade is per haps the most valuable of its kind in existence. The Grassi Museum contains art-industrial and ethnographical collections; also a fine Historical Museum of Music: and the Permanent Exhibition of Machinery and Furniture. The important collections of the Leipzig Museum include some noteworthy sculptures— Thorwaldsen's mede," Hildebrand's "Adam," Klinger's "Cassan dra" and "Salome," and Schilling's "Phidias."
Among its valuable pictures arc l'reller's car toons representing scenes from the Odyssey, sev eral examples of and 117Icklin, and Dela roehe's "Napoleon at Fontainebleau." These collections contain more than 750 oil paintings, 275 sculptures, and 100 cartoons and aquarelles. The Royal Academy of Plastic Arts elates from 17G•. Leipzig abounds in admirable organiza tions for the advancement of knowledge. There are the Historical Society, with relics of the fa mous battlefield; the Academy of Art ; School of Industrial Art ; the Technical School; and the celebrated Royal Conservatory of Music. founded in 1887, and attended by over GOO students. In the new Gewandhaus weekly concerts are given in winter.
Leipzig has been since 1879 the seat of the supreme law court of the Empire. It has the seat also of the Imperial Discipline Court, and of numerous important institutions of the Kingdom of Saxony. The city government is administered by an o•er-burgomaster, a burgomaster, a police director, about 25 magistrates and some 75 coun cilmen. The annual budget balances at over $5.000.000. The city debt amounts to some $12. 500,000. There is spent annually for schools about $1,000,000, and for the sick and the poor about $450,000. There are two municipal as well as other gas companies. The water-works belong to the city. Since 1897 all the street railways have been electric. Among the many excellent hospitals the most prominent perhaps is that of Saint John's, built in 1872. The municipal bakery is one of the features of the city. The environs, attractive for their fine woods and meadows, are famous as having been the scene of the great battle of Leipzig (see LEIPZIG. BATTLES OF ) . In 1900 the population was 455,089, nearly all Evangelical.
The town of Leipzig arose about the beginning of the eleventh century. close to a Slavic settle ment called Lipzi (afterward Lipzk, Lipzik), a name derived from Lipa, a linden-tree. It ob tained municipal rights in the twelfth century and soon became a flourishing seat of commerce. It came under the dominion of the House of Wet tin, and after the partition of the Saxon terri tories in 1485 belonged to the Alhertine line. Leipzig suffered terribly in the Thirty Years' War.