3-047-012 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Market-Place, Leipsic, during the Fair, 1872. 'The Market-place...is daily thronged with merchants of every nation, Europeans, Americans, Asiatics, from north, south, east, and west, not in hundreds but in thousands, to buy or sell a variety of commodities in this great central mart. Bargains to the aggregate amount of several millions sterling are concluded at the principal fair, which is opened on the second Sunday after Easter, and is continued during three weeks...The Market-place and other streets are occupied by temporary booths, in which most of the business is transacted...the booksellers and publishers of all Germany, and some from Paris, Brussels, Florence, and St. Petersburg, are accustomed here to exchange their literary wares...Leipsic is well known to possess more interesting literary associations of a different nature. It was the scene of some passages of Goethe's youth, which he has narrated with characteristic ease and grace. He was no doubt a frequent companion of the students' social parties in Auerbach's Cellar, where Dr. Faustus, and the sly demon Mephistopheles, had played in an earlier age their questionable tricks, which are still to be seen portrayed on the walls in that notable old-fashioned German tavern'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.