If your average Leipziger thinks of church at all, then it will be to the events of October 9 1989 that his mind will be drawn.
Since the 1970s a small group of church members had been meeting on Monday afternoons in the Nicholas Church to pray for an end to communist rule.
The meeting attracted wider support when, in May 1989, church leaders exposed the falsification of election results and on October 9 1989, 200,000 people, centring on the Nicholas church, filled the streets of Leipzig.