Initially known appropriately as the Achteck ( Octagon ), on 15 September 1814 it was renamed Leipziger Platz after the site of Prussia's final decisive defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Leipzig, 16 – 19 October 1813, which brought to an end the Wars of Liberation that had been going on since 1806.

The history of Leipziger Platz has been inextricably linked with that of its neighbour almost since its creation ( indeed, Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz, being side by side, have frequently been regarded and discussed as being all one entity ).

It was not until later on that many of these buildings began to be replaced by edifices of architectural magnificence, around Leipziger Platz, along Leipziger Straße which bisected it, and also Wilhelmstraße.

By this time however, Leipziger Platz was no longer a parade ground, and there had been much speculation about a possible complete redesign for the whole area.

Under both schemes the old rural intersection just outside the Potsdam Gate, and the Octagon ( Leipziger Platz ) just inside, were to be joined together to create a long rectangular space, with a gargantuan edifice standing in the middle of it.

Proposed new layout for Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

The design also included a new look for Leipziger Platz.

Many of the properties in the neighbourhood were the work of architect Georg Friedrich Heinrich Hitzig ( 1811 – 81 ), a pupil of Schinkel who also built the original " English Embassy " in Leipziger Platz, where the vast Wertheim department store would later stand, although Friedrichvorstadt's focal point and most notable building was the work of another architect — and another pupil of Schinkel.

Potsdamer Platz and neighbouring Leipziger Platz really started coming into their own from this time on.

Also, a very large government presence, with many German imperial departments, Prussian state authorities and their various sub-departments, came into the area, taking over 26 former palaces and aristocratic mansions in Leipziger Platz, Leipziger Straße and Wilhelmstraße.

Potsdamer Platz in the mid 1920s, looking east into Leipziger Platz, with the Hotel Furstenhof on the right.

Meanwhile, facing the Palast Hotel across the entrance to Leipziger Platz ( the Potsdam Gate ), was the 400-room Hotel Fürstenhof, by Richard Bielenberg ( 1871 – 1929 ) and Josef Moser ( 1872 – 1963 ), erected in 1906-7, also on the site of an earlier building.

Additionally, the southern edge of the Tiergarten was to be redefined, with a new road planned to slice through the built-up area immediately to the north of Columbushaus ( although Columbushaus itself would remain unscathed ); this road would line up with Voßstraße, one block to the north of Leipziger Platz.

( Handelsorganisation, meaning Trading Organisation ), had seized almost all of Wertheim ’ s former assets in the newly-created German Democratic Republic but, unable to start up the giant Leipziger Platz store again ( it was too badly damaged ), it opened a new Kaufhaus ( department store ) on the ground floor of Columbushaus.

He did, however, continue to write for the Neue Leipziger Zeitung under the pseudonym " Berthold Bürger " (" Bert Citizen ") as a freelance correspondent.

Its street layout followed the Baroque-style grid pattern much favoured at the time, and was based on two main axes: Friedrichstraße running north-south, and Leipziger Straße running east-west.

It later became Potsdamer Straße ; its point of entry into Berlin, where it passed through the customs wall, became the Potsdamer Tor ( Potsdam Gate ); once inside the gate Leipziger Straße was its eastwards continuation, and Wilhelmstraße was the first north-south thoroughfare that intersected with it.

Just inside the gate was a large octagonal area, created at the time of Friedrichstadt's expansion in 1732-4 and bisected by Leipziger Straße ; this was one of several parade grounds for the thousands of soldiers garrisoned in Berlin at the height of the Kingdom of Prussia.

The Potsdam Gate itself was redesignated the Leipziger Tor ( Leipzig Gate ) around the same time, but reverted to its old name a few years later.

Formerly little more than a gap in the customs wall, it was replaced by a much grander affair consisting of two matching Doric-style stone gate-houses, like little temples ( a nod to Friedrich Gilly perhaps ), facing each other across Leipziger Straße.

In addition, the East Berlin sign was carefully placed so that, when viewed from further away down Leipziger Straße, its display board obscured the West Berlin sign standing a little way beyond it.

In the time of Frederick William ( 1688 ), shortly after the Thirty Years ' war and a century before the gate was constructed, Berlin was a small walled city within a star fort with several named gates: Spandauer Tor, St. Georgen Tor, Stralower Tor, Cöpenicker Tor, Neues Tor, and Leipziger Tor ( see map ).

Friedrich Gilly's unexecuted design for a temple raised above the Leipziger Platz caught the tenor of high idealism that the Germans sought in Greek architecture and was enormously influential on Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leo von Klenze.

Previously, the parliament had assembled in several other buildings in Leipziger Straße in Berlin but these were generally considered too small, so in 1872 an architectural contest with 103 participating architects was carried out to erect a new building.

It was bounded by ( from the east and clockwise ) the districts of Torgau-Oschatz and Muldentalkreis, the city of Leipzig, the district of Leipziger Land and the state of Saxony-Anhalt ( districts Saalekreis, Anhalt-Bitterfeld and Wittenberg ).

The first completely sound helpmate was by A. Barbe of Leipzig, published in 105 Leipziger Ill. Familien-Journal, 1861.

It was bounded by ( from the north and clockwise ) the districts Muldentalkreis, Döbeln, Freiberg, the district-free city Chemnitz and the district Chemnitzer Land, the district Altenburger Land in Thuringia and the district Leipziger Land.

From 1878 till his death Curtius was general editor of the Leipziger Studien zur classischen Philologie.

The city sold the land to an investor group to build offices on the Leipziger Straße location.

* Remains of the town fortifications: the Leipzig Tower ( Leipziger Turm ) ( 15th century ) in the east and remains of the town wall in the south of the city centre.

Neighboring districts were ( from northwest clockwise ) Sangerhausen, Mansfelder Land, Saalkreis, the district-free city Halle, the districts Delitzsch and Leipziger Land in Saxony, the districts Weißenfels and Burgenlandkreis, and the Kyffhäuserkreis in Thuringia.

Further wrangles effectively brought work on the north side of Leipziger Platz to a complete stop for several years ; even now there are some " fake facades " where completed new buildings should be, while a long-running dispute over who owned the Wertheim department store site ( or had claims to the revenue from its sale by the government ), has to this day left another large gap in the central Berlin cityscape that is only now finally being redeveloped.

He also had articles appear in the Leipziger Illustrierte Zeitung and on a regular basis in the newspaper Ostdeutsche Rundschau ( East German Review ), owned by the powerful publicist and parliamentary deputy Karl Heinrich Wolf.

Even the Reichstag itself, the German Parliament, occupied the former home of the family of composer Felix Mendelssohn ( 1809 – 47 ) in Leipziger Straße before moving in 1894 to the vast new edifice near the Brandenburg Gate, erected by Paul Wallot ( 1841 – 1912 ).

Due to its north-southerly direction, it forms important junctions with the east-western axes, most notably with Leipziger Straße and Unter den Linden.

Founded by German merchant Georg Wertheim ( 1857 – 1939 ), designed by architect Alfred Messel ( 1853 – 1909 ), opened in 1897 and extended several times over the following 40 years, it ultimately possessed a floor area double that of the Reichstag, a 330-metre-long granite and plate glass facade along Leipziger Straße, 83 elevators, three escalators, 1, 000 telephones, 10, 000 lamps, five kilometres of pneumatic tubing for moving items from the various departments to the packing area, and a separate entrance directly from the nearby U-Bahn station.

), Johann Jacob Reiske: Persönlichkeit und Wirkung ( Beiträge zur Leipziger Universitäts-und Wissenschaftsgeschichte 7 ), ( Leipzig, 2005 ).

It is bounded by ( from the west and clockwise ) the district of Greiz, the Burgenlandkreis ( Saxony-Anhalt ), and the districts Leipziger Land, Mittweida, Chemnitzer Land, Zwickauer Land in Saxony.

Two of the journals, the Leipziger Magazin für reine und angewandte Mathematik ( 1786 – 1789 ) and the Archiv für reine und angewandte Mathematik ( 1795 – 1799 ), published Johann Heinrich Lambert's Nachlass as edited by Johann Bernoulli.

* the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding ( Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung ), Germany, 1995,

* Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ( as Eva ), with René Kollo, Theo Adam, Peter Schreier, Geraint Evans, Karl Ridderbusch, Chor der Staatsoper Dresden, Chor des Leipziger Rundfunks and Staatskapelle Dresden, ( con.

* Freyer / Gehlen / Schelsky ( Die Leipziger Schule ), article by Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, in Klassiker der Soziologie Bd. 2, Beck ´ sche Reihe 1999.