- Peter Corbett
- Jan 8
- 4 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
A long time ago in another life I was a partner in a business that sought opportunities almost everywhere in the world. Before the fall of the infamous Berlin wall (1989) we (the company) were involved in some transactions, predominantly in Russia and the GDR. In 1989 we were in discussion with an engineering company (AKA the State) in Leipzig, which was still officially in East Germany.
Myself and the sales director were invited to a trade show in Leipzig and for meetings with the "state" – we were there for 2/3 days as I recall. The Berlin wall had come down and the West German Government were negotiating to re-unite east and west. The atmosphere at that time can only be described as electric, the excitement was palpable, however there was still a feeling of suspicion and scepticism, which was hardly surprising given the previous 40 years.
During one of our meetings the hosts asked us for some time to discuss details in private. They recommended us going for lunch (without them) to the only decent restaurant in town at the railway station.
The station was opened in 1915 boasting Europe's largest terminal by area – it retains that honour still today. Even back then (1989) after 40 years of neglect by the GDR the building was impressive; today it is claimed to be the most beautiful as well as the largest station in Europe – more on that later.
If one can imagine an old black and white movie of Europe from the 1920's or 30's on a grim winters day, then you may get the idea of what East Germany was like then (mid-March). The atmosphere constantly hazy and the persistent smell of sulphur from lignite – the main source of energy for domestic and industrial use. This low calorific brown (coal) not only produced heavy atmospheric pollution but discolored everything from the ground upward; this made for a grim outlook even on a sunny day, especially in the cities.
During my extensive travels, I always carried a camera - film of course! This was my weapon of choice on this occasion – a great camera even today with a very good 35mm lens.
We entered the main hall, taking photographs was a no-brainer for me. The people around us were not amused with several travellers engaging us by wagging a finger with a shaking head – I was not deterred. I wanted some shots of this place and time – the world was about to change forever. Very soon we had more serious company, at first at a distance, then eventually a confrontation. I managed to get the film out a few minutes earlier to change the finished roll and deposit it in my pocket. The Stasi, whilst not particularly aggressive demanded my camera, they missed the finished roll in my pocket.
Back to our meeting; we told the story to our hosts, they were nothing but amused telling us that photography in public places was not allowed without permission. Given the times they were not troubled and in fact the next day much to my surprise my camera was returned, of course without the film, which had only a couple of exposures.
Although I did this develop this film I never got around to exploring the images in detail, consequently at some stage during my many moves (including South Africa in 2003) I lost the negatives along with 99% of my thousands of other negs going back to the 1960's. When I returned to the UK in 2018 as I unpacked boxes of old photographic books a sheet of negs fell out of the leaves of one of theses books – the negs of my Leipzig adventure presented before me.
I scanned the negs (Epson V850 – since sold. See my scanning setup here) and was transported back 30 years to that day in Leipzig – the images have been sitting on my hard drive since.
If you are reading this then you can see that i've revived my interest in film photography and at present I am shooting film virtually 100% – I have also recently set up my darkroom (See here)
Last year (2025) I found myself in Leipzig station again after 36 years, albeit for a very short time. I managed to shoot a couple of rolls whilst I dodged security and the very busy commuter times at the station. Below are two galleries of my previous and present images – times do change !
This first gallery shows the original shots from 1989 using the above camera with Kodak Plus X - 125. The light was not good, I pushed the film speed to 800 ISO even then some of the shutter speeds were as low as 1/15 sec. – I developed to compensate for the pushed ISO.
This second gallery shows Leipzig station as of 2025. As mentioned above, its claimed to be the most beautiful railway station in Europe; I cannot attest to that however it is impressive and highlights wonderfully the preserved restored architecture. It is also immaculately clean given the huge amount of human traffic and commuters.
The camera I used was my Fuji 6x9 GSW II. I shot using Ilford HP5 and Kodak Portra 800 developed myself using Ilford DD-X and CineStill C41. I used my bespoke scanning setup with Negative Lab Pro v3 in Lightroom Classic to process the negatives. – large negs sure make a difference
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