Village The village was probably founded by
Slavic Sorbs in the seventh century. Early forms of the name were
Golitz,
Goliz or
Golis. The old Sorbian root
gol meant
bare, barren and is possibly a description of the unforested immediate hinterland of the village. The ending
-its/-itz is typical for Slavic villages. In the course of the
German expansion to the east,
Flemish settlers established themselves in the region. The first documented mention is in the year 1317, in which the village grant of land to the Cistercian monastery of St. George is mentioned. The rulers of Gohlis were the
Margraves of Meissen or
Landsberg, and later the
Electors of Saxony from the
Ernestine branch of the
House of Wettin (1423–1485), then the
Albertine Dukes, Electors and
Kings of Saxony. Within the Saxon state, the village Gohlis belonged to the district of Leipzig. The village Gohlis belonged to the
seigneury (lordship) of the manor Gohlis, by which it was subject to patrimonial law. In 1659, Michael Heinrich Horn (1623–1681), a professor of medicine and chemistry at the
Leipzig University, acquired the manor and the seigneury of Gohlis. The so-called
Gohliser Schlösschen ("little palace of Gohlis") is nowadays used as restaurant and for cultural events. After Richter's death, Christiana Regina remarried, making her third husband, the historian
Johann Gottlob Böhme (1717–1780) lord of the manor. The next owner was Christiana Regina's brother, Johann Hieronymus Hetzer (1723–1788). He was a patron of the arts, making Gohlis known as a "Court of the Muses". At the invitation of Hetzer and his friend
Christian Gottfried Körner, poet and playwright
Friedrich Schiller spent the summer of 1785 in Gohlis. He worked on the second act of his play
Don Carlos, edited the
Fiesco and wrote the first version of the
Ode to Joy. The farmhouse in which Schiller stayed is the oldest house standing in Gohlis. It was built in 1700 and has hardly changed since the 18th Century. In 1841, the Leipzig Schiller Society erected a memorial site which is now the "Schillerhaus" museum. In 1793, the city of Leipzig became the owner of the manor and acquired the underlying seigneury. Even after the city sold the manor to the
House of Alvensleben in 1832, it continued to exercise the local jurisdiction. Under Saxony's 1838 Municipal Code, Gohlis was made a separate rural municipality with the right of local self-governance, ending the late-feudal system of manorialism. At that time, Gohlis comprised 54 houses and 578 inhabitants. During the
Industrial Revolution, Gohlis was connected to the
Magdeburg–Leipzig railway in 1840. During the following decades, the village experienced a rapid population growth. In 1871, it counted 5015 inhabitants, effectively becoming a suburb of the booming city of Leipzig. A new school was built in 1860–61. In 1870 Gohlis became a separate Lutheran parish, the
neo-Gothic Peace Church was consecrated in 1873. In the same year, Gohlis was connected to the
Leipzig tram network (then horse-drawn, electrified after 1896).
Adolf Bleichert moved his
cableway factory to Gohlis in 1881,
Part of Leipzig Gohlis, like several other suburbanised villages around Leipzig, was incorporated into the city in 1890. At that time, Gohlis already counted 19,312 inhabitants. Planned as a
satellite city for 15,000 people, only a quarter of the project was completed before being halted by the ramifications of the
Great Depression and finally abandoned after the
Nazi seizure of power. The modernist
Church of Reconciliation (
Versöhnungskirche), intended as the centre of that satellite city, was consecrated in 1932. One year later, Gohlis counted 54,581 inhabitants. Instead of Bauhaus-style apartment blocks, housing development was resumed in the 1930s with more conventional single-family and duplex houses. During the
Allied airstrikes of 1943-45, Gohlis suffered some damages, but was less affected than other parts of the city. Under the communist rule in East Germany, residential development was complemented by 1960s blocks of
housing cooperatives and a minor
Plattenbau estate built at the northern end of Gohlis in the 1980s. Most of the old building stock deteriorated. After the
German reunification in 1990, almost all industrial plants closed down. Since then, Gohlis is dominated by residential use, small-scale services and retail. The shopping centers
Gohlis-Arkaden,
Gohlis-Center and
Gohlis-Park were built during the 1990s. At the same time, most of the old buildings were renovated, making Gohlis again one of the most coveted residential areas of Leipzig. In the 2010s, it experienced another building boom by
urban consolidation. From 32,500 inhabitants in 2000, the population rose to more than 45,000 in 2020. == Traffic ==