Has anyone heard of a place called Leidenstadt?

Question

There is a song about it but does it or did ot exist? I thought I heard someone talk about it in a film once - seemed to be on the outskirts of Berlin but I might have imagined that!! Hope you can help?

Answer 1

Jean-Jacques Goldman

BORN IN 1917 IN LEIDENSTADT

CHORUS:

If I'd been born in 1917 in Leidenstadt

On the ruins of an old battle site

Would I have been a better or worse man

Had I been born a German?

Cradled in hate, ignorance and humiliation

Nourished by dreams of retaliation

Would I have had an offbeat conscience

A simple teardrop amidst raging torrents

If I'd grown up around the dockhands of Belfast

Amidst the hate, the guns and the blast

Could I have found the force to help betray a friend

Think my own way to the end

If I was born white and rich in Johannesburg

Where fear and power's the only word

Could I have heard the cry of change blow in the wind

Never be the same again

Well never really know what we hold inside

Behind all those fronts, we hide

The soul of a hero, a conspirator or a torturer

Either for the worse, or for the better

Would we be fighters or like sheep in a flock

If it meant more than just talk!

CHORUS

And hopefully we may be spared from having to decide

For a long time what shall be our side

Answer 2

Leidenstad is the french way of writing Leiden stad.

Leiden stad is dutch for "the city of Leiden" which is in western holland.

Answer 3

Do you mean Leiden? It is a town (Stadt) in the Netherlands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden