On Tuesday, 21 February 1741, Johann Andreas Silbermann, son of Andreas and nephew of Gottfried Silbermann, begins a long-awaited journey to and through Saxony. Following in the footsteps of his family history - his father came from the Frauenstein region - and with a keen sense of the cultural and historical peculiarities of the area - art and architecture, stories and myths, social circumstances - but equally curious about his own profession, organ building, he explores the country over the coming weeks and records his impressions in vivid descriptions in his travel diary.

The journey happens quickly and without much loss of time. Silbermann takes the through mail, often also the extra mail, and makes quick progress. But despite the urge to get to Saxony (nightly breaks are only taken between midnight and four o'clock), and impatiently suffered travel delays due to the winter weather, there is still time during the day to take a closer look at and describe some places: in Heidelberg, Frankfurt and Fulda he completes a tourist programme that includes city sights, castles, churches and of course organs:

I also had the organ pointed out to me, it was started 30 years ago by a Franciscan, but because he died over it, Hoffmann Orgelmacher von Würtzburg made it, it is now and then quite strangely arranged.

Once in Thuringia and Saxony, Silbermann reduced the pace of travel and took plenty of time to study the people, customs and "Merckwürdigkeiten" of the region. The visit to churches and castles - Silbermann receives insights and explanations via the respective bedmaster - is accompanied by detailed observations: he registers and documents the design, materials, colours, dimensions, expenses such as construction and maintenance costs, construction times, etc. of both the exterior and interior appearance. Eisenach, he finds the government of the Schloßkirche organ in appalling confusion, although it had just been renovated; at Wartburg Castle, he is led by the bedside of Margravine Elisabeth, a model of Grimmenstein Fortress and into Luther's room, and wonders about the ladies' clothes:

The costumes of the women look quite silly, they all wear black cloaks /: it may rain or not:/ like the guards have in Strasburg, and mostly baarfuß, on their heads they have thick fur caps.

He likes Gotha very much, Friedenstein Palace fascinates him as much as the Margarethenkirche, the large window panes in the town houses, the better dressed women, the street lighting at night:

Here, as in Eisenach, there are 3 square tin lanterns almost every 60 steps, which are lit at night.

In Erfurt he tastes black radish, Halle amazes him with its towers, the large orphanage and Prussian traces everywhere. Finally, on 6 March, he arrives in Leipzig - not without paying a Saxon groschen at the gate on his arrival at 10 o'clock in the evening. He stays here a little longer, meets G. A. Homilius as a young pupil and through him gains access - not to Bach, who is not visited for unknown reasons, but - incognito - to Johann Scheibe:

After we went to the Pauliner church to H Schaibe the organ maker as the master of this work. H Emilius asked him very politely to do him the favour of letting him see his work, but I heard how reluctantly he went about it outside the room with the greatest impatience, at last they came together, but H Emilius asked me for God's sake not to reveal who I was, so I had to adopt a different name.

Johann Andreas and Michael Silbermann arrive in Zittau on 18 March. For six weeks, Silbermann "lodges" with his uncle Gottfried in the "orphanage ", with whom he "amuses" himself " constantly in matters concerning our art". He becomes acquainted with the town's dignitaries and undertakes excursions into the surrounding area.

In Lusatia, he visited weaving workshops and, thanks to the family connections of his Zittau acquaintance, was introduced to the secret art of weaving by royal decree; in Görlitz, he grumbled about the confusing organ, which the famous Bach had rightly called a horse organ; the Holy Sepulchre, modelled on the original in Jerusalem, interested him so much that he added an illustrated description to the diary.

And the extent to which Zittau itself grew on him during this time is shown even more than in the daily descriptions of the city in the countless engravings pasted into the diary, like a photo or postcard album, which he comments on several years later:

This beautiful city was burned in 1757 from the 19th to the 23rd of July by fire from the Austrians who besieged it to 120 houses. In the process, 89 people, most of whom had solved themselves in the cellars, were suffocated and perished.

Silbermann enriches the detailed prose descriptions of his experiences and impressions with sketches to document what he has seen and, for example, to illustrate the furnishings of a hall in theBrühl Palace, for example.

A musical highlight is the high mass in the Catholic court chapel, which was installed in the Taschenberg Palais at the time.

I was in ampt and vespers in the court church. in the morning the music consisted of 70 people.

And: in the circle of family and new acquaintances we celebrated extensively.:

At noon, my cousin Michael Silbermann held a feast, and invited some of my acquaintances to join us, so that we had 20 people. He made great expenses for himself, by treating the guests to loud wine in addition to the delicate and many meals, and musicians had to play music with French horns and other instruments for as long as the feast lasted, i.e. until Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock. Mr. Cousin took great pains to arrange everything in such a way that only a lot would go on it, and some of them got drunk after 2 meals and sobered up again.

Finally, a sensation is the encounter with the "great Englishman" Kirkland, who belonged to the great regiment guard of Frederick II. As a memento, Silbermann acquires an engraving which he adds to his diary.