The neat, three-storey bourgeois house in which Frau Henriette Pressburg Marx gave birth to her son Karl in the German city of Trier has stood little changed for the past two centuries. But the town square has been transformed by the addition of a 5.5- metre bronze statue of the philosopher, which was unveiled on Saturday to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.
The statue comes from a controversial source: it was a donation by the People’s Republic of China.
Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with the memories of communism still fresh for many, the Marx bicentennial has been met with caution in his home country. After Chinese plans for a triumphal unveiling on the anniversary of Marx’s birth rang alarm bells, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s advisers shot down proposals for a Sino-German state summit in Trier. Even the statue was negotiated down from its originally proposed height of 6.3 metres.