Karl Marx House

The Karl Marx House in Trier is the birthplace of the German economist, philosopher, author and revolutionary Karl Marx and now a museum.

History

The house was in the alley jumper 664 (now Bridge Street 10) Built in 1727. Karl Marx was here on May 5, 1818 as the third child of the Jewish lawyer Heinrich Marx and his wife Henriette Marx also Jewish (* 1788, † 1863), a born Presburg born. The family lived there since April 1, 1818 rent. In October 1819 she received a purchased, smaller house ( Karl -Marx- residence ) in Simeon Street ( today Simeonstraße 8), near the Porta Nigra. There, remembered today only a plaque on Karl Marx.

Rediscovery, SPD purchase and expropriation

The birthplace of Karl Marx fell into disuse and was until 1904 identified by a found moving display of the Father Heinrich Marx in the Trierischer newspaper dated 5 April 1818. The SPD was only in 1928 that acquire in the 19th and early 20th centuries several times heavily modified house after a long effort. From 1930 it was restored by the architect Gustav Kasel Trier ( 1883-1951 ). Here, an attempt was made possible to restore the original state of the building, including a later been translated floor was removed again and the original mansard roof reconstructed. On the ground floor built showcase were later removed again, the former rear building and the garden were obtained only in residues and also had to be reconstructed. Due to the slow progress of this work for the 5 May 1931 the 113th birthday of Marx, planned opening delayed as a memorial. In the final phase of the Weimar Republic, the house was the subject of political controversy because of its symbolic power. With the rise of the National Socialists in 1933, the prestigious birthplace of the so-called father of communism was compulsorily acquired in May 1933 and used as a printing office of the party newspaper " Trier National Journal ".

Museum Karl Marx House Trier

On May 5, 1947, was opened as Karl -Marx- house with several showrooms to the interested public. The exhibition tells about the life and work of Karl Marx. In 1968 it was incorporated into the Friedrich- Ebert -Stiftung and re-opened on 5 May 1967 Willy Brandt and provided with a Research Centre. On March 14, 1983 ( the 100th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx) opened the museum after a year of rebuilding and renovation work with a newly designed on three floors exhibition its doors again.

Showrooms in 2003

Chinese signs

A delegation of the SED under the direction of Kurt Tiedke visited the Karl Marx House (1978 )

Redesign of the Museum Karl Marx House in 2005

In 2005 the house was closed for three months opened on 9 June 2005 again with a newly designed exhibition. Critics of the Trier local politics complain that with the redesign of the SPD ' would have rewritten the history Karl Marx and Karl Marx instrumentalized for the party work of the SPD. At the opening event Anke Fuchs, Franz Müntefering, Kurt Beck and Mayor Helmut Schroer were present. The exhibition now also takes into account the history of communism in the Soviet Union, in the rest of the Eastern Bloc and China.

The Karl Marx House has around 32,000 visitors annually (as of June 2005). Around one third of them are tourists from China, for it is one of the main attractions in Germany.