The classical building at Kornmarkt, one of the most important large buildings from the Prussian era, was built in 1824/1825 by the master builder Johann Georg Wolff as a club house for the “Literary Casino Society” which was founded in 1817. This Casino Society, which was formed of political and social groupings, as well as of the reading circles of the late 18th and early 19th centuries’ educated classes, counted leading townspeople and Prussian officers as members. It was here that the enlightened, democratically-inclined educated class of Trier, to which the legal counsel Heinrich Marx belonged, organised itself and it was here the cultural scene of Trier took play.
It was at one of the Casino Society’s historically famous and lively balls where Karl Marx fell in love with the “Queen of the Ball” and his later wife, Jenny von Westphalen. In 1834 his father, Heinrich Marx, gave a speech at the Casino where he outlined what the people’s constitutional desires were. A few days later some of the members sang the Marseillaise and waved the tricolour, to which the Prussian officers left the Casino in protest, and then it was closed for several months. The building was destroyed in the Second World War and after its regeneration it served as the Casino of the French occupying soldiers. Since 2004 it has been primarily used for gastronomic events.
