In honour of the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, in 2015 the People’s Republic of China offered the city of his birth the gift of a Karl Marx sculpture as a symbol of friendship and appreciation. The square near Karl Marx House was considered as the location for the sculpture but the renowned Chinese artist and academic professor, Wu Weishan, preferred Simeonstiftplatz after an on-site visit at the beginning of 2016.

After the city council had officially decided to accept the gift following long discussions, only its size had to be negotiated. The originally planned height of 6.3 metres including pedestal was reduced to 5.5 metres. In view of the distribution of costs, the People’s Republic of China agreed to finance the pedestal including steps to sit on, as well as the costs of the statue itself and its transportation to Trier. The City of Trier’s remaining costs covering the removal of the soil, the building of the foundations, paving work and lighting came to around 39000 euros.

“I am portraying Marx in all his greatness with a determined look in his eyes”, said the artist. “His long hair and his long coat embody his wisdom. Karl Marx’s thoughts are contemplating the world. He is convinced that everything is in motion and that everything is changing. Marx is looking ahead and is quietly moving onwards.”

The bronze sculpture is to be revealed in a ceremony on 5th May 2018 on Karl Marx’s birthday at Simeonstiftplatz.

On 1st October 1819 the lawyer, Heinrich Marx, father of Karl Marx, purchased the small baroque mansard roofed building at 1070 Simeonsgasse (now number 8 Simeonsgasse), not far from the Porta Nigra of a professional colleague, the legal counsel Peter Schwarz. For the amount of 18,987 francs and 20 cents it was agreed to make payment by installments, and so the family moved here from Brückengasse.

After the father had converted from his Jewish faith to protestantism between 1816 and 1819 in order to improve his chances of career progression, the children, Sophia, Karl, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie and Caroline were also christened as Protestants in this house on the 26th August 1824. Karl was home schooled by his father here until he moved to the local grammar school in 1830. Karl Marx lived in Simeonstrasse until his secondary school graduation in Autumn 1835.

Afterwards he left Trier to begin his studies at the University of Bonn, and only returned to Trier a few times and just for short visits. The mother, Henriette Marx, is last recorded as being at this address at the end of 1850 with the house probably sold between 1851 and 1852. With the interior renovated and greatly changed, a shop can now be found on the ground floor. Now only a memorial plaque above the entrance to the house serves as a reminder of the one-time resident, and of the city of Trier’s most famous son.

The Jesuit college, which later became the Friedrich-Wilhelm Grammar School, was founded in 1561, and until the Second World War took place in the building of what is now the Episcopal Seminary on Jesuitenstrasse. Karl Marx’s time at the Trier Grammar School lasted only five years however, from 1830 until 1835. He had previously been home schooled for a number of years by his father. In 1835, at 17 years of age, Marx received a grade point average of 2.4 in his Abitur, the final year exam at school, with a 1 being the highest grade. Under Rector Johann Hugo Wyttenbach (1767–1848), also Dean of the Trier City Library, librarian of the literary society and founding member of the Society for Beneficial Research, as well as teachers like Johannes Steininger (1794-1874), the school had a strong liberal ethos.

For example, Karl Marx’s fellow pupils were the “forty-eights”, Friedrich Zell, Ludwig Joseph Bleser, Viktor Valdenaire and Ludwig Simon who all graduated between 1832 and 1836. However, the Prussian government sought to counter such democratic sympathies. Wyttenbach was under the surveillance of the Prussian secret police. In addition to this, because of generally rampant poverty, the school was continuously losing pupils (in 1825 there were 457, in 1837 only 295). Only after the founding of the episcopal boarding school in 1840 did numbers rise again. Following the destruction of the school building in 1944 and several temporary lodgings, the school moved into its current building at Fausenburg in 1961.

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.

Karl Marx was born in this house, number 10 Brückenstrasse on 5th May 1818, the third child of his Jewish parents, the lawyer Heinrich Marx (1777-1838) and his wife Henriette Marx, born Presburg (1788-1863). In 1727 the front building was newly built in baroque style, with the partly Gothic buildings behind being greatly altered. It was here that Marx was born in 1818. He spent only the first year and a half of his life in the house which his family had rented since April 1818. By 1819 his father had already bought a house of their own at number 8 Simeonstrasse where Karl Marx lived until his completion of secondary school and his departure from Trier in 1835.

The house at number 8 Simeonstrasse was left forgotten and was only identified as the birth place of Karl Marx by a Social Democrat because of a newspaper article. The Social Democratic Party bought the house in 1928 and had it extensively restored in order to open a memorial. However these efforts were in vain: in 1933 the house was subject to a compulsory purchase by the SA (the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party) and was turned into the headquarters and the printing press for the “Nationalblatt” newspaper. In 1947 the house was once again in the possession of the Social Democratic Party. Today it serves as a museum meant to convey the life, the works and the history of Karl Marx’s impact. In honour of the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, his place of birth was renovated and the permanent exhibition newly designed.