Marx’s birthday party reopens old wounds
A giant statue of Karl Marx created to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth has reopened old wounds in Germany over a man whose theories lay behind the country’s Cold War division.
The city of Trier in western Germany, where Marx was born, yesterday opened several days of events to celebrate the anniversary by unveiling a 5.5m bronze figure of the philosopher and economist.
However, critics say the celebration is misplaced, and they are also uneasy about accepting the statue as a gift from China, where Marx remains revered for his Communist Manifesto, amid accusations that civic chiefs are trying to increase Chinese tourist numbers.
Marx’s anti-capitalist theories still resonate in his homeland, with a poll this week showing that only 49 per cent of Germans agreed that free market capitalism brought out the ‘‘best in people’’, the lowest finding in 28 countries apart from France.
‘‘Karl Marx developed the foundation upon which all subsequent communist dictatorships have built,’’ said Dieter Dombrovski, president of the Union of the Victim Groups of Communist Tyranny.
‘‘He wrote these works, sure, he did not implement them, but he developed the thought, and the communist dictatorships implemented everything that he wrote,’’ added Dombrovski, who was once jailed in communist East Germany.
Wolfram Leibe, the mayor of Trier, said the passage of time had allowed a reassessment of Marx. ‘‘We now have 30 years of distance from German reunification, which gives us the possibility to look at Marx with a critical eye without prejudice,’’ he said.
He denied trying to attract Chinese tourists, saying that only 1 per cent of the city’s five million visitors a year came from China.
The Marx statue was created by Chinese sculptor Wu Weishan. ‘‘In the history of human civilisation, people have erected statues to show their recognition of human values and to celebrate men of special significance,’’ Wu wrote in the China
Daily yesterday. ‘‘Life is limited but the spirit is infinite. The book in Marx’s hand and the path under his feet have proved that mankind will continue to advance on its own wisdom and strength.’’
Beijing marked the anniversary with an official tribute at the Great Hall of the People led by President Xi Jinping, who pledged that China would continue to ‘‘hold high the great banner of Marxism’’.
Chinese students start learning Marxist theories in middle school, and civil servants must take courses in Marxism to secure promotions. The Communist Manifesto is mandatory reading for ruling Communist Party officials. Xi urged party members to regard the habit of reading Marxist classics as a ‘‘way of life’’.
The wealth gap in China – home to at least 370 billionaires, second only to the United States – is widening. Xi dismissed skeptics, saying: ‘‘The Chinese Communist Party is completely correct to write Marxism on its own banner.’’
People in Trier, which was part of capitalist West Germany after World War II, ‘‘have long been a bit ashamed about Marx’’, said city spokesman Michael Schmitz, who has hosted Chinese state television and six reporters from the state-run Xinhua News Agency for the celebrations. ‘‘We are aware of the fact that this is part of a larger Marx revival in China.’’
Visitors can marvel at an art installation of 500 Karl Marx gnome-like figurines – in two shades of red – while sipping a Moselle wine named ‘‘Das Kapital’’ for the occasion.
Yet for Xi, the anniversary is an opportunity to push a serious goal. Harking back to Marx helps him fill a vacuum left by decades of market reforms, modernisation and China’s growth to become the world’s second-biggest economy.
The celebrations dovetail with Xi’s bid to expand the party’s influence as he pushes through sweeping changes in China’s political system, military, economy and education sector.
Having cast off presidential term limits, he says ‘‘the party leads everything’’, and is trying to promote Marxism as a plank of foreign policy, notably in countries like Vietnam and Laos.
The Marx statue was unveiled in the presence of German Justice Minister Katarina Barley – though not Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany.
‘‘Marx isn’t responsible for all the atrocities carried out by his alleged heirs,’’ European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a speech opening the festivities. ‘‘He was for equal treatment, for not suppressing differences.’’
Trier’s city council voted to accept the Chinese gift last year after attaching a resolution stressing the importance of human rights. Activists from Falun Gong, a spiritual group banned in China, were planning demonstrations this weekend.
Norbert Kaethler, head of Trier’s tourism agency, is happy about the present from Beijing: he figures the statue will boost the number of Chinese visitors to the town of 110,000. ‘‘Many Chinese think Trier must be an important German town because Marx was born here,’’ he said.
Yang Liu-Gerhards, who came to Trier as a student in 1998 and now teaches economics at a vocational school, credits Mao Zedong only with cherry-picking Marx’s ideas for his own political purposes when he established communist China.
‘‘Still, my father was happy when he heard that I was going to Trier,’’ she said. ‘‘Not only because it was Germany, but also because it was the birthplace of Marx.’’
The statue of Marx aimed ‘‘to show our appreciation of the great German philosopher’’, said Wang Yiwei, associate dean of a new institute for Xi Jinping thought at Beijing’s Renmin University.
‘‘But Germans are not so proud of Marx,’’ he said. ‘‘They’re more proud of Goethe.’’