Karl Marx was born 200 years ago and to celebrate, an exhibition in his hometown Trier looks at his life and work. DW spoke to historian Beatrix Bouvier to learn why Marx remains a relevant, if controversial, figure.
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How Karl Marx became a pop icon
Karl Marx's legacy is ambivalent: while his ideas made Marx the spiritual father of the labor movement, they have also been used as justification for tyranny. Still, he is celebrated around the world as a cultural icon.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/A. Widak
Marx as prophet of the bottle collectors
Today, Karl Marx serves as something of a prophetic symbol, warning about the class divide between rich and poor. In this street art piece in Berlin, the philosopher is dressed as a bottle collector, bag in hand, with a T-shirt that reads: "I told you how to change the world." Of course, it's never as easy as it's made out to be.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/A. Widak
Spiritual heirs
A number of infamous political heirs to Marx's communist ideas have included the likes of Joseph Stalin, who manipulated these theories to justify a reign of terror against his perceived enemies. Marx is seen here displayed in April 1969 at the ninth annual Party meeting for China's Communist Party, alongside his spiritual collaborators and heirs Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
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Justifying mass murder
That's how it works with theories: they can be re-interpreted and misused. Marx would not have been enthusiastic about being appropriated by a dictator and mass murderer like Mao Tse Tung. Marx's ideas may have been revolutionary, but he preferred, if possible, a moderate approach to their implementation.
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In hostile company
While the ongoing homage to the philosopher in his hometown of Trier is understandable, Marx himself might question why some other more egregious world figures are constantly celebrated next to him. Here a Marx figure is pictured alongside those of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Tse Tung during Labour Day on May 1, 2017 in the Philippine capital Manila as protesters demanded workers rights.
Image: picture-alliance/Zumapress
Lending his name to an Indian party
Marx has been similarly exploited in the Indian state of Kerala on the tropical Malabar coast (Arabian Sea), where he was once again staged alongside Lenin and the tyrant Stalin. Incidentally, when India's Communists split in 1964, CPI (M) emerged from the CPI Communist Party: the "M" stands for Marxist.
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A Communist leader
Although communism has historically been compromised and often associated with oppression, Marx's idea of a classless society has since remained a universal guiding political principle around the world. In this image, Lenin, Marx and Engels adorn a billboard at a demonstration on Labor Day in Sri Lanka in 2012.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/G. Amarasinghe
Theater in Havana
After the Cuban Revolution, the largest theater in the country with 8,000 seats was renamed after Karl Marx in 1959. Cuba's music stars perform here, and in 2017 the political leadership celebrated the 100th anniversary of the October socialist revolution.
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Opposing christmas consumerism
He may share Marx' beard, but Santa Claus is a symbol of the commercialization of Christmas — and thus of capitalism. The urban myth that Santa was invented by a certain large US soda manufacturer is played on here by a street artist in São Paulo, who has turned Marx himself into a red giver of a different kind of gift, namely a proletarian revolution.
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA/C. Faga
Wax figure
The Beijing branch of the Madame Tussauds' waxworks depicts the philosopher in a much more appropriate manner: as a thinker with alert eyes, ready to argue his positions. With glasses and outstretched tongue, it could just as well be Albert Einstein.
Image: picture-alliance/ROPI/G. Dianhua
Conceptual art object
There is one place in the world where no concept is too strange to honor the philosopher. In his hometown of Trier, the marketing of their famous son is nonstop. In 2013, a conceptual artist installed 500 fairly representative Marx figures in front of the Porta Nigra, the city's Roman landmark. More unusual homages are in the works for this year's 200th birthday celebration ...
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Also available in green, or go
... including the newly introduced pedestrian light figures who take on the thinker's uniform and beard. He's not only seen in red, as above, but also in green. But that is not enough. Trier really wants to cash in on the anti-capitalist, for example, with ...
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Tittel
Bathe with Marx
... rubber duckies, replete with Marx's masterpiece, "Das Kapital," in their hands. Other souvenirs include mouse pads with the phrase "Karl has sent you a friend request. The question remains: have the people of Trier always been so excited about their hometown hero or do they still feel insulted that he turned his back on them so soon after leaving school?
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DW: Ms. Bouvier, on the occasion of his 200th birthday, Karl Marx is on everyone's minds. What has made Marx into such a mythical personality?
The question is being asked over and over again today as to whether Marx was right after all. Since at least the financial crisis of 2008, Karl Marx is once again being viewed as something of a prophet, or at least a prognosticator.
Were his theories actually prophetic?
The crisis theory that is often quoted today is not one that he was able to develop further. In the "Communist Manifesto," Marx described what he observed in his time and what we are seeing again today, namely the negative consequences and the dynamics of globalization. In the exhibition, however, we take a step back from this view of Marx as prophet.
"Leben.Werk.Zeit." (Ed. Note: "Life.Works.Time.") consists of two exhibitions. What does the visitor expect and what do you want to set straight?
One exhibition is mainly devoted to the stages of his European life path, much of which took place abroad. It becomes clear in this section that Marx shared the same fate as other oppositionists in the 19th century.
In the second section, "Work and Time," it is made clear just how disruptive the time in which Marx lived was, which problems he was faced with personally, and those which were standard for the time. We wanted to ask: what motivated him and how did it come to be that Marx and his ideas were dogmatized and perverted in the 20th century?
This bust of Marx was a gift to Trier from ChinaImage: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Tittel
Marx's legacy of Marx is ambivalent. He is used as a legitimate critic of social injustices, but his theories have also been used to justify the actions of terrible tyrants like Stalin and Mao. Where did Marx center himself on this fine line?
Certainly Marx cannot be held liable for what Stalin brought about. Nevertheless, one has to consider where the starting points lie, and these are certainly the dictatorship of the proletariat and the question of violence in revolutions. One has to point out in connection to this that there were gaps in Marx's edifice of ideas.
How perceptive was Marx about the development of capitalism, not only in Europe, but around the world?
He saw that capitalism was developing in a way that was no longer tied to England, but the baton had long since passed to the United States, where it was more dynamic than anywhere on the European continent.
What was Marx's view on the use of violence as a means of achieving the goals if reformist efforts failed?
The question of violence certainly plays a role, but it was precisely in his late years that Marx formulated that the use of force also always depends upon the extent to which it was exercised by the other side, i.e., by the side holding power. For him, it is never about beginning with violence or enforcing any ideas through the use of force. But the notion that violence can play a role has never been denied.
The idea of communism as equality for all has been repeatedly abused in order to maintain power. Would Marx have condoned such oppression?
Beatrix Bouvier, former head of the Karl-Marx-Haus says Marx was not dogmaticImage: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Tittel
No, certainly not. Marx does not stand for oppression or dogmatization. One has to point that out again and again. Another look at Marx might help to understand that things have been distorted.
Marx has been dead for 135 years; yet today his theories not only remain politically relevant, but he has become something of a modern pop star and is, for example, celebrated in street art worldwide. How did this happen?
Marx has tended to be de-ideologized, but this has never been accompanied by depoliticization. Even the presentation of Marx as a pop icon is always associated to some small degree with political provocation.
Marx's birthplace Trier knows how to market the famous son of the city in a wide-ranging way, for instance employing his likeness as a crosswalk figure. What do you make of it?
I find it amusing and think it is a legitimate way to deal with Marx. Former Lord Mayor Klaus Jensen once said: Marx is capital for Trier.
And conversely, what would the capitalist critic Marx say if he saw that his likeness was for sale in the souvenir shop in the shape of a rubber ducky?
Well, he would certainly be "not amused." But I think he may have enjoyed the popularity a little bit, too.
Beatrix Bouvier headed the Museum and Research Center Karl-Marx-Haus in Trier from 2003 to 2009 and serves on the board of the International Marx-Engels-Foundation and the Scientific Advisory Board of the exhibition society Karl Marx 2018.
