About this project

Karl Marx did have a great influence on German and World history either you like him or not. But after the falldown of the East European projects of a socialism which dealed with his and Engels´  theories of society their names were sadly discredited.

As an external expression of this will to forget after the turn-around in 1989 („Wende“) many Karl-Marx-Places and -Streets and some named after Engels were given other names as usual in the course of time: some Karl-Marx-Places were named before „Hindenburg-„ or „Adolf-Hitler-Places“. Also during my work on that project at least one Karl-Marx-Place was kicked because of city council resolution.

Places in a town or a village, served to be a meeting place, are the beginning of the project. But as you can see they lost this former function in these days.

There are 52 places named after Marx (and two which lost their official names but were called as Marx-Places popularly until today). I did document them all but only show a selection.

Streets named after Marx are about 375 in Germany, after Engels about nearly 200. Too much to document, too much to show. But here you can see some of them and some monuments and settlements, those builded in the 1920s, often near industry complexes for the people working there. Same it is with a lot of Marx- and Engels-Streets which are settled in working class areas.

Marx´ 200. birthday took place in 2018, Engels´ in 2020. Each of them got their own project.

For Engels I had to think not to simply repeat so I did the following: everybody has Marx in mind for his own. But Engels except for specialists is mostly combined with Marx even he at least was the one who made it possible for Marx to study to create that epochal monument „Das Kapital“. So I had to look for towns and villages which have streets of both of them.

In the entirety this seems to be a portrait of Germany in special.

„Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt darauf an, sie zu verändern.“

Karl Marx, 11. These über Feuerbach, Fassung 1845

„The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is to change it.“

Karl Marx, 11. Thesis about Feuerbach, version 1845