Karl Marx grave

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Karl Marx grave. Image from 2016
The simple, original grave of the Marx family (1881 to 1954). After a photograph by Karl Pinkau (1896).
The original grave slab is set in the middle of the front of the grave monument.

The Karl Marx grave is located in the eastern part of the Highgate Cemetery in what is now Camden in the British capital London .

Karl Marx was buried here on March 17, 1883. At the grave Eleanor Marx , Carl Schorlemmer , Ray Lankester , Horatio Bryan Donkin , Wilhelm Liebknecht , Charles Longuet , Paul Lafargue , Friedrich Leßner , Georg Lochner , Edward Aveling , Helena Demuth and Gottfried Lembke . Marx himself had wished for “participation in the funeral to be limited to family and most intimate friends,” which his daughters Laura and Eleanor and Friedrich Engels followed. Friedrich Engels gave the funeral speech in English: "Like Darwin the law of the development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history (...) His name will live on through the centuries and so will his work."

His wife Jenny Marx , who was buried there on December 5, 1881, also rests in the grave . Three more people were later buried in the plot: his grandson Harry Longuet in 1883 and his housekeeper Helena Demuth in 1890 . In 1956, the urn of his daughter Eleanor Marx was buried in the new location of the grave in the cemetery after she had been transferred to another place.

On November 23, 1954, the remains of Karl Marx, Jenny von Westphalen, Harry Longuet and Helena Demuth were exhumed and reburied around a hundred yards from the old grave - next to the site of a memorial that was still to be erected. The British sculptor Laurence Bradshaw was commissioned to create this funerary monument after the Communist Party of Great Britain founded the Marx Memorial Fund.

The grave monument was unveiled on March 14, 1956 by Harry Pollitt , then General Secretary of the British Communist Party. The monument consists of a larger than life, bronze portrait bust of Karl Marx on a cuboid base. The front of the plinth bears the inscription "WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE" from the Communist Manifesto at the top and the 11th thesis on Feuerbach at the bottom: "THE PHILOSOPHERS HAVE ONLY INTERPRETED THE WORLD IN VARIOUS WAYS - THE POINT HOWEVER IS TO CHANGE IT ”(“ The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; it depends on changing it ”). The original grave slab of the original grave of the Marx family is embedded in the center of the base front.

In the 1970s there was a fruitless attempt to destroy the monument with a self-made bomb.

In February 2019, the tomb was smeared with paint and the marble slab was massively damaged.

See also

Web links

Commons : Karl Marx grave  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ With the original gravestone: “Jenny von Westphalen The beloved wife of Karl Marx Born February 12. 1814 Died December 2. 1881 And Karl Marx Born May 5. 1818, died March 14, 1883 And Harry Longuet Their grandson Born July 4. 1878 , died March 20, 1883. And Helena Demuth Born January 1, 1823 (sic!), died November 14, 1890 ”(Wilhelm Liebknecht in: Mohr und General . Berlin 1965, p. 175.)
  2. ↑ And added in 1956: And Eleanor Marx, Daughter of Karl Marx Born January 16. 1856 (sic!), Died March 31. 1898. (Chushichi Tsuzuki: Eleonor Marx. History of her life. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-7678 -0437-9 , p. 297.)
  3. ↑ Their names live on through the centuries . Berlin 1983, p. 9 f.
  4. ↑ The Social Democrat . No. 14 of March 29, 1883. ( Their names live on through the centuries. Berlin 1983, p. 114.)
  5. ^ Friedrich Engels: Draft for the Speech over the Grave of Karl Marx . In: Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe . Department I. Volume 25. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1985, pp. 403-404.
  6. ↑ Friedrich Engels: The burial of Karl Marx . In: The Social Democrat . No. 13 of March 22, 1883. ( Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe . Department I. Volume 25. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1985, pp. 407 and 411; Marx-Engels-Werke . Volume 19, pp. 335 ff ..)
  7. ^ Friedrich Engels: Jenny Marx, b. v. Westphalen . ( Marx-Engels-Werke . Volume 19, p. 291 f).
  8. ^ Inscription on the grave slab of the original grave of the Marx family ("[…] Their remains were removed and re-interred on 23rd November 1954 at the place nearby where a monument was erected on 14th March 1956").
    Tomb of Karl Marx and Family in Highgate (Eastern) Cemetry. In: www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  9. ↑ Christine Lindey: Laurence Bradshaw. Morning Star, April 3, 2007. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  10. ^ Asa Briggs: Marx in London. An illustrated guide. British Broadcasting Corporation, London 1982, ISBN 0-563-20076-6 , p. 80.
  11. ^ Marx monument unveiled in Highgate cemetery. The Guardian, March 15, 1956. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
    Tomb of Karl Marx and Family at Highgate (Eastern) Cemetry. In: www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  12. ↑ Christine Lindey: Laurence Bradshaw. Morning Star, April 3, 2007. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  13. ↑ https://www.prosieben.de/tv/newstime/panorama/grabstaette-von-karl-marx-geschaendet-103533

Coordinates: 51 ° 33 '58.2 "  N , 0 ° 8' 37.5"  W.