The Ghost of Trier

Author: Liang Heng / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: The first sentence of The Communist Manifesto is: "A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism." I don’t know the original meaning in German, but why the Chinese translation used the word "specter." The Chinese habit is that a specter is distant, mysterious, elusive, and immensely powerful. Invisible, intangible, seemingly present yet absent, believed yet doubted, it carries a mix of reverence and fear. In the dim unknown, its true nature is unclear, yet it cannot be escaped. Perhaps this is what a specter is. Or maybe it’s the charm of this specter that made me eager to visit Marx’s former home when I first arrived in Germany. Marx was born in the small town of Trier in southwestern Germany. When we rushed there one evening, we found a gray little building in a narrow alley. Amidst the quiet streets and densely packed residential areas, it was an unremarkable structure. The afterglow of the setting sun cast a faint golden hue over it. I pushed the door open and saw a small counter displaying brochures and souvenirs. The entrance was small, the windows clean and bright, radiating a homely warmth. What caught my attention was a portrait of Marx on the wall—it wasn’t a photograph or a painting, but a portrait composed entirely of the text of The Communist Manifesto. The continuous string of English letters formed long lines, outlining Marx’s image—his familiar beard, broad forehead, and deep eyes. I stood in front of this unique portrait for a long time in silence. It’s truly rare for a person to use their world-renowned work to mark and outline their own image. The small building of the former home is three stories tall, circular, with a small courtyard in the center. The ground floor was originally the office of Marx’s father, a lawyer, and is now used as a reception room for visitors. The second floor is where Marx was born and now displays various materials introducing his life and the background of the international communist movement at the time. The third floor holds Marx’s writings. In reality, Marx only lived here for a year and a half after birth. His father rented the house in April 1818, and Marx was born on May 5th of the same year. The family moved out the following October. Marx had no memories of this place and likely never returned. But posterity remembered it. In 1904, a Social Democratic Party member in Trier confirmed that this was Marx’s birthplace. The party tried multiple times to buy it but was limited by funds and couldn’t succeed. It wasn’t until 1928 that they purchased the house from a private owner for 100,000 gold marks and began renovations, planning to open it in May 1931. However, political conditions worsened, Hitler came to power, and in May 1933, the house was seized and turned into a local fascist party headquarters. It wasn’t until the end of World War II that the Social Democratic Party regained the building, and it finally reopened on May 5, 1947. The world has changed immensely since Marx was born in this house in 1818, a span of 170 years that has seen more transformation than the previous 1,700 years. Yet the world still runs in Marx’s mind. In the museum, there’s a map showing Marx’s involvement in the workers’ movement and his travels for research. Thin lines crisscrossed the European continent, weaving a dense network. London, England, was a focal point where these lines converged. Naturally, I thought of the famous story there—Marx studied and wrote in the British Museum for so long that he wore a shallow groove into the stone floor. Just like Shaolin Temple’s stone steps bear the footprints of martial artists, whether for righteousness or martial arts, it takes hard work. From the beginning, Marx made the entire planet—the economic systems, production relations, science and technology, human thought, and philosophy of the world—his research subjects. He sought to uncover the truth about the world and untangle its complexities. He was a philosopher like Archimedes or Laozi of China. He saw the poverty of the working class, but he never wanted to change the situation of workers in a single place at a time. He didn’t, like Owen, pursue a specific charitable experiment, nor did he initially agree with the Paris Commune. He sought to find a fundamental solution to this chaotic world. The most preserved materials in this building are Marx’s various manuscripts and versions of his works. P3-4