Marx-Engels Forum

Listen for a moment. Traffic hums somewhere behind the trees, and the Spree slides past just out of sight. Underfoot, the paving is plain and grey. Ahead of you, two bronze figures wait in the open air. One sits. One stands beside him. People queue to photograph them, and someone usually climbs onto the plinth to sit on a lap. This is the Marx-Engels Forum, a small park in the centre of Berlin with a very large argument attached to it.

The two men are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They were the nineteenth-century German thinkers behind the Communist Manifesto. Marx is the seated figure, broad and bearded, his hands resting on his knees. Engels stands at his shoulder, slimmer, his hands loosely clasped. Both look calm, almost tired. There is no raised fist and no heroic pose. The sculptor, Ludwig Engelhart, chose something quieter. He made two older men who seem to be thinking, not marching.

The statues were unveiled in 1986, in what was then East Berlin, the capital of the German Democratic Republic. That was the socialist state in the eastern part of a divided Germany. The government planned this forum as a place of honour for the founders of its official ideology. Three years later, the Berlin Wall fell. So the monument had only a very short life as an official shrine. Most of its life has belonged to a different country entirely.

Now look around the edges of the space. Here is the first surprise. This calm, open lawn was once one of the oldest and densest parts of Berlin. Before the Second World War, narrow streets and close rows of houses filled this ground, close to the medieval heart of the city. Bombing in the war destroyed much of the district. Afterwards, the East German authorities cleared what remained. They wanted wide, open space for a modern socialist capital.

That explains the strange emptiness you may feel here. Between the Spree and the Television Tower, the ground opens up in a way that is unusual for a European old town. Behind you, the Television Tower rises far above the rooftops, with its silver sphere near the top. To one side stands the red-brick City Hall, often called the Red Town Hall because of its brick, not its politics. The old Saint Mary's Church sits low among the trees, one of the few survivors of the old district.

Come back to the statues and walk slowly around them. The bronze has darkened unevenly. Some places shine a warm gold — the knees, the hands, the edges of the plinth. Those bright patches come from thousands of visitors touching the figures and climbing on them. It is an honest record of how people actually treat this monument. Few of them come to pray. Many of them come for a funny photograph.

Originally, the figures did not stand alone. The forum was designed as an ensemble. There were relief walls in stone and bronze, and a set of tall stainless steel columns. Etched into those columns are photographs from the history of the workers' movement — strikes, protests, crowds and faces from many countries. Look closely at the steel if the columns are near you. The images are small and grainy, and you need to stand close to read them.

Here is the second surprise. These statues have moved. In the 2010s, Berlin extended an underground railway line beneath this area. During the works, the city lifted the figures and placed them nearby, on a different spot. For years, visitors photographed Marx and Engels facing a slightly different direction, in the middle of a construction zone. Their position today is the result of that long building project, not of the original 1986 plan alone.

After reunification in 1990, many socialist monuments in eastern Germany disappeared. Statues of Lenin were taken down. Street names changed. Yet these two figures stayed. Part of the reason is that Marx and Engels were thinkers, not rulers of the East German state. Berliners also tend to keep layers of their history visible, even uncomfortable ones. According to a story often repeated in the city, someone once painted the words "We are innocent" on the plinth in the early 1990s.

Berliners have a dry sense of humour about the pair. One popular joke says the two men are sitting and standing there with their luggage, waiting for a train to the West. Another treats them as two patient pensioners, watching the tourists pass. These jokes are folklore, not official history. But they say a lot about how ordinary people in the city relate to grand political monuments. Here, irony is a kind of affection.

Turn now towards the river. Across the water, you can see the dome of Berlin Cathedral. Close to it stands the Humboldt Forum, a rebuilt version of the old royal palace, now a museum and cultural centre. For several decades, the Palace of the Republic stood on that site instead. It was the parliament and cultural house of East Germany. It was demolished in the 2000s. So from this one spot, you look at the Prussian kings, the socialist state and modern Germany at the same time.

The future of this square is still a topic of debate in Berlin. City planners, architects and residents have argued for years about what to do with the open ground between the river and the Television Tower. Some want to rebuild the old street pattern. Others want to keep a large green public space in the centre of the city. The statues sit right in the middle of that conversation, as they always have. Nothing about this place is completely settled.

Before you leave, stand back a few steps and take in the whole scene at once. Two quiet bronze men. Trees moving in the wind. The tower overhead, the cathedral dome beyond the river, the red brick of City Hall. Notice who else is here — a tour group, a child on the plinth, a commuter cutting across the grass. As you walk away, look at the open ground under your feet. A whole old neighbourhood once stood exactly where you are walking now.