A 14 X 7 meter relief of Karl Marx which adorns the front of the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany, must be removed by August 22 to make room for remodelling. The relief, titled “Aufbruch,” (”Departure”) but better known simply as “Marx-Relief” was built by the former DDR in honor of Marx 33 years ago. The townspeople are divided over what to do with it. Some, like university rector Franz Häuser, see it as possessing “strong symbolic value.” The PDS, Germany’s communist party, has requested that it be placed in another prominent location. Others, like the chairman of the local Youth Union, want to see it removed from sight forever.
The relief is symbolic of the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism in the DDR and, along with that, for the restriction of science.
Author and honorary citizen of the city of Leipzig Erich Loest has a most poetic suggestion. To understand it, however, we must back up in time to 1968.
The Paulinerkirche stood before the University of Leipzig and looked down over a city square known as the “Karl Marx Platz.” Construction had begun in 1228 and the church was first dedicated in 1240. It was a place of worship, community gathering and a burial site. Extensively renovated in 1900, it stood as a model of Gothic church architecture. It contained many historic and artistic artifacts, including a well-known organ. A place of God, however, could not be tolerated on the edge of the Karl Marx Platz.
So, on May 30, 1968 at 11AM, the church was destroyed. The decision was made May 23, with only one voice of dissent, a parish priest who noted that the Basilica stands untouched over Red Square. With only seven days to prepare for the demolition and concerns over what the SED would do, little was rescued from the church. Of th
at day, Erich Loest writes (my translation),
That was Leipzig’s bitterest day since 1945. The SED with Paul Fröhlich and Ulbricht behind him, had decided to destroy the University Church. The reason was simple: On the Karl Marx Platz, no house of God could be tolerated.
Ironically, as the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Loest and other onlookers noted that now the tower of St. Nikolai was clearly visible. The rubble was cleared and piled at the edge of the city where it is now covered by a small hill with a small wooden cross which reads, “Paulinerkirche 1968.”
Erich Loest would like to see the Karl Marx Relief destroyed as the church was and have its rubble deposited atop the church’s on the outskirst of Leipzig. A fitting end to the city’s great monument to marxist socialism.
As the dust settles, however, Marx’s hold on German (and American) society will still be visible. Until we free our minds, Marx’ “dogmatism” will remain.
Credits:
The pictures of the Paulinerkirche are from the NPR website where you can also view video of the last mass held there and the destruction of the church.
The picture of the Karl Marx Relief and the information regarding it come from Spiegel. The article is in German.
The information regarding the Paulinerkirche is from Paulinerkirche.de. It also is in German.
Related Tags: Paulinerkirche, Aufbruch, Marx Relief, Loest, Marxism, Socialism, church and state
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A further insight into the fundamental attitudes of Communists can be gained from a few brief quotes;
Marx: “We make all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.”
Lenin; “Atheism is an integral part of Marxism. Marism is materialism. We must combat religion. This is the ABC of all materialism and consequently Marxism.”
Note: Unfortuantely people view Marx as an atheist; when in reality he was a devout Satanist.
Milovan Djilas; “Was it not so that the demonic power and energy of Stalin consisted in theis, that he made the (Communist) movement and every person in it pass to a state of confusion and stupefaction, thus creating and ensuring his reign of fear….”
Svetlana Alliluyeva; “Beria (the Soviet Minister of interior affairs) seems to have had a diabolic link with all our family….Beria was a frightening, wicked demon….A terrible demon had taken possession of my father’s soul.”
Stalin to Kaganovitch; “When I have to say good-bye to someone, I picture this person on all fours and he becomes disgusting. Sometimes I feel attached to a person who should be removed for the good of the cause. What do you think I do? I imagine this person sh***ing, exhaling stench, farting, vomiting-and I don’t feel sorry for this person. The sooner he stops stinking on this earth, the better. And I cross this person out of my heart.
Franz Mehring; “Although Karl Marx’s father died a few days after his sons twentieth birthday, he seems to have observed with secret apprehension the demon in his favortie son…. Henry Marx did not think and could not have thought that the rich store of bourgeois culture which he handed on to his son Karl as a baluable heritage for life would only help to deliver the demon he feared.”
Marx; “A silent, unavoidable revolution is taking place in society, a revolution that cares as little about the human lives it destroys as an earthquake cares about the houses it ravages. Classes and races that are too weak to dominate the new condition of existence will be defeated.
Note: For more on the real story of Marx, read Marx and Satan by Richard Wurmbrand.
Very informative post. Anonymous, those quotes are a good addition. That time in history was so dark, and the effects of it are still with us.
Thank you both.
I wish Marxism had died with the fall of the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain. It, however, is alive and well if somewhat disguised and perhaps not as openly ugly as the perversion it undertook in the USSR.
But the emphasis on materialism has the same effect. It dehumanizes us; makes us nothing but another “agent” of evolution. “We are what we eat,” or so the philosophy goes. A phrase which attempts to make us nothing more than that which we imbibe, physically and spiritually. It is also the foundation of the belief in the perfectability of man which holds that if only we could improve man’s condition, we would improve his constitution.
But we are infinitely more than that which we eat, being created in His image. And there is only one way to attain perfection…through giving ourselves over to the only one who walked in perfection.
Those Marx quotes are sheer fabrications. “Anonymous,” why don’t you cite the works and chapters in which they appear? Because you can’t, because they don’t appear in any of Marx’s writings.
Here’s a tip: just because something appears in a forwarded email doesn’t make it true.
You are right, Midwestern Lefty, that sources should be cited. I am not familiar with these quotes in particular although a cursury search on the internet turns them up in a variety of places. Only two are from Marx. So you are very right that Marx did not say most of it either way, although anonymous does not claim he did. I don’t have the time nor the desire to try to track them down right now either as true or as myth. But I do know Marx said this:
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
and this:
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”
The basic idea is the same. And the source…Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. This is more of a draft/introduction to something that was never completed, but interesting thoughts on religion…and the necessity of its destruction…just the same. I’ll try to check the others out more thoroughly later, when I have the time.
Midwestern Lefty,
As an apologist for Marxism you will do all to protect his legacy. Since Satan is a deciever it’s understandable you take this position for, “they have eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear.”
As the old saying goes “Show me your friends and I’ll show you, you.” As one examines Marx’s life, relationships, associates, his system and the results thereof, a common picture arises, Satanism!
It is true not all quotes in my post come from Marx hence, “A further insight into the fundamental attitudes of Communists” was the opening to my post muting your arguement.
Regarding my post you failed to read this at the end of my comment;
“Note: For more on the real story of Marx, read Marx and Satan by Richard Wurmbrand.”
As an apologist for Marxism I expect you not to have read this book or researched the quotes presented. The information did not come from an email but to say “from the horses mouth.” As Dana commented the quotes can be easily found on a web serch.
I will do SOME of the footwork for you here, yet you must examine for yourself or this project will yield no benefit to you.
Svetlana Alliluyeva: Twenty Letters to a Friend (London, Hutchinson, 1967) Pg 64ff
Milovan Djilas, Strange Times, “Kontinent,” 33, pg 25
The Communist Manifesto
Henry Marx, Op. cit. Mehring p.32.
Here’s some more quotes from the people who ushered in Satan’s system, Communism, with their sources.
( I ) Satan is in the Family
Marx’s favorite daughter, Eleanor, with her father’s approval, married Edward Eveling. He lectured on such subjects as “The Wickedness of God.” (Just as Satanists do. Unlike atheists, they do not deny the existence of God, except to decieve others; they know of His existence, but describe Him as wicked.) In his lectures he tried to prove that God is “an encourager of polygamy and an instigator to theft.” He advocated the right to blaspheme (*). The following poem describes the attitudes of his movement toward Satanism;
To thee my verses, unbridled and daring,
Shall mount, O Satan, king of the banquet.
Away with thy sprinkling, O priest, and thy droning.
For never shall Satan, O priest, stand behind thee.
Thy breath, O Satan, my verses inspires,
When from my bosom the gods I defy.
Of kings pontifical, of kings inhuman;
Thine is the lighting that sets minds to shaking.
O soul that wanderest far from the straight way.
Satan is merciful, See Heloisa!
Like the whirlwind spreading it’s wings,
He passes, O people, Satan the great!
Hail, of reason the great Vindicator!
Sacred to thee shall rise incense and vows!
disenthroned. (**)
* Chushichi Tszuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1967), p.85
** Frederick Tatford, The Prince of Darkness (Eastbourne: Bible and Advent Testimony Movement, 1967)
( II ) Bauer wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge, also a friend of Marx and Engels, on December 6, 1841
I deliver lectures here at the university before a large audience. I don’t recognize myself when I pronounce my blasphemies from the pulpit. They are so great that these children, whom nobody should offend, have their hair standing on end. While delivering the blasphemies, I remember how I work piously at home writing an apology of the holy scriptures and of the Revelation. In any case, it is a very bad demon that possesses me as often as I ascend the pulpit, and I am so weak that I am compelled to yield to him…My spirit of blasphemy will be statisfied only if I am authorized to preach openly as professor of the atheistic system. (*)
* Bruno Bauer, letter of December 6, 1841 to Arnold Ruge, MEGA, I, 1 (2), p. 263
( III ) The man who convinced him (Engels) to become a Communist was the same Moses Hess who had previously convinced Marx. Hess wrote, after meeting Engels in Cologne,
“He parted from me as an overzealous Communist. This is how I produce ravages…..” (*)
* A. Melskii, Evangelist Nenavisti (The Evanelist of Hate, Life of Karl Marx) (Berlin; Za Pravdu Publishing House, 1933, in Russian) p.48
( IV ) Solzhenitsyn reveals in his monumental Gulag Archipelago (*) that the hobby of Yagoda, the Soviet Union’s minister of interior affairs, was to undress and naked, shoot images of Jesus and the saints. A couple of comrades joined him in this. Another Satanist ritual practiced in Communist high places!
* Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), Vol I-II, p. 173
( V ) Blasphemous Versions of the Lord’s Prayer
The Soviet Newspaper Sovietskaia Molodioj, February 14, 1976 added a new and shattering proof of the connections between Marxism and Satanism. It described how militant Communists stormed churches and mocked God under the Czarist regime. For this purpose the Communists used a blasphemous version of the “Our Father”
Our Father, which art in Petersburg
(today Leningrad)
Cursed be your name,
May your kingdom crumble,
May you will not be fulfilled,
yea, not even in hell,
Give us our bread which you stole from us,
And pay our debts, as we paid yours until now,
And don’t lead us further into temptation,
But deliver us from evil-the police of Plehve (the Czarist Prime Minister),
And put an end to his cursed government,
But as you are weak and poor in spirit and in power and in authority,
Down with you fro all eternity, Amen. (*)
* Sovietskaia Molodioj (Soviet Youth), Moscow, February 14, 1976 in Russian. “Let Thy Kingdom be Destroyed,” p. 4.
( VI ) Satan, who his worshippers see in hallucinatory orgies, actually speaks through them. Thus Marx is only Satan’s mouthpiece when he utters in his poem “Invocation of One in despair” the words, “I wish to avenge myself against the One who rules above.” Listen to the end of Oualanem:
If there is Something which devours,
I’ll leap within it, though I bring the world to ruins_
The world which bulks between me and the abyss,
I will smash to pieces with my enduring curses.
I’ll throw my arms around its harsh reality,
Embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away,
And then sink down to utter nothingness,
Perished, with no existence - that would be really living. (*)
* Op, cit, Marx, Oulanem
( VII ) Marx dreamt about ruining the world created by God, He said that in another poem;
Then I will be able to walk triumphantly,
Like a god, through the ruins of their kingdom,
Every word of mine is fire and action,
My breast is equal to that of the Creator. (*)
* Quoted in Deutsche Tagespost, West Germany, December 31, 1982
( VIII ) In his poem ‘The Pale Maiden” he writes;
Thus heaven I’ve forfeited,
I know it full well,
My soul, once true to God,
Is choosen for Hell. (*)
* Karl Marx, “Des Verzweiflenden Gebet” (”Invocations of One in Despair”), p.30.
( IX ) Finally Midwestern Lefty, do not draw your conclusion too soon.
I have also had letters from Satanists offering an apology for their religion. One of them writes;
A defense of Satanism needs only the Bible for documentary evidence. Think of all the thousands of earthly people, created in Gods own image, mind you, destroyed by fire and brimestone (Sodom and Gomorrah), a lethal miscellany of plagues, and, to top everything off, the drowning of the earth’s population, except for Noah’s family. All of these devastations brought about by a “merciful” God/Lord/Jesus/Jehovah. What could a merciless god have done?
But in all the Bible there is no record of even one death being brought about by Satan! So, let’s hear it for Satan!
THIS SATANIST HAS NOT STUDIED THE BIBLE WELL. DEATH CAME INTO THE WORLD THROUGH SATAN’S DECEIT, HIS LURING OF EVE INTO SIN. THIS SATANIST HAS ALSO DRAWN HIS CONCLUSIONS TOO SOON. GOD HAS NOT YET FINISHED WITH HIS CREATION.(*)
Richard Wurmbrand, Marx and Satan, Living Sacrifice Book Company, 1986, p.115
Remeber it is appointed a man once to die and then comes the judgemnet. Please read, “In the Hands of an Angry God,” by Jonathan Edwards. To think one can devise matters well for oneself is mere folly. (When will your life be required of you? Do you know the day or hour?)