Engels' House

The thing that most surprised me about Karl Marx's home town was that it was his home town. When I visited Trier a few years ago, I couldn't believe how such a place could have bred such a mind. Trier -- surrounded as it is by vineyards and think, pine forest -- seemed to me to be an unlikely birth place of the most influential man of the past 1000 years. The only person disturbing the peace was a Jehovah's Witness handing out leaflets on a bridge over the Moselle. Everyone else was calm and peaceful, going about their lives in the little German town just nine miles form the Luxembourg border.

Visiting Wuppertal today, though, I can quite easily see how it was the home of Engels. It was Manchester that politicised Engels, but there is evidence in Wuppertal of why a man growing up there would be sympathetic to the interests of the working man. Because by the middle of the 19th century, Wuppertal was home to a thriving textile industry. Today, there are still many little brick chimneys poking up from between the opulent houses that the cotton helped to pay for.

In the square in front of the house, is a statue of Engels, with text engraved in both German and Chinese - for it was a gift from the Chinese government. At the side of the house is a large memorial to Manchester. Truly, the influence of Engels has spread across the entire globe. Yet he is very rarely given his due. But, together with Marx, the pair of them are without a doubt the most influential philosophers of all time. How relevant, then, that it was them wrote the following:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it"Read more