While the German city of Trier has long capitalized on its historic links with Karl Marx, the Wuppertal region has made less of the Engels connection. The house where Friedrich Engels was born is in the Wuppertal district of Barmen. It is a handsome late-baroque residence on a road now very appropriately named Engelsstrasse. The house reflects the status of the Engels family. The building has undergone a thorough renovation over the last four years and reopens to the public on the bicentennial of Engels’ birth.
The other Germany
My brief was to take the pulse of eastern Germany on the 21st anniversary of her union (in October 1990) with her bigger neighbour to the west. Thus was a new and larger Germany born. Twenty-first birthdays have symbolic rather than any legal ...