LONDON: Karl Marx may be resting in peace, but he now does so under 24/7 video surveillance. After his grave at Highgate Cemetery in London was vandalised twice last year, the Marx Grave Trust, which owns the monument, decided to monitor it with video cameras installed in December, hoping to deter vandals.
While some tombs of illustrious individuals are monitored — a webcam feed of Andy Warhol’s grave in Virginia is available online — cameras remain rare in cemeteries. Marx’s is the first one to be monitored at Highgate.
But it seems as if Marx — who in the 19th century complained about being followed by Prussian spies when he lived in London, or by British informers who watched his door with “more than a doubtful look” — can’t escape monitoring.
In January 2019, the marble plaque that displayed the names of Marx was smashed up, and two weeks later, the words “Doctrine of HATE” and “Architect of Genocide,” were daubed on the gravestone. The Marx Grave Trust decided to install cameras after the vandalism. “For some, Marx is a great source of inspiration, and for others he is responsible for all sorts of terrible things,” Ian Dungavell, the head of Friends of Highgate Cemetery, a public body that works to preserve historical sites, said. Although Marx is hailed as an influential thinker, his legacy is complicated, and many hold him responsible for brutality committed in the name of his ideas.
Marx’s grave has long been a pilgrimage site, with representatives of countries such as China and Cuba coming to pay tribute on anniversaries of his death, according to Mary Davis, a professor and the secretary of the Marx Memorial Library in London. But, the grave had a turbulent existence. In 1960, two swastikas were painted, along with a slogan saying that Marx — whose ethnic background was Jewish — loved the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, a pipe bomb at the memorial.
“These cameras are not watching Marx,” said Liz Payne, chairwoman of the Marx Grave Trust, “but people who might come to damage Marx’s legacy.”
While some tombs of illustrious individuals are monitored — a webcam feed of Andy Warhol’s grave in Virginia is available online — cameras remain rare in cemeteries. Marx’s is the first one to be monitored at Highgate.
But it seems as if Marx — who in the 19th century complained about being followed by Prussian spies when he lived in London, or by British informers who watched his door with “more than a doubtful look” — can’t escape monitoring.
In January 2019, the marble plaque that displayed the names of Marx was smashed up, and two weeks later, the words “Doctrine of HATE” and “Architect of Genocide,” were daubed on the gravestone. The Marx Grave Trust decided to install cameras after the vandalism. “For some, Marx is a great source of inspiration, and for others he is responsible for all sorts of terrible things,” Ian Dungavell, the head of Friends of Highgate Cemetery, a public body that works to preserve historical sites, said. Although Marx is hailed as an influential thinker, his legacy is complicated, and many hold him responsible for brutality committed in the name of his ideas.
Marx’s grave has long been a pilgrimage site, with representatives of countries such as China and Cuba coming to pay tribute on anniversaries of his death, according to Mary Davis, a professor and the secretary of the Marx Memorial Library in London. But, the grave had a turbulent existence. In 1960, two swastikas were painted, along with a slogan saying that Marx — whose ethnic background was Jewish — loved the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. In 1970, a pipe bomb at the memorial.
“These cameras are not watching Marx,” said Liz Payne, chairwoman of the Marx Grave Trust, “but people who might come to damage Marx’s legacy.”
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