In the early summer of 1864, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had their picture taken in London.
Posing with them are Marx's three daughters, Jenny, Laura and Eleanor.
The men are wearing light-colored tweed suits with waistcoats. Marx is holding a wide-brimmed hat;
the daughters are wrapped in long black skirts and overdresses.
But it is not the clothes that are interesting, but the surroundings.
The group is standing outdoors on a lawn with a garden fence in the background against dense foliage.
The young women have put on flower hats.
One thinks of the country outings of the Impressionists.
Nevertheless, there is a certain heaviness about the picture.
The faces of the older daughters speak of deprivation.
In London, the Marx family lives in precarious circumstances.
The New York Daily Tribune fired the German philosopher from his position as correspondent because of the American Civil War.
It was not until 1870 that Engels paid a monthly pension to put an end to the financial misery.
Andrew Kilb
Feature correspondent in Berlin.
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In the exhibition "Karl Marx and Capitalism" set up by the German Historical Museum in the Pei-Bau, an enlarged print of the photograph hangs in the "Women's Emancipation and Social Questions" section.
It could also hang under "Nature and Ecology" or "Struggles and Movements," because in 1864 Marx had co-founded the short-lived "International Working Men's Association," now considered the First International.
“Economy and crisis” would also be appropriate keywords, since Marx was writing his main work “Das Kapital” under the impression of the global economic crisis of 1857.
He always had many motifs at work at the same time, and in a shot like the one on the garden fence they flowed together.
One would only have to read them out, as is usual in museums.
The show at the DHM, on the other hand, is often content with showing what it has,
and leaves the rest to the experts.
This works where the objects are inherently eloquent, but sometimes it doesn't.