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Friedrich
Engels
The Manchester International Festival
website offers an explanation for the relatively recent
arrival of this statue of Friedrich Engels outside HOME
on the old Gaythorne site. "Turner
Prize-nominated artist Phil Collins returned
Friedrich Engels to the city where he made his name
– in the form of a Soviet-era statue, driven across
Europe and permanently installed in outside HOME in
the centre of Manchester.
 ... The radical son of a German mill owner, Friedrich Engels arrived here in 1842, documenting the plight of the city’s working classes during his 20-year stay. It’s now exactly 100 years after the ideas from The Communist Manifesto, written by Engels and Karl Marx, changed the course of history by inspiring the Russian Revolution during the final phase of the First World War. Reflecting on the conditions of contemporary workers and the last century of change, as part of 14-18 NOW, Ceremony has returned Engels to prominence in Manchester, reasserting the city’s crucial role in the history of radical thought." |
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