Most Fridays I send out an email that features photos from the Rupert Leach Collection, snaps taken from the personal reels of View-Master’s Director of Photography in the 1940s and ‘50s. These never-before-published images show alternative shots of some commercial View-Master reels and personal photos of Leach, his wife Poppy, and others.
I try to get to the bottom of the people and places pictured within despite the limited context provided by mostly unmarked reels. Let’s dig in.
This week’s reel is an odd one. The envelope features something scratched out and the words “grave and Karl Marx” written on the front. The reel itself says “Mt. Rainier” but does not feature a photo of that.
In fact, the reel features just one photo:
Why would this photo be alone on a reel? Did it just not fit in with some other scenes of London? Was Leach a huge Marxist? Did he love The Communist Manifesto? Was Leach a friend of the Marx family’s descendants? I have no idea, and I’m guessing that would be impossible to know. I don’t like making huge leaps about the politics and thinking of people in the past. He might have hated Marxism, and this photo was on a reel by itself to ensure it didn’t corrupt the rest of his photos in his London stash.
Frankly, the symbols of a given era change dramatically over time. Karl Marx’s grave might mean something very different to someone in the 1950s interested in seeing the new gravestone than it does to me in the 2020s. I simply don’t have enough context to draw conclusions.
So, instead of trying to decipher what this could mean, I thought I’d look up Karl Marx’s grave and focus on the site itself and not read too much into anyone’s political leanings in 1955 because I mostly don’t care.
I do care about political leanings in 2024, however. Is this where I should say I deeply disapprove of Donald Trump and everything he stands for as a person and a public servant? If you gotta unsubscribe because you can’t handle that, I’m at peace with it. We all have to follow our consciences, and I sleep well knowing that.
The Tomb of Karl Marx today looks like this, basically:
And here’s a close-up of the grave inscription, very much the same as the photo Leach took, but the dedication to Eleanor Marx appears to have been added.
We talked a couple of weeks back about how I think these photos of London were all taken in 1953, when Leach and others from View-Master went to London to shoot a packet for the queen’s coronation.
It turns out the Tomb of Karl Marx — as it stands today — is located in the Eastern part of Highgate Cemetery in North London. You can see a list of notable graves here. Wikipedia thinks Karl Marx is the most notable person in the cemetery but they don’t love character actor Bob Hoskins like I do (RIP, King!). However, Marx and his family were originally buried in a different part of the cemetery and in November 1954 they were disinterred and reburied at their present location!
So is Leach’s photo of their first burial location or the second? I believe it’s the second. Because this was the earlier grave marker:
And that is very clearly not what Leach photographed. Also! The tomb with Karl’s cool disembodied head wasn’t added until 1956 — paid for the Communist Party of Great Britain.
This effectively time stamps the photos in this collection to 1955! Also, the View-Master camera system with its personal reels debuted in 1952. So this all aligns fairly well.
Anyway, I had to keep reading about Karl Marx’s tomb because of course I did.
The pedestal of the tomb is inscribed with famous quotes of Karl’s — including “Workers of all lands, unite,” which is a famous communist rallying cry.
Of course, people throughout history have been very chill about communism and Marxism and political theory in general, so nothing interesting ever happens at Karl’s resting spot. Just kidding. Obviously, people are never chill so the grave has been vandalized repeatedly (with a hammer, with swastikas and pro-nazi propaganda and more) and it survived two attempted bombings in the 1970s!
The NYT ran a story about the cemetery adding cameras in 2019 after repeated defacings. Here’s a gift link for the nerds who want to read the whole thing. This struck me, though:
“The socialist sculptor who erected the monument, Laurence Bradshaw, knew it would come under attack, and that’s in part why he made it in granite,” said Mr. Dungavell of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust. “This grave has had a rough life.”
And this:
Jean Seaton, a professor of media history at the University of Westminster and director of the Orwell Prize for political writing, said, “It’s quite paradoxical that Marx, the anti-individualist, the great generator of collectivist ideas in which you sacrifice the individual to the greater good, has to be protected so much himself.”
There is a stark irony in that. Would Marx even approve of his grave being monitored? We’ll never know.
I will never understand defacing a grave because you don’t like the ideas of the person buried there. But I often find that human beings are more dangerous than ideas. Once they get hold of ideas, all hell can break loose!
Do me a favor and smash that ❤️ button, so I know you’re following along!
One photo that inspired an insightful deep-dive! Thanks, Rebecca!
What a coincidence! Just last night I saw a clip of a movie from early in David Warner’s career filmed at the base of this very monument. Uh oh… what’s the universe telling me? 😄