European Capital of Culture 2025 kicks off in Chemnitz

German city shares title with Nova Gorica and Gorizia

Around 80,000 people attended the opening event on January 18 that launched Chemnitz's year as European Capital of Culture 2025, a title the eastern German city is sharing with Nova Gorica/Gorizia, which will officially kick off their year on February 8, reported DW.

"This year, Chemnitz can send out a signal of a new sense of togetherness," German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the opening ceremony.

The Capital of Culture year brings people together who would otherwise have little contact with one another, Steinmeier said, adding that "this is exactly what we so urgently need at this time."

The day's celebratory events concluded with a show held next to a giant monument to Karl Marx, a German philosopher and a famous advocate of communism.

Since 1971, downtown Chemnitz has been home to one of the largest portrait busts of Karl Marx in the world.

"Karl Marx needs no legs, no hands, his head says it all," the statue's sculptor, Soviet artist Lev Kerbel, reportedly said.

The bust of the philosopher and social theorist has become an iconic symbol of Chemnitz. It has even given rise to the eastern German city's nickname: "Schädelstätte," roughly "cranium city."

So what does Karl Marx have to do with Chemnitz? On a personal level, not very much. Marx, who co-published "The Communist Manifesto" was born in Trier and died in London; he never even visited Chemnitz. Following World War II, the city became part of the German Democratic Republic, often known in English as Eastern Germany.

This year, for the first time, cities in two countries are being presented together as one capital of culture while also presenting themselves individually: Nova Gorica in Slovenia and Gorizia in Italy, which together once made up a single city.