Last year, the Annual Conference of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) was held in Trier on the Mosel River in Germany. Trier is a wonderful town of 100,000 and is famous for its wine and its Roman heritage. Trier (latin Augusta Trevorum) was the capital of the Roman province Gallia Belgica, the Roman prefecture of Gaul and served as the residence of the Roman Emperor Constantin for six years. Clear-cut, the AAWE dinners were held in the ruins of an ancient Roman bath and in Germany’s oldest wine cellar at the Vereinigte Hospitien (who, in addition to their hospices and hospitals, also make outstanding wine).

But Trier is also the birth town of Karl Marx and in 2007 his birth house, the Karl Marx Haus, was visited by 42,000 people. About 12,000 came from China and 100 were wine economists and AAWE members. After the tour and having listened to elaborate stories about his live we all descended to the gift shop. There we found all kinds of gimmicks, Karl Marx busts, t-shirts, books and --- astoundingly --- some bottles of Karl Marx Wine (red wine, of course -- pinot noir). Our wine friend Victor Ginsburgh bought two bottles of the Karl Marx wine and carried them back to Brussels. So far, he has not opened them yet ......Thus, no word on their quality.

What is the link between Karl Marx and wine?

The parents of Karl Marx owned a few vineyards in Mertesdorf in the nearby Ruwer valley. Karl Marx’ father was a lawyer and it was quite common for bourgeois families at the time to acquire vineyards either for their own wine consumption or as an investment for their old age security. The Marx family vineyards were located in the “Viertelsberg”, a medium quality vineyard near the renowned ‘Grünhaus’ (now known as Carl von Schubert’s Maximin Grünhäuser). The Marx family sold their vineyards in 1857. Today, the ‘Weingut Erben von Beulwitz’ produces a Spätburgunder wine (pinot noir) with the Karl Marx label. The grapes do not come from the exact Marxian vineyards but from the Eitelsbacher Marienholz, a parcel nearby.

However, this is not the only link between Karl Marx and wine. Marx had been fond of good wine from early an age on. In 1835, at age 17, Marx enrolled in the law program at the University of Bonn where he joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society; he later served as the president of that society. However, law was not his passion and he went to Berlin to study philosophy and earned his doctorate in 1841.

In the following years, wine spurred a dramatic change in his interests and subsequently in his life as well. It was the extreme poverty of the Mosel vintners that initiated his interest in economics and later in communism. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Mosel region became a Prussian province and as the only notable wine region within the empire it provided all of Prussia with wine. Since wines from non-Prussian Germany were heavily taxed Mosel wineries enjoyed a quasi monopoly. Wine prices were high and the Mosel wine business was booming. The area under vines was sustantially expanded and most Mosel wine makers were well off.. However, in 1834, Prussia established the German Tariff Union (Zollunion) with the southern German states -- all of which have a substantial wine production. All of a sudden southern German wine was exempt from any duties and non-Mosel wine flooded the Prussian market. As a result, wine prices fell dramatically and the wine producers at the northernmost frontier of professional viticulture -- that is, the Mosel – were in deep trouble. A rigid Prussian tax policy that referred to past profits instead of present losses and a series of bad (= cooler and wet) vintages added to the misery. Mosel wine makers fell into deep poverty.

In 1842, Marx began to write for the Cologne based Rheinische Zeitung (in the same year he also became the editor-in-chief of the Rheinische Zeitung). His articles were anonymous using the pseudonym the “++-Korrespondent von der Mosel.” Marx was appalled by the Prussian tax policy that imposed harsh and unjust hardship on the Mosel vintners. In January of 1843 he wrote a series of articles known as the “Justification of the ++-Correspondent from the Mosel” in which he vehemently criticized the Prussian government. This was the beginning of his new life. A few months later Marx had to leave Prussia and emigrated to Paris where he met another German fugitive, Friedrich Engels. Together they changed the world.