After the Second World War, the city and the district of Chemnitz were renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt on May 10, 1953. This also marked the beginning of the reconstruction of the city, which had been badly damaged after the air raids on Chemnitz, according to socialist urban planning plans. A monument in honor of the namesake was intended to embody this transformation into a socialist-type city.
The Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel proposed 17 basic designs for the creation of such a sculpture, only one of which corresponded to the actual monument of a head on a pedestal. All other designs were conceived as holistic representations of Karl Marx's body. The decision was made to depict the head alone, as the viewer would have seen the philosopher's shoes at head height in a full-body representation.
The monument was cast in bronze months before it was erected in Karl-Marx-Stadt at the Monument Skulptura art foundry in Leningrad and then dismantled into 95 individual parts. In Karl-Marx-Stadt, these were to be welded back together, but Soviet technology was not suitable, so the decision was made to give the job to VEB Germania, as otherwise the welded parts would tear apart. The monument stands on two bases, which are covered in plates made of Korninskij granite, named after the mining region in southern Ukraine.
The inscription behind the Karl Marx monument was designed and manufactured by Volker Beier in collaboration with Heinz Schumann.[5][6] It consists of a total of 174 plates of a hydronalium alloy.
On October 9, 1971, the monument was inaugurated in front of around 250,000 people who were on Karl-Marx-Allee (popularly known as "Nischelgasse" or "Schädelgasse"), which runs along the monument and is now Brückenstraße again. Among those present at the unveiling of the new landmark were Erich Honecker and Robert-Jean Longuet, great-grandson of Karl Marx[7]. The symbol of Karl-Marx-Stadt was also the motif of the frequently used 35 Pfennig postage stamp from the Aufbau series in the GDR. It corresponded to the postage at the time for letters to the Federal Republic of Germany.