Karl Marx University

Under cover of darkness in the early hours of 18 February 1969, at about four a.m., a group of twelve students sneaked up to the entrance gate of the Catholic College of Tilburg carrying ladders, brushes and red lead. Many nights before, which had been cold and snowy, they had taken turns to lie in a ditch in front of the building to observe at what times the surveillance people were doing their rounds. After a few weeks, they had worked out what their schedule was. And at five a.m., displayed in huge letters on the wall above the entrance gate to the main building, were the words “Karl Marx Universiteit.”

Karl Marx

And so it came to pass that the University bore the name of the 19th century founder of the working-class movement, author of key works such as Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto. The students’ venture was meant to raise awareness for their demands: student participation rights and democratization of the University. And awareness it did raise, making national headlines in a matter of hours. The pictures that were then taken, would prove to be legendary as they cropped up in all historical and nostalgic coverage of the College occupation. They also appeared on the cover of a novel entitled Karl Marx Universiteit by Tymen Trolsky, also known as alumnus Jasper Mikkers.

Perpetrators never found

It took the College many days and gallons of chemicals to have those words removed. The perpetrators were sought but never found. Their names were finally exposed in 2013, when the book 1969: Opstand in het Zuiden (1969: Revolt in the South) came out, in which former student Frans van Beek revealed who, besides himself, had been on the painters’ brigade. He also revealed that the whole thing had been a copycat, as, one year before, German students had rebaptized the Wolfgang Goethe Universität in Frankfurt into Karl Marx Universität. The occupation of the Catholic College took place two months later, when the words had long since been removed from the College gateway. Rien Siers, photographer with the Tilburgs Hogeschoolblad (Tilburg College Journal, now known as Univers), was one of the few who had taken pictures of them, which sold like hotcakes to domestic and foreign press when the College was occupied. All this caused a lot of confusion, which fed the myth that Tilburg academia was having itself a left-wing and legendary springtime heyday.