Karl Marx, (Trier 5.5.1818, evgl. get. 26.8.1824 , - London 14.3.

1883), working in collaboration

with Friedrich Engels, was the famous founder of the revolutionary political philosophy of Marxist
Communism.
His parents were Heinrich "Herschel" Marx and Henrietta Pressburg (1788-1863). Marx was
ancestrally Jewish, his maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, and his paternal line had been rabbis in
Trier since 1723. They lived a wealthy and middle-class existence, with Herschel's family owning a
number of Moselle vineyards. Herschel had converted from Judaism to Prussia's predominant
Lutheranism, and so became called Heinrich. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney. [1]
Heinrich's wife Henrietta was a semi-literate Dutch Jewish woman, although from a prosperous
business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics: she was great-aunt to Anton and
Gerard Philips, and great-great-aunt to Frits Philips. Her nephew, and Karl's first cousin, Benjamin
Philips (1830–1900), was a wealthy banker and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would
later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. In contrast to her husband,
Henrietta retained her Jewish faith.[1]
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 at 664 Brückergasse in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of
Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine. [1] That town and region was folded into West Germany[2] after
World War II, and since the 1990s has been part of the consolidated Republic of Germany. Karl was
the third of nine children, and he became the oldest surviving son when his brother Moritz died in
1819.[1]
in 1819 Heinrich moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra. Young Karl was
baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824, but later in life he became a known atheist, a belief
which also figured prominently in his system of political philosophy. His surviving siblings, Sophie,
Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie and Karoline, were also baptised as Lutherans. Prior to high
school, young Karl was privately educated, by his father Heinrich Marx.[1]

1830 Gymnasiast in Trier,

From 1830-1835 Marx attended Trier high school. [2]

In 1835 Marx entered as a student at the University of Bonn, faculty of law (jur.), [2]
In 1836 he transferred to the University of Berlin, faculty of law. While there in Berlin through 1838
he studied law, philosphy, history, and English and Italian languages.[2]
As a teenager, Marx had fallen in love with Jenny von Westphalen, a young woman several years his
senior, from his home town of Trier. Soon after becoming a student in Berlin, Marx wrote a letter
home to his father, on November 10, 1837, in which he describes his feelings for Jenny, and the
beginnings of his turmoil over Hegelian phiosophy, which he was then studying:.[2]
"All the poems of the first three volumes I sent to Jenny are marked by attacks on our times, diffuse
and inchoate expressions of feeling, nothing natural, everything built of moonshine, complete
opposisition between what is and what ought to be, rhetorical reflections instead of poetic thoughts,
but perhaps also a certain warmth of feeling and striving for poetic fire."
...
"Owning to being upset over Jenny's illness and my vain, fruitless intellectual labours, and as the
result of nagging annoyance at having had to make an idol of a veiw that I hated, I became Ill, as I
have already written to you, dear Father. When I got better I burnt all the poems and outlines of
stories, etc., imagining that I could give them up completely, of which so far at any rate I have not
given any proofs to the contrary."
...
"Please give greetings from me to my sweet, wonderful Jenny. I have read her letter twelve times
already, and always discover new delights in it. It is in every respect, including that of style, the
most beautiful letter I can imagine being written by a woman."
Between 1839 and 1841 Marx studied Greek philosophy and wrote his doctoral dissertation, The
Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosphies of Nature.[2]
In April 1841 he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Univsity of Jena, and then moved to
Bonn, in search of a teaching position at the University of Bonn.[2]
His plan to become a teacher at Bonn failed, and so through 1942 Marx instead began to write
articles for the Young Hegelian radicals' paper, Deutsche Jahrbücher, and also for an opposition
newspaper in Cologne, theRheinische Zeitung.[2]
In October 1842 Marx became the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, and so he then moved to
Cologne.[2]

1842 Redakteur in Köln, deutscher Philosoph und Politiker,

In November 1842 at Cologne Marx first met his future collaborator Friedrich Engels, who had also
been writing articles for theRheinische Zeitung. In that meeting, Engels had stopped by the paper's
office there on his way to England, where he would remain for the next couple years.[2]
The Prussian government then imposed strict censorship on the Rheinische Zeitung, and so on
March 17, 1843 Marx resigned as editor.[2]
On June 19, 1843 Marx married his long-term love Jenny von Westphalen in a Protestant church in
Kreuznach.[1] In November he became an expatriate when he moved to Paris, France. He continued
to write and edit for Jahrbücher in Paris, and included articles that he received from Engels in
England.[2]
In April 1844 the Prussian government accused Marx of high treason, with an arrest order if he
crossed the border.[2]
In January 1845 the Prussian government pressured France to banish Marx from Paris, and so Marx
moved to Brussels, Belgium, where he was again joined by Engels in April. That summer, through
August, they both travelled to Manchester, England to study working and living conditions there.
That year the Prussian government forced Marx to renounces his Prussian citizenship.[2]

1845 in Brüssel,

In February 1848 Marx and Engels wrote their most famous work, the Communist Manifesto,
published in London, England.[2]

1848 in Köln,

In the fall of 1849 Marx and his family settled in London. The next year he resumed studies in the
British Museum. [2]

1849 in London, Schriftsteller.

In 1850 Engels settled in Manchester, where he began a twenty year career in the firm of Ermen and
Engels, through which he helped support Marx over the next period of his life.[2]
Karl's wife Jenny died in 1881, and Karl followed a couple yers later on March 14, 1883.[2] He is
buried in Highgate Cemetery, London.

Marriage Family

7 Kinder, drei überlebende Töchter, von denen die älteste Nachkommen hatte. oo Bad Kreuznach
(Pauluskirche) 19.6.1843

Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny v. Westphalen, * Salzwedel 12.2.1814, + London 2.12.1881

Sources
 Source: Lit. (Mitt. H. Elsner, Karl-Marx-Haus-Museum, Brückenstraße 10, Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung, Trier): Cites:
1. 1. Heinz Monz, Karl Marx, Grundlagen der Entwicklung zu Leben und Werk, Trier (NCO-
Verlag, Neu & Co) 1973.
2. 2. Zur Persönlichkeit von Marx' Schwiegervater Johann Ludwig von Westphalen
(Schriften aus dem Karl-Marx-Haus Trier, Nr. 9, Trier, 1973)
3. 3. Manfred Schönke, Vorfahren und Geschwister von Karl Marx, Marx-Engels-Stiftung,
Große Gathe 55, W5600 Wuppertal, 1991
4. 4. Helmut Elsner, Karl Marx in Kreuznach 1842/43; in: Schriften aus dem Karl-Marx-
Haus Trier, Nr. ..: Marion Barzen, Helmut Elsner, Jacques Grandjonc, Elke Röllig, Inge
Taubert sowie Bert Andréas (+), Jacques Grandjonc und Hans Pelger, Studien zu Marx'
erstem Paris-Aufenthalt und zur Entstehung der "Deutschen Ideologie".
5. 5. Genealogie Marx (Wandtafel im Museum Karl-Marx-Haus)
6. 6. Gero v. Wilcke, Karl Marx Trierer Verwandtschaftskreis in: Genealogie, Deutsche
Zeitschrift für Familienkunde, Band XVI, 32. Jgg., Heft 12, Dez. 1983, S. 761-782.
 Source: "Ancestors/Descendants of Royal Lines" (Contributors: Manuel Abranches de Soveral,
Reynaud de Paysac, F.L. Jacquier <Genealogy of Lewis Carroll, Justin Swanstrom, The Royal
Families of England Scotland & Wales by Burkes Peerage; Debrett's Peerage & Baronage;
Table of descendants French Canadian Genealogical Society>, H.R. Moser <Burke Peerage>,
L. Orlandini, O.Guionneau, L.B. de Rouge, E. Polti, A.Terlinden <Genealogy of the existing
British Peerage, 1842>, L. Gustavsson, C. Cheneaux, E. Lodge, S. Bontron <Brian Tompsett>,
R. Dewkinandan, C. Donadello)http://geneastar.org.
 Source S50: Wikipedia article: Karl Marx
 Source: Mehring, Franz. Karl Marx: The Story of His Life. New York, 1957 (this is the
standard biography of Marx, per anthologist Robert C. Tucker
 Source S60: Tucker, Robert C., Ed. "Chronology: The Lives of Marx and Engels" and
"Introduction" in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, W. W. Norton & Co., New York,
1972, 1978

Footnotes
1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Source: #S50Wikipedia
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.062.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.132.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 Source: #S60Tucker

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