Karl Marx

1818-1883. German philosopher, historian and revolutionary.

Youth:

Karl Marx was born on May 5 1818 as third of nine children in Trier, Germany. His parents were Heinrich Marx and Henrietta Marx, born Presborck. In 1830 Karl Marx attended the "Gymnasium zu Trier", which was later called Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium. The Gymnasium and especially the headmaster were known to be rather liberal and so the Latin teacher Dr. Vitus Loers was assigned by the state as co-headmaster. Three teachers were seen as "suspect" and so the police took them under surveillance. In 1835 Karl Marx started to attend the University of Bonn where he wanted to study philosophy and literature but his father insisted that he studied law. Because his grades where poor Karl Marx was later transferred to the University of Berlin.

Marriage and Family:

In 1836 he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, which was some sort of scandal because it broke several social taboos like the class difference between Karl (middle class) and Jenny (aristocracy). The other taboos were that Marx, although he had been baptised Protestant in early years, was still of Jewish origin. The last problem was that Jenny von Westphalen was four years older than Karl.The scandal was lessened by the fact that both families were on friendly terms and especially by the friednship between Karl and Jenny's father Baron Ludwig von Westphalen. They got married in 1843 in Bad Kreuznach. They had seven children but because of poor living conditions only three of them survived.

Cologne:

In 1842 he moved to Cologne where he began write for the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung in which he expressed his view on politics. Because the views expressed in the newspaper got more and more radical it attracted the attention of government censors. After an article caused a scandal because it criticised the monarchy of Russia, the Russian Tsar Nicholas I requested that the newspaper was to be banned. In the same year he published his work Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, from which his famous quote about religion being "the opium of the people" comes from.

Paris:

He left Cologne for Paris to work for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. It was here that he met Friedrich Engels with whom he started to collaborate. Karl Marx published his books The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and Theses on Feuerbach. In Paris Karl Marx worked on a political newspaper called "Vorwärts". The topics that were talked about made the Prussian authorities uneasy so they asked the Frensch authorities to something against it. The French authorities used a trick and claimed that since the authors of the magazine talked about politics it was an illegal publication because the publisher had not paid a special fee and so the editor C. L. Bernays was sent to jail. The next attempt to publish the magazine in 1845 was answered by the authorities with an order to expel many writers (for example Marx, Heine and Bakunin). Although the order was later revoked, that is to say they could stay in France but had to stop the magazine and all attempts of publishing any similar magazines, but Marx still chose to look for a new exile and so he moved to Brussels.

Brussels:

In Brussels Marx was joined by Engels and they both met with several other socialists from Europe. Both Marx and Engels visited members of the Chartist movement. Marx published The German Ideology and The Poverty of Philosophy which built the foundation of his most famous work The Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848. In 1848 several revolutions and protests arose, which Marx supported with his inheritance but was forced to flee first to France and then to Cologne and then to London in 1849.

London:

In London Marx spent the rest of his life. His two main interests were understanding economics and capitalism and organising revolutionary thoughts. For example in 1864 he was involved in the "International Workingmen's Association", better known as the "First International", which was an international association of left-wing-organizations, trade unions and members of the working class. He published several books, including his famous work the Capital. Marx worked without a pause so that even his doctors gave him the advise to slow down.Marx did not listen to them so that in his last years his health declined rapidly and in 1883 Karl Marx died of bronchitis and pleurisy.

Sources:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/

http://agso.uni-graz.at/lexikon/klassiker/marx/30bio.htm

Friedenthal, Richard. Karl Marx -Sein Leben und seine Zeit-. München, R.Piper & Co, 1981

Wheen, Francis. Karl Marx. München, Bertelsmann, 1999