21 Karl Marx Thinker Interesting Fun Important Facts

(Last Updated On: April 16, 2021)

Karl Marx was a German journalist, economist, and thinker who is among the most influential facts and figures in history and whose beliefs have served as guiding ideas of many countries.

Karl Marx facts

As a younger school scholar, Marx was imprisoned for drunkenness and fought a duel. Throughout his life, he labored as a journalist for plenty of newspapers together with the New York Daily Tribune.

Marx spends most of his grownup life in poverty and it was the financial help of his buddy Friedrich Engels that enabled him to focus on his revolutionary work.

His most well-known works embrace the Communist Manifesto, one of the influential political manuscripts of all time; and Das Kapital thought of his magnum opus in the economy.

Marx was comparatively unknown in his lifetime and it was solely after his death that he turned a world icon. Know in regards to the family, life, profession, training, marriage, influential works, through these Karl Marx facts.

1. He might need to have an illegitimate son along with his housekeeper

In 1836, Karl Marx turned engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, who was 4 years elder to him and belonged to an outstanding family of the Prussian aristocracy. Karl and Jenny often met as kids and have become shut mates as youngsters.

Their match was controversial because of the distinction of their religious and sophistication origins however Karl was mates with Jenny’s father Ludwig von Westphalen.

Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen on 19th June 1843 in a Protestant church in Kreuznach in present-day Germany, Karl Marx facts.

The couple had seven kids however solely three survived to maturity: Jenny Caroline (1844 – 1883); Jenny Laura (1845 – 1911); and Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–1898).

Marx named all his daughters after his spouse and beloved to provide humorous nicknames to his kids, like ‘Qui Qui’ and ‘Tussy’.

Marx can also be mentioned to have had an illegitimate son named Freddy along with his lifelong housekeeper and buddy, Helene Demuth. However, this declares can’t be established with certainty.

2. His high school was raided by authorities

Heinrich, who was deeply influenced by Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire, taught Marx at dwelling till 1830. Marx then attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium.

The headmaster, Johann Hugo Wyttenbach, often employed liberal lecturers who advocated cause and the liberty of speech. The police suspected the varsity of defending revolutionaries and even went as far as to raid the varsity in 1832 throughout Marx’s matriculation.

3. Marx fought a duel throughout his time at the University of Bonn

Initially, Karl was privately educated by his father Heinrich Marx. From 1830 to 1835, he attended the Trier High School. In October 1835, at the age of 17, he entered the University of Bonn, Karl Marx important facts.

While at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets’ Club, a bunch containing political radicals; and was co-president of Trier Tavern Club consuming society. At one level, he was imprisoned for drunkenness.

Marx was additionally challenged to a duel by a member of the college’s Borussian Korps; a problem he accepted. Marx was shot at and was fortunate to get away with nothing worse than a small wound in his left eye.

Not too happy along with his actions, Heinrich Marx enrolled Karl at the University of Berlin in October 1836. Although he studied legislation at the University of Berlin, Marx turned fascinated by philosophy and was notably within the concepts of German thinker G. W. F. Hegel.

4. Marx suffered from ailing health for most of his life

In 1849, Karl Marx began experiencing health issues that usually continued to plague him for the remainder of his life. The assaults typically got here with complications, eye irritation, neuralgia within the head, and rheumatic pains.

He was affected by a critical nervous dysfunction in 1877 because of which he suffered insomnia, which he suppressed with narcotics, Karl Marx important facts.

There are a number of speculations relating to the character of his illness together with liver and gall issues, and continual pores and skin illness referred to as hidradenitis suppurativa.

Marx’s sickness was aggravated by extreme nocturnal work and dangerous consuming habits coupled along with his fondness for liquors and extreme smoking.

Following the death of his spouse in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that saved him in ailing health and finally introduced on bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him. Karl Marx died on 14th March 1883 in London.

He was 64 years old. He was survived by his daughters Eleanor and Laura. After Engels died in 1895, he left Marx’s daughters a good portion of his $4.8 million property.

5. He had a controversial marriage to a childhood friend

A few years before Marx was born, his father had befriended Ludwig von Westphalen, a Prussian aristocrat with some liberal leanings. His daughter Jenny von Westphalen met Marx when she was 5 years old and he was 1, Karl Marx interesting facts.

When she was 22, Jenny and Marx turned engaged—she canceled an earlier engagement to a younger member of the aristocracy—regardless that they weren’t from the identical social class, and males marrying older girls was frowned upon at the time in Prussia.

6. Marx didn’t attend his father’s funeral

Marx’s wild school years drove a wedge between him and his family—a sign of his mental rise up from their bourgeois complacency. Marx refused to go to them as soon as he started attending the University of Berlin.

His father was dismayed at his son’s recklessness and wrote, a year before he died, that Marx ought to attempt to set up his social respectability by writing an ode heaping reward upon Prussia and its rulers.

It ought to “afford the opportunity of allotting a role to the genius of the monarchy … If executed in a patriotic and German spirit with a depth of feeling, such an ode would itself be sufficient to lay the foundation for a reputation.” But Marx had no want to capitulate. When Heinrich Marx died of tuberculosis in May 1838, Karl didn’t make the journey dwelling from Berlin.

7. His mom’s family later based the corporate Philips Electronics

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, at Bruckengasse 664 in Trier, then a city within the Kingdom of Prussia and now a city in Germany. He was the third of 9 kids of Heinrich Marx and his spouse Henrietta Pressburg. He turned the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819.

Heinrich Marx was a profitable lawyer and a person of the Enlightenment, within the concepts of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. He took half in agitation for a structure and reforms in Prussia, Karl Marx fun facts.

Henrietta Pressburg belonged to an affluent business family that later based the corporate Philips Electronics, presently one of many largest electronics corporations on the earth.

Both parents of Marx have been Jewish and have been descended from a long line of rabbis. However, previous to the beginning of Karl, Heinrich transformed from Judaism to Lutheranism, most likely to flee the constraints of anti-Semitic laws. Karl was baptized when he was six years old.

8. His baptism at age 6 was most likely for political reasons

Marx’s paternal ancestors had served as rabbis in Trier, Prussia (now in eastern Germany) since 1723, and his mom’s father was a rabbi, Karl Marx interesting facts.

After the top of the Napoleonic Wars, the French administration left Prussia and the brand new authorities started implementing legislation barring Jews from serving in professions or public workplaces.

Marx’s father Heinrich, a profitable lawyer, transformed to Lutheranism in 1816, probably in response to the legislation. Marx and his siblings have been all baptized in 1824.

9. Karl Marx co-authored the extremely influential Communist Manifesto

In 1846, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels established a small political circle in Brussels referred to as the Communist Corresponding Committee. The League of the Just was a socialist group that had been based by German émigrés in Paris in 1836, Karl Marx facts.

In June 1847, the League of the Just merged with the Communist Corresponding Committee to determine a world political occasion referred to as the Communist League. Marx and Engels collectively wrote the Manifesto of the Communist League, which was first revealed on 21 February 1848.

The Communist Manifesto had an effect, restricted to Germany, through the Europe-wide Revolution of 1848. It would later achieve in stature with the rise of communism in the late nineteenth century and is now thought of as one of the influential political manuscripts.

It remains to extensively learn and lots of taking into account it as a precious perception into present-day society in addition to evidence for in the present day’s world of recurrent wars and repeated economic disaster.

10. He was plagued by poor health.

He referred to his health issues as “the wretchedness of existence.” According to biographer Werner Blumenberg, Marx suffered from complications, eye irritation, joint ache, insomnia, liver and gallbladder issues, and depressive signs.

The ache was probably exacerbated by Marx’s dangerous habits: working late nights, consuming liver-taxing meals, and smoking and consuming excessively. Yet Marx saved up the tempo of his work even after creating boils in 1863 that have been so painful he couldn’t sit down.

New analysis suggests a few of Marx’s issues might have stemmed from continual, painful pores and skin illness referred to as hidradenitis suppurativa that may additionally trigger depressed self-image and foul moods.

And let’s not neglect the “weak chest” that saved him from serving within the navy at 18, which can have been brought on by pleurisy, an inflammatory situation of the lungs and thorax. It was that illness that finally killed him at age 64, Karl Marx important facts.

11. His love poems and novels were unpublished during his lifetime

Beyond his political philosophy and economic initiatives, Marx additionally penned a number of love poems to Jenny, a play set in a mountain city in Italy, and a satirical novel referred to as Scorpion and Felix.

None of his fiction noticed the light of day throughout his lifetime, and Scorpion and Felix have solely survived in fragments, however, all of his work was revealed posthumously within the 50-volume set of Marx and Engels’s Collected Works.

12. He wrote for plenty of newspapers that have been banned for being too radical

Due to the Prussian government’s rising opposition to the Young Hegelians, it turned troublesome for Karl Marx to additional his tutorial profession. In 1842, Marx moved to Cologne in Germany.

Here he started writing for the liberal democratic newspaper Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News) and shortly turned the paper’s editor. The following year, the Prussian authorities banned the paper for being too radical; and for publishing an article that strongly criticized the Russian monarchy.

In 1843, Marx moved to Paris the place he turned co-editor of a brand new, radical leftist newspaper, the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals).

However, the paper proved to be short-lived and after its collapse, Marx started writing for Vorwärts! (Forward!), the one uncensored German-language radical newspaper left.

In 1845, because of stress from the Prussian authorities, the French authorities shut down Vorwärts! Also, together with the principal collaborators of the paper, Marx was expelled from France and he emigrated to Brussels in Belgium in February 1845.

13. His “Weak chest” helped him avoid military service

Marx evaded navy conscription because of his “weak chest,” an imprecise analysis that was definitely exacerbated by his late-night partying, dangerous diet, consumption, and chain-smoking, Karl Marx interesting facts.

His father even informed him how finest to keep away from the draft, writing to Marx, “If you can, arrange to be given good certificates by competent and well-known physicians there, and you can do it with good conscience … but to be consistent with your conscience, do not smoke too much.”

14. His buddy Friedrich Engels supplied him financial help for many of his grownup life

In 1842, Friedrich Engels, on his solution to Manchester, visited the workplace of the Rheinische Zeitung and met Karl Marx for the first time.

They met once more at Café de la Régence in Paris on 28th August 1844, rapidly turned shut mates and remained so their complete lives. Engels was the son of a rich German cotton textile producer.

He lived a double life as a cotton lord by day and a communist by night. Engels supplied cash to Marx to publish their revolutionary concepts.

In truth, Marx lived in poverty for many of his grownup life and Engels supplied him financial help for practically 40 years. He often despatched Marx as a lot as £50 a year, equal to around $7,500 now.

This was a third of the annual allowance he acquired from his parents. Engels supplied Marx with help for his well-known work Das Kapital and co-authored the influential Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx facts.

15. A duel and jail time characterized his college experience

Marx attended the University of Bonn starting in 1835, however, most of his time appears to have been spent being drunk and disorderly. He joined a radical political group referred to as the Poets’ Club and was co-president of the Trier Tavern Club, a consumer society that antagonized the more aristocratic organizations on campus.

His involvement within the latter bought him tossed in jail for 24 hours. He additionally ran afoul of the Borussia Korps, a militant group that compelled school college students to swear fealty to Prussian leadership.

Marx carried a gun to defend himself (which bought him into more hassle with the police) and as soon as accepted a duel with a Borussia Korps member which resulted in Marx being lower over his left eye. After a year in Bonn, he transferred to the more rigorous environment of the University of Berlin.

16. He labored as a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune

During the Europe-wide Revolution of 1848, Marx was accused by the Belgian Ministry of Justice of aiding Belgian staff who have been planning revolutionary motion.

Hence he was compelled to flee from Belgium. He quickly settled in Paris before shifting to Cologne. Here he began a day by day newspaper named Neue Rheinische Zeitung (New Rhenish Newspaper).

While he was editor of this paper, Marx was commonly harassed by the police and dropped at trial on a number of events, however was acquitted every time. Marx’s paper was suppressed after the democratic parliament in Prussia collapsed and Marx was ordered to depart the nation in May 1849.

He quickly resided in Paris before shifting to London, the place he would stay for the remainder of his life. While in London, Marx and Engels each started writing for six completely different newspapers around the globe. Most of Marx’s writing was as a European correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune for around 10 years.

17. He relied on Engels for money

Marx lived in Paris—a hotbed of political thought within the mid-19th century—for under two years, however, it was throughout that point that he met Friedrich Engels on the Café de la Régence and launched one of the essential philosophical friendships in modern occasions. Engels formed Marx’s view on the proletariat along with his real-world experience as an owner of his family’s textile mill.

They additionally collaborated on a number of essays (together with The Communist Manifesto) and Engels fronted the cash to publish Das Kapital. What’s more, Engels commonly gave the struggling Marx cash for his family to reside on (capitalism was not typed to the thinker).

The well-off industrialist reaped the rewards of his workers’ manufacturing whereas aiding Marx in championing a system that may overthrow his personal energy, Karl Marx interesting facts.

18. He kept getting banned from countries

Orders that Marx ought to depart a rustic inside 24 hours crop up commonly in his biography. He began the pattern in Prussia in 1843 when Tsar Nicholas I requested the federal government to ban Marx’s newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, which brought on Marx to grow to be co-editor of a radical left newspaper in Paris and head to France.

In 1845, the French authorities shut down his new periodical, Vorwarts!, and expelled Marx. He then went to Belgium, however authorities arrested him in 1848 on allegations that he’d spent a 3rd of his inheritance on arming staff, and he fled back to France (then beneath a new government) before going back to Prussia to launch the doomed Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

The authorities suppressed the paper and ordered Marx to depart Prussia in May 1849, however when he fled for France, the Parisian authorities additionally despatched him packing, so he sought refuge in London along with his spouse, who was anticipating their fourth baby. He constructed life in England, however died a stateless particular person.

19. His early writings included fictional works

In Berlin, Marx joined the Doctor Club, a scholar group which mentioned Hegelian concepts; after which he turned related to a bunch of radical thinkers referred to as the Young Hegelians, who have been crucial of Hegel’s metaphysical assumptions however adopted his methodology of reasoning with the intention to criticize established society, politics, and faith.

During his years as a scholar, Marx wrote a brief novel, Scorpion and Felix (1837); a drama, Oulanem (1839); and plenty of love poems. However, he quickly deserted fiction for different pursuits.

None of this early work was revealed throughout his lifetime. In 1841, Marx accomplished his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.

As the essay was controversial among the many conservative professors at the University of Berlin, he submitted his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose college awarded him his Ph.D. in April 1841.

20. Marx highlighted the shortcomings of capitalism in his groundbreaking work Das Kapital

Karl Marx wrote quite a few works throughout his profession, a lot of which remained unpublished or largely unread throughout his lifetime however later influenced subsequent mental, economic, and political history, Karl Marx facts.

Marx is most famed for offering a revolutionary critique of nineteenth-century capitalism and lots of imagining that his theories on the exploitative relationship between capitalist employers and their employees stay legitimate until the present day.

In 1867, Marx revealed the first quantity of his magnum opus Das Kapital (Capital: Critique of Political Economy). The second (1885) and third (1895) volumes have been revealed after his dying by Friedrich Engels.

Das Kapital predicts the downfall of capitalism because of its shortcomings and its alternative by a system the place the working class inherits economic and political energy. It is the foundational theoretical textual content of communist philosophy, economics, and politics; and one of the influential works in history.

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21. Famous Quotes by Karl Marx

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.“ – The Communist Manifesto (1848)

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” – The Communist Manifesto (1848)

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” – Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” – Theses on Feuerbach (1845)

“From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.“ – Critique of the Gotha Program (1875)