Karl Marx: A Biography

JO 38 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

interests and he will be all the more enthusiastic and delighted with the
examination when he learns that another Hegelian is now getting a
chair.'^128 And a year later he was writing: 'In any event see that Ladenberg
[Rector of the University of Berlin] smoothes the way for you. Get him
to write here on your behalf and anticipate all the sorts of intrigues that
there could be. See, too, if you cannot win over Eichhorn [Minister of
Culture].'^129
Thus encouraged, Marx duly submitted his thesis in April 1841 , but
not to the University of Berlin: instead, he sent it to Jena, one of the
small universities which 'gready facilitated the gaining of the title of
Doctor'.^130 In fact, Jena held the record in the production of Doctors
of Philosophy. The whole affair was managed by Wolff, Professor of
Literature there, a friend of Heinrich Heine and an acquaintance of Marx,
who had probably informed him of the situation inside the Faculty at
Jena. Marx was immediately granted his degree in absentia on 15 April
1841.

III. JOURNALISM

As soon as his thesis was accepted, Marx began a very restless year which
was finally to culminate in his adopting journalism as a career in mid-
1842. His search for a secure means of earning his livelihood led him to
commute between Trier, Bonn and Cologne, never remaining for very
long in any one place. He began many projects but - true to his previous
life-style - finished none of them.
After six weeks at his parents' home in Trier, Marx moved to Bonn to
pursue his academic career in the company of Bruno Bauer. To obtain a
lectureship, the university statutes required a dissertation in addition to
a doctoral thesis, so Marx began to revise his thesis for publication and
also extend it in 'a longer dissertation, in which I will present in detail
the cycle of Epicurean, Stoic and Sceptical philosophy in relation to all
Greek Speculation'.^131 He also appended two extended notes to his thesis.
The first of the substantial notes that Marx added to his thesis at the
end of 1841 was directed primarily against Schelling, who had just been
summoned to Berlin by Frederick William IV in order to 'root out the
dragon-seed of Hegelianism'.^132 In his lectures entitled 'The Philosophy
of Revelation', Schelling drew a distinction between a negative and purely
rational philosophy, and a positive one whose real content was the evolu-
tion of the divine in history and as it was recorded in the various myth-
ologies and religions of mankind. Schelling's lectures were accompanied
by much publicity and at first attracted wide attention: Engels, Kierke-