983It is hard to think of a more influential—or more controversial—nineteenth-
century thinker than Karl Marx. Not content simply to develop a theory, Marx
sought fundamental change in social, economic, and political structures. As he
put it, “The philosophers have only interpretedthe world in various ways; the
point is, to change it.”
Marx was the third of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx in the
Rhineland town of Trier. His parents were of Jewish ancestry but had converted to
Protestant Christianity to protect Heinrich’s job as a government lawyer. In 1835,
Karl went to the University of Bonn to study law. Hardly the model student, he
spent much of his time drinking or writing love letters to his childhood sweetheart
and then fiancée, Jenny von Westphalen. At his father’s insistence, Marx trans-
ferred to the University of Berlin and began to focus on his studies. While there,
he abandoned his legal training and began preparing for an academic career as a
philosophy professor. He wrote a dissertation contrasting Democritus and
Epicurus that was accepted by the University of Jena, and in 1841 Marx received
his doctorate in philosophy.
But the leftist politics Marx had adopted while in Berlin made it impossible for
him to obtain a university post, so in 1842 he took a position as editor of the
Rheinische Zeitung (Rhenish Gazette),a liberal middle-class newspaper in Cologne.
Marx was a successful editor—too successful for the government censors who sup-
pressed the paper after an article by Marx on the poverty of the Mosel winemakers.
Marx moved to Paris where he became co-editor of the new journal, the Deutsch-
Französische Jahrbücher (German-French Annals). With his future seeming secure,
Marx finally felt free to marry Jenny in 1843. But the Jahrbücherclosed almost
immediately and once again he was unemployed. Fortunately, at about the sameKARL MARX
1818–1883