Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

PARIS 59

simply continuing the Deutsche Jahrbiicher. 'Even if the Jahrbiicher were
once again permitted, all we could achieve would be a pale imitation of
the extinct review and that is no longer sufficient.'^5 Ruge had at first
thought in terms of a series of pamphlets but Marx was strongly in favour
of a monthly as a more effective means of propaganda. So he and Ruge
decided to give practical expression to the idea of Franco-German co-
operation that had been suggested by most of the Young Hegelians at
some time or other during the previous two years. The influence of
French thought had made the radicals very internationally-minded - in
contrast to the liberals whom the crises of the 1840 s forced into a narrow
nationalism. Hess and Weitling had both learned their socialism in France
and Feuerbach had forcefully expressed the idea that the 'new' philosophy,
if it wished to be at all effective, would have to combine a German head
with a French heart. Marx was extremely enthusiastic at the prospect:
'Franco-German annals - that would be a principle, an event of import-
ance, an undertaking that fills one with enthusiasm.'^6 Froebel agreed to
publish a review of this character and preparations began. In May, Marx
and Froebel went to visit Ruge in Dresden; Ruge agreed to put up 6000
thalers, Froebel 3000 , and the three of them decided on Strasbourg as
the place of publication. Marx's immediate future was now guaranteed:
as co-editor of the review he had a salary of 550 thalers, and earned a
further 250 or so from royalties.
The way was now at last open for marriage. He had written to Ruge
in March:

As soon as we have signed the contract I will go to Kreuznach and get

married.... Without romanticising, I can tell you that I am head-over-

heels in love and it is as serious as can be. I have been engaged for

more than seven years and my fiancee has been involved on my behalf

in the toughest of struggles that have ruined her health. These have

been in part against her pietist and aristocratic relations, for whom the

Lord in Heaven and the Lord in Berlin are the objects of an equal

veneration, and in part against my own family where certain radicals

and other sworn enemies have insinuated themselves. For years, my

fiancee and I have been fighting more useless and exhausting battles

than many other persons three times our age - who are for ever talking

of their 'experience', a word particularly dear to our partisans of the

juste-milieuJ

The difficulties with Jenny's family had been increased by the arrival of
her step-brother Ferdinand, a career civil servant and later Prussian Minis-
ter of the Interior, who in 1838 had been appointed to an important post
in Trier. It was possibly to avoid his influence that Jenny moved with her
mother, probably as early as July 1842 , to the spa of Kreuznach about