Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A LIFE WITH
KARL MARX
H. F. PETERS
RED JENNY
A Life with Karl Marx
By the same author:
My Sister, My Spouse:
A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome
Zarathustra's Sister:
The Case of Elisabeth and
Friedrich Nietzsche
,
�ED
JENNY
A LIFE WITH KARL MARX
H.E PETERS
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
To
John and Jessie Keyser,
friends in a world of acquaintances
'magna est veritas et praevalebit'
Contents
1 Rebellious Blood 1
2 A Childhood in Trier 10
3 Loving a Wild Boar 20
4 A Bookworm 's Honey moon 33
5 The Clarion Call of the Gallic Cock 43
6 Exile in Brussels 59
7 The Year of Decision 1848-1849 77
8 The Hells of London 95
9 Death Street 102
10 At the Edge of the Abyss 117
11 Politics as Fate 137
12 Retired Revolutionaries 159
Postscript 165
Acknowledgements 167
Bibliograph y 168
Notes 169
Index 179
List of Plates
Rebellious Blood
i,
it was a claim cherished by all the Westphalens, even by Karl
,
Marx, who often referred to it proudly : 'one of my wife's
Scottish ancestors was a rebel in the war of liberation against
James II and was beheaded in the market-place of Edinburgh. 'I
It is a moot point whether Philipp was much impressed with
his future wife's noble ancestry. He was a proud man. That his
father had merely been a postmaster, and that, as far as he
knew, none of his ancestors had any connection with the
nobility, was a matter of indifference to him. What mattered
was that his wife should feel at home in Germany and that he
should be in a position to provide a gracious home for her. By
frugal living he hoped to save enough to purchase a small
estate at the end of the war, marry Jeanie and settle down as a
country squire. This is precisely what he did.
The Seven Years ' War ended in 1763. A year later Philipp
bought an estate in Bornum in the Duchy of Brunswick . He
was ennobled the same year in recognition of his war services .
Thus when he married Jeanie Wishart of Pittarow in 1765 he
was no longer the commoner Philipp Westphal but Baron von
Westphalen . His friend and patron, Duke Ferdinand, wished
him to remain in his service, but Philipp declined all positions
6 RedJenny
A Childhood in
Trier
five, it was Edgar with whom Jenny shared the joys of her
childhood. Of sorrows there were not many.
She knew nothing of the problems her parents faced when
they had to decide where to send Jenny to school. Should
a non-Catholic girl go to a Catholic school? Or should a
Protestant teacher be hired to give her private lessons? The
small Protestant congregation of Trier employed one teacher
for more than a hundred boys and girls . It is unlikely that
Westphalen would have sent Jenny there, since he would not
have been very interested in having her taught Protestant
doctrine. As a non-dogmatic Christian he would probably
have reasoned that it would benefit Jenny most ifhe sent her to
one of the two excellent private Catholic schools where, in
addition to the basics, she would learn history, geography and
French, as well as home economics and needlework: he
himself would teach her about Luther and the Reformation .
What was finally decided and where Jenny went to school, we
do not know. We do know that she was confirmed in the
Protestant faith in 1828 and that her confirmation motto was:
' Still I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. '3 She said later
that neither Christianity nor any religion meant anything to
her, but she kept her confirmation motto written on a small
slip of paper to the end of her life.
Soon after his arrival in Trier, Westphalen made the
acquaintance of Heinrich Marx, one of the town's most
prominent lawyers . He was born Hirschel ha-Levi Marx and
he was the scion of a long line of rabbis. Early in his life he had
decided not to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, but to
study law instead . Jews could only practise law in Prussia since
an edict of 1812, and even then, they had to obtain official
permission, which might be refused . During the reactionary
period following the Napoleonic wars it was rare for a man of
the Jewish faith to be allowed to practise law in Prussia or the
territories under Prussian jurisdiction. Heinrich Marx tried to
obtain permission to continue in his profession by addressing
an appeal to the Prussian Governor-General of the Rhineland.
He said it was an honour to serve the 'noblest of kings', in
A Childhood in Trier 13
whose fatherly heart he put all his trust. But to no avail . The
President of the Supreme Court of the Rhineland declared in
1816 that Jews were not permitted to practise law, no matter
how highly respected they were by their fellow-citizens. Marx
had the choice of giving up either his profession or his faith.
Reluctantly , he chose the latter, for although he personally
was a man of the Enlightenment and had no strong attachment
to Judaism, he knew that his baptism would deeply offend his
family, in particular his oldest brother Samuel, the chief rabbi
of Trier. Sometime between April 1816 and August 1817,
Hirschel ha-Levi Marx became a Protestant and continued to
practise law as Heinrich Marx. It was at that time that he met
the First Councillor of Trier, Ludwig von Westphalen.
The two men, both in their forties and both opposed to the
illiberal policies of their superiors, came to know and respect
each other. They were both members of the Casino society
and participated in social events that were looked upon with
suspicion by the Prussian authorities. It was said that at
banquets, toasts were often drunk to individual members of
the parliamentary assembly known as the Rhenish Diet, but
none to the King and that on occasions even the Marseillaise
was sung. In Berlin this would have been considered treason,
but in the Rhineland people in general found it amusing.
The friendship between Westphalen and Justizrat Marx,
who had been given the honourable title of 'Royal Prussian
Legal Councillor' after his baptism or, as Heinrich Heine put
it, after he had bought his 'en trance ticket to European cul
ture', extended to their children but not to their wives . Marx's
wife Henrietta, the daughter of a rabbi from Nimwegen in
Holland, never felt at home in Germany and was ill at ease in
social gatherings where the conversations touched on subj ects
that did not interest her or which she did not understand; she
preferred to remain what God had made her: a Jewish mother
devoted to her family . On the other hand, Caroline von
Westphalen performed with ease and considerable tact the
social duties which her newly acquired station in life de
manded. Respected by her servants and supported by her
14 RedJenny
he was forty, a rank which his father never attained. Since they
were both working for the same administration, Ferdinand's
rapid advancement must have hurt Westphalen's pride, even
though he was pleased about his son's success. Ferdinand's
attitude towards his father was that of a son who wants to
help, but is frustrated by his father's easy-going life-style. It
was all very well for businessmen and their ilk to belong to the
Casino Club, but not for officials or officers. His father's
friendship with the Jewish lawyer Marx was another indis
cretion. Marx had been the main speaker at a banquet cele
brating the Club's anniversary and had praised the King for
favouring popular government, which was news to the King
and led to an official investigation into both Marx's and
Westphalen's loyalty to the monarchy. As if that were not bad
enough, Ferdinand was outraged when he heard the rumour
that his beautiful half-sister Jenny had become secretly en
gaged to that ne'er-do-well son of Marx, Karl.
3
The die was cast in August 1836. Jenny was twenty-two years
old and radiantly beautiful. She was surrounded by suitors
who vied to make her their own, but she was restless and
unfulfilled : the lightning of love had not struck her heart.
When it did, it was for a boy she had known all her life. He had
said goodbye to her in October 1835 , as he left to study law at
the university of Bonn. She had wished him luck and asked
him to let her know how he was getting on. This he promised
and promptly forgot. The student Karl Marx, emancipated
from his home town, had better things to do than letter
writing. He kept even his family wondering what he was
doing. In November his father wrote admonishing him:
' More than three weeks have past since you left and no word
from you. You know your mother and how anxious she is.
Your negligence is unpardonable! It confirms, unfortunately,
the opinion I have of you, that despite your many good traits
the prevailing force in your heart is egotism." We do not
know what Karl answered, except that his father noted his
reply was 'barely legible'2 and that he could not make head or
tail of the poem Karl had written .
Furious writing of poetry , reading and lectures on law and
mythology occupied him during the day; his nights were filled
with riotous partying, drunken revelry and duelling in the
Loving a Wild Boar 21
Marx Senior informed his son, telling him at the same time .
that he had gained Jenny's complete trust. 'The dear, dear girl
is tormenting herself, she is afraid she is hurting you, forcing
you to over-exert yourself in your studies. ' 7
Karl's answers were couched in phrases of poetic extrava
gance: 'A new world arose for me when I left you, the world of
love, hopeless love at first, but drunk with longing. Even the
j ourney to Berlin which otherwise would have enchanted me
and aroused my interest in nature and my love of life, left me
cold; indeed, it depressed me, for the rocks I saw were not
steeper or bolder than the feelings of my soul, the busy cities
not busier than my blood, the meals in the inn no more
overloaded and indigestible than the creation of my fancy and
finally, art not as beautiful as Jenny. 'K He devoted his first
months in Berlin to love and poetry. As a p resent for Christ
mas in 1 836 he sent his fiancee three collections of his poems.
The first was entitled
Book of Songs, the second and third Book
of Love and all three were dedicated to 'my dear, eternally
beloved Jenny von Westphalen' . His sister wrote to him:
'Jenny was visiting us yesterday and wept when she received
your poems, tears ofjoy and sorrow. '9 Jenny loved poetry and
it moved her deeply to hold in her hands three volumes of
poems written for her by the man she loved . Although Marx
later dismissed these poems as youthful indiscretions, an
opinion shared by most Marx scholars, they shed light not
only on an early phase of his life, but provide deep and often
disturbing insights into the working of his mind; thus he
writes at that time in Oulanem . A Tragedy:
from Marx's thought. He had little pity for the world or for
the men who crawled on its surface, those "apes of a cold
God " , eternally in bondage. ' I I But for Jenny these poems
conveyed only Karl's youthful passion, expressed in the style
of the German Romantic poets. At the same time as she was
moved she worried that she might not be able to keep her
ardent young lover: 'What makes me so miserable, dear Karl,
is precisely that which would fill the hearts of every other girl
with bliss: your beautiful, moving, passionate love, the in
·
credible beautiful way in which you express it, the passionate
pictures of your fancy - all these cause me great anxiety and
often despair . . . my fate would be terrible if your ardent love
were to cease. ' 1 2 Such thoughts puzzled Karl, for had he not
told her:
See: I could a thousand volumes fill,
Writing only 'Jenny: in each line,
Still they would a world of thought conceal,
Deed eternal and unchanging Will,
Verses sweet that yearning gently still,
All the glow and all the Aether's shine
Anguished sorrow's p ain and joy divine,
All of Life and Knowledge that is mine.
I can read it in the stars u p yonder,
From the Ze p hyr it returns to me,
From the being of the wild waves' thunder.
Truly, I would write it down as one refrain,
For the coming centuries to see -
LOVE IS JENNY, JENNY IS LOVE 'S NAME. I )
Jenny was upset but forgave him as she always did, then and
later. 'I hope you behaved yourself on the Rhine steamer or
was there another Madame Hermann on board? Oh, you
wicked rascal . 1 shall cure you of that. All these steamship
trips. Such wanderings 1 shall lay under an interdict in the
"contrat social", our marriage contract, and all such abnor
malities will be punished verbally. 1 shall specify all cases and
demand atonement; 1 shall institute a second, severe common
law; a marital law . Just you wait. 1 shall get you. ' :!AI The banter
ing tone of this passage from a letter to her beloved little wild
boar is revealing. She was concerned about his fidelity and had
a right to be, although, unlike his friend Engels, Marx was no
philanderer. He merely seized the occasion for sex with other
women when it was offered him.
From one ofJenny's letters it appears that they had sexual
relations some two years before they were married. She wrote
to him from Neuss, a little town on the left bank of the Rhine
opposite Dusseldorf, where she had gone to visit friends and
get away from her family . Karl was in Bonn hoping to get a
professorship. Jenny planned to visit him on her way back to
Trier, but had been given strict instructions by her mother that
she was to do so only in the company of her brother Edgar.
Engaged couples could only see each other in the presence of a
chaperon . Her mother reminded her that for the sake of ' outer
and inner decency' she must not violate this rule. In her letter
28 RedJenny
his mother, who held the purse strings. To pacify her and
because he knew that a degree would help him get started in
life either as a professor, a writer or a j ournalist, he sat down
and wrote a doctoral dissertation on 'The Difference between
the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature ' . His
thesis foreshadows his later dictum : 'The philosophers have
only interpreted the world, the time has come to change it. '24 He
submitted his dissertation not to the University of Berlin,
where he was registered , but to the University ofJena, which
he had never attended . Jena conferred doctoral degrees to
students in absentia without requiring examinations and with
out inquiring into a candidate's personal or professional
opinions. His dissertation was promptly accepted and the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy conferred upon him in April
1841.
With this entrance ticket to an academic career in his pocket,
he travelled to Bonn, hoping to get a lectureship there,
although he also toyed with the idea of becoming a j ournalist.
By way of introducing ' D r Marx' to his friends in the Rhine
land, Moses Hess, who had met him at the Doctors' Club,
wrote:
to let him have his share of his father's estate, but to no avail .
Henriette reminded him that his father had wanted him to
become a lawyer, not a freelance journalist, and she was not
going to finance a way .o f life of which his father would
strongly disapprove. Marx felt frustrated and outraged . When
his friend Arnold Ruge chided him for not having sent a
promised article, he exploded and said that he had not been
able to work for weeks because he had been involved in a most
unsavoury family quarrel . 'Although my family is well-to-do,
it is placing such obstacles in my way that I am at the moment
in the direst straits. I cannot possibly bother you with an
account of these private scandals, since fortunately public
scandals prevent a man of character from being bothered by
private ones. ':lH The public scandal which was bothering Marx
at the beginning of his career as a j ournalist was the issue of
press censorship.
In his first political article, published on 5 May 1 842, Marx
argued for an inalienable human right: freedom of expression.
This article, and five that were to follow, was written in
answer to a debate going on in the Rhenish Diet about
freedom of the press. Marx insisted that there must be no
interference by any governmental agency with the free ex
pression of ideas . 'A free press is a mirror that presents the
truth, however unpleasant it may be; a censored press is a
distorting mirror and hides the truth . ' 29 Written in a calm and
graceful style, these articles on censorship have been num
bered among Marx's most brilliant works. Ironically, they
could not be published in any totalitarian state today.
Deeply impressed by both the content and the style of Karl's
articles, Jenny wrote him that a terrifying thought had struck
her some time ago, the thought that he had lost his right hand
in a duel . She was terrified and yet happy, for 'darling, I
thought I could then become really indispensable to you; then
you would always love me and keep me. I thought that I could
then write down all your heavenly thoughts and be really
useful to you. '.�I Marx never lost his right hand, but his
handwriting became so illegible that he needed Jenny to copy
32 RedJenny
all his manuscripts . At this time he was both his own writer
and editor. Jenny was overjoyed when he told her in October
1 842 that he had become editor-in-chief of the Rheinische
Zeitung and had been promised an annual salary of600 thalers .
At long last their future together seemed secure.
4
A Bookworm 's
Honey moon
was in love, absolutely, with heart and soul, and my bride had
fought the hardest fights for me, fights that have undermined her
health, partly against her pietistic-aristocratic relatives to whom
the Lord in Heaven and the Lord in Berlin are equal obj ects of
veneration, partly against my own family where some priests and
other enemies of mine have installed themselves . I and my bride
have therefore had to fight for years more unnecessary and
inj uring fights than many others who are three times older and
constantly talk about their 'experience oflife ' . . . 15
to visit the old lady with whom Karl had a feud because of his
father's inheritance. She asked herself why Mrs Marx, who
never bothered to answer her son's letters, had taken the
trouble to visit her. She answered by explaining: ' Success . . .
or in our case, the appearance of success that I know to give
by using the subtlest tactics . '22 Jenny did not know, when she
wrote those words that as the wife ofthe chiefideologist of the
world communist movement, it would remain her task all her
life to give the appearance of success . She pretended to be a
good middle-class housewife even at times when she did not
have enough bread for her children . It seemed important to
her, if only to prove to her reactionary, but well-situated half
sisters in Berlin, that she had m ade the right decision when she
married Karl. They did not know, poor fools, what Karl
knew, namely that the ground upon which they stood would
soon be rocked by a social earthquake that would destroy
their temples and shops. Signs of the coming revolution
were everywhere. Jenny was still in Trier, when the Silesian
weavers went to the barricades in protest against their oppres
sors, demanding better pay and shorter working-hours . This
uprising was crushed by Prussian soldiers on the orders of
King Frederick William IV: dozens of workers were killed and
many wounded. The paternal image of the King, propagated
so persistently, was badly damaged by these events, for it had
suddenly become obvious that Prussia' s celebrated 'Law and
O rder Society ' was based upon brute force.
It was therefore not surprising that a few weeks later an
attempt was made on the King's life. At the beginning of .
August 1 844 - Jenny had already been in Trier for six weeks
she received a letter from Karl which she answered at once, for
the bells were ringing, the cannons firing and the pious
running to church 'to sing hallelujah to the Lord in Heaven
for having so miraculously saved our Lord on Earth ' . 23 The
former mayor of a small Silesian town, whose request for a
position in the Prussian civil service had been rejected , had
fired two shots at the King without hitting him. Jenny asked
sarcastically: 'Did not your Pruss ian heart tremble with horror
The Clarion Call of the Gallic Cock 53
will like' 29; 'I am looking forward to seeing her soon again. 1
h ope the coming winter will be less melancholic for us than the
last one. '30 Jenny hoped so too , for the time had come to forget
the sorry affair with Ruge and theJahrbiicher. Karl wrote to her
that his first article for the Vorwiirts was an adversely critical
review of an article that Ruge had written for the Vorwiirts
under the pseudonym 'a Prussian' . He had made fun ofRuge's
stylistic and grammatical nonsense; thank God , they were rid
of Ruge.
Another worry that Jenny shared with her mother during
the months of her stay in Trier, was her brother Edgar. He was
a student in Bonn, but instead of attending lectures and
preparing himself for the state exam he wasted his mother's
money in evenings in taverns and on visits to the opera in
Cologne. To his mother he wrote that he was looking forward
to the coming revolution and the complete overthrow of the
existing order. Jenny's opinion was that he should not wait for
the overthrow of the existing order, but that he should over
throw his own disorder. Her mother made angry remarks
about the crazy, revolutionary youth of Germany. Jenny was
on the horns of a dilemma, on the one hand because she was
married to one of those crazy revolutionaries , on the other
because she had to blame her brother for sharing Karl's ideas.
Should she wait for Edgar's return from Bonn and talk with
him seriously about his duties towards his mother and his
fiancee Lina Scholer, or should she return to Karl in Paris? She
was longing for her husband but afraid of the everyday
problems she had to face. However , when Karl wrote and told
her how much he missed her she decided at the end of
September to leave Trier and return to Paris .
The result of their passionate reunion was what Jenny both
hoped for and feared: 'Kar1chen , how long will our little doll
play a solo part? I fear, 1 fear that when Mama and Papa are
together again, sharing community property, they will soon
perform a duet ' . 31 As she rightly anticipated, she was pregnant
again at the end of the year. Karl, who loved children, was
delighted, for although he was an ath eist he belie ved in the
Tile Clarion Call C!ftile Gallic Cock 55
Exile in Brussels
i
I.
l
the poet from his ivory tower into the political maelstrom. He
wrote a small volume of poems entitled Professions of Faith
with the subtitle 'Contemporary History' and the resolution
expressed in the preface 'to stand firmly and imperturbably on
the side of those who oppose the reactionaries with head and
with heart. 'I> Freiligrath had these poems printed, although the
censor had prohibited them, had given up his royal pension
and gone into exile in Brussels. Marx was so impressed that he
visited the poet immediately after his arrival in Brussels, for
'he wanted to make amends for the wrong that the Rheinische
Zeitung had done Freiligrath before he stood on the battle
r
ments of the party ' . 7 Freiligrath received his former critic 'the
interesting, pleasant, unassuming chap Karl Marx', " in a
, friendly manner and joined the small band of young people
f
gathered around Marx and Engel s .
Jenny's brother Edgar w a s among them. Jenny h a d mixed
i feelings when he appeared in Brussels. She had been happy to
� hear that he had passed his state exam, despite years of
,
i
Jenny enjoyed the six weeks she spent with her mother in
Trier thoroughly. She wrote to Karl : 'I have never felt any
better than now in dear old Germany ; " you must agree it takes
courage to say this to you arch-German-haters . But I have it,
this courage, and in spite of all, in spite of all, life is good in
this old land of sins. At any rate I have only encountered the
pettiest and meanest conditions in magnificent France and
Belgium. People here are little, very little, all of life here is a
miniature edition; however, the heroes over there are no
giants either and for the average person life there is not one
whit better. It may be different for men, but for the woman
who is meant for be;tring children, for sewing, cooking,
mending I sing the praises of our miserable Germany ' . III
Jenny's mother noted with satisfaction the visible physical
and mental improvement of her daughter in the course of her
stay in Trier. She hoped that Jenny and Karl would give up
their nomadic life and return to Germany . She worried about
the future of both her children. It was unfortunate that Jenny
and Edgar had fallen into the political quicksand of the time
because of Karl's communist convictions . She was entirely in
favour of helping the poor, but she was alarmed when Jenny
talked of the bloody revolution that Karl prophesied . Her late
husband had told her of the terrible things that happened
during the French Revolution and that the poor in France had
been just as poor after the Revolution as before. Would it not
be the same in Germany? There was, not without reason, the
saying: 'La revolution devore ses enfants. '
Jenny thought differently, or pretended she thought dif
ferently, and she could not do otherwise without betraying
her husband . Karl believed firmly in the revolution and con
sidered it his duty to make preparations for it. As Karl 's wife,
the mother of his daughter and now heavily pregnant with his
second child, Jenny had no other choice than to return to the
'pauper colony' of their Brussels exile. She wrote to Karl that
she would take care of the 'great affair' upstairs in their little
house and afterwards move down again. He could sleep in his
present study and work undisturbed, while she was with the
Exile in Brussels 65
her husband 's illnesses but she always addressed him as 'Dear
Mr Engel s ' . She never used either his first name Friedrich or
Fritz, nor the nickname 'General' that was later customarily
used by members of her family.
'The great catastrophe', as Jenny called her confinement,
because it coincided with the completion of Karl 's book The
German Ideology, occurred on 26 September 1 845. It was again
a girl and they called her Laura in memory of Jenny's sister
Laura who had died in childhood. As the mother of two babies
and the wife of a man who needed her to copy his illegible
letters and manuscripts, Jenny did not have much time to take
care of the household - Lenc hen was in charge of that and she
was much better at it than Jenny. As far as merchants and
shopkeepers were concerned Lenchen was the mistress of
the household, Jenny the grande dame to whom you took off
your hat. Wilhelm Liebknecht, a close friend of the Marxes,
says: 'Lenchen was the dictator in the house of Marx, Jenny
the ruler. ' 1 3
Thanks to this division oflabourJenny could devote herself
to her husband's business and ideas . She took part in the
conversations between Karl and Engels about The German
Ideology, a book which aimed to supersede once and for all the
superficiality of such German philosophers as Feuerbach and
other prophets of the so-called 'true socialism'; and to clear the
way for their own ideas of 'scientific socialism' and the inevit
able outbreaks of revolu tions which would finally bring about
a communist world order; for 'we do not consider com
munism a condition that has to be established, an ideal to
wards which reality has to reach. We call communism the real
movement which will cancel the present condition. '14
Jenny was impressed by such words. Compared with the
eternal uncertainty of the bourgeois world, the cut-throat
competition, the money-grubbing on the one hand, the
hunger and misery on the other, communist society seemed to
embody the ideal of genuine humanity. In order to realize this
ideal it was necessary to prepa re the workers of the world for
the conquest of political power. This was done through the
Exile in Brussels 67
for Christmas or how to pay the food bills. The last weeks of
1 847 were hard work for Marx. A world trade crisis and the
price rises it precipitated led to noisy protests everywhere in
Europe and the time was obviously ripe for revolution. It was
therefore important, particularly at Christmas' when Chris
tianity was uppermost in people's minds, to show the workers
of the world a communist confession of faith. Engels, still in
Paris, proposed that it be called 'Tpe Communist Manifesto' .
During Christmas and the first weeks of the new year Marx
worked with Jenny as his secretary on the te.xr of a procla-
mation as influential as any in the annals of history.
Preparations for a family Christmas party, whichJenny had
to discuss with Lenchen and about which she corresponded
with her mother in Trier, interrupted her work on the Mani
festo: There was, in addition, the Christmas party of the
German Workers' Union, at which Jenny had to help decor
ating the hall. Karl, the main speaker, made a toast to
Belgium's democracy, contrasting it to the absolutism of the
other European states and calling it a model for all Europe
because it guaranteed free speech and assembly .
The Deutsche Briisseler Zeitung pubiished a long report about
the New Year's celebrations of the German Workers' Union:
'The banquet on New Year's Eve was another step toward
fraternization and strengthening . of democracy in several
countries. No discordant note disturbed this respectable and
enjoyable party. A number ofladies in full evening dress took
part and we observed beautiful women applauding vigor
ously. The banquet was followed by music and then by a
dramatic performance, where Madame Dr Marx ' showed a
brilliant talent for recitation. It is very impressive to watch
exceptionally gifted ladies trying to improve the intellectual
faculties of the proletariat' . 2"
This New Year's Eve was a high point in Jenny's life . She
was dancing with her belo.ved husband into the fateful year of
1 848, cheerful and confident, for the future lay full of promise ,
before her. Under Karl's direction she copied the last pages of
The Communist Manifest� which was emphatically requested
74 RedJenny
you ! '
However, the events of the next few days took a precipitous
I . tum and prevented Marx from leaving Belgium peacefully.
On the night of 4 March, police officers entered his room in
the Hotel Bois Sauvage and arrested him. He was accused of
having given money to German workers in Brussels for the
'.
i
purchase of weapons . Jenny writes : 'They dragged him away
in the night, I run after them terribly afraid and try to find
influential people to discover what they were up to. In the
darkness of night I run from house to house. Suddenly a guard
grabs hold of me, arrests me and throws me into a dark jail. It
was the place where they put up homeless beggars, rootless
wanderers , unfortunate, lost women. I am pushed into a dark
cell. I sob as I enter, and one of my unfortunate fellow sufferers
offers me her bed . It was a hard wooden bunk. I fall down
on it' . 33
When daylight came, Jenny discovered that Karl was being
escorted by a military police force and expelled from Belgium
upon order of King Leopold. She herselfhad to undergo a two
hour cross-examination, during which 'they did not get much
out of me' . 34 She certainly did not reveal, what she later
admitted in the review of her life, that Karl had given money to
the German workers to buy arms. Jenny's discretion was
absolute.
After her examination was abandoned without result, the
76 RedJenny
police took her to a coach and 'I arrived back home to my poor
little babies only in the evenin g ' . 35 Then with Lenchen 's help
she began packing her personal effects, sold what could be
sold, but left her silver and better linen in the care of the
bookseller Vogler. Accompanied by the young printer
Stephan Born she travelled back to the Paris which she had left
three years ago. 'It was a very cold, cloudy day, the last in the
month of February [it was actually the beginning of March]
and we found it very difficult to keep the babies warm, the
youngest being barely a year old. 'J(,
When she reached Paris , she parted from her young com
panion, who reported the strain caused by the events of the last
few days: 'A deep sadness lay on her pure features . We shook
hands and said goodbye when she had reached her provisional
home. Everything had been provisional for her, a real home
for herself and her children she had never known ' . 37
7
The Year of
Decision
1 848-1 849
II
pawnshop and got some money for her silver. But it was not
the often scarce housekeeping money that worried her, for
Lenchen always found some means of getting bread and
vegetables. What really worried Jenny was the health of her
children Jennychen and Musch. Both were susceptible to any
change in weather and often had fever and little appetite.
Lenchen recommended that they eat lots of fruit, but fruit was
scarce in winter. Jenny got nuts and dried fruit from her
mother, who also sent her the traditional Christmas goose and
presents for the children. In spite of the gloomy political
situation that appeared on the horizon at the end of this year of
revolution which had beg�n so promisingly, the mood in the
Marx house was full ofexpectation: Karl and Jenny greeted the
new year with a champagne toast on the victory of the
revolution.
"
III
i
On New Year's Day Karl read aloud to Jenny from the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung's leading article, 'The Revolutionary
Movement' :
The defeat o f the working class i n France meant also the suppres
sion of those nationalities which had answered the call of the Gallic
cock with heroic attempts at emancipation. But once again
Poland, Italy and Ireland were ravaged, raped, assassinated by
Prussian, Austrian and English policemen . . . The defeat of the
working class in France, the victory of the French bourgeoisie was
also the victory of the East over the West, the defeat of civilization
by barbarism. In Wallachia the Russians and their puppets, the
Turks, started the oppression of the Romance nations, in Vienna
Croats, Pandours, Czechs, Circassians and similar rabble strangled
German freedom and at this moment the Czar is all powerful in
Europe . ..Hence the slogan of European liberation is the eman
cipation of the working class. 12
lies the anxiety about my dear husband. You can imagine, how
afraid I was, when I heard about the revolt in Paris. The terrible
cholera raging there, kept me in constant fear. And in addition the
general, heavy sorrows and defeats of our party, the difficult
situation facing all who fought for the principle of a new world.
Even the thought that my dear Karl has so far come through all
:� dangers worries me. I always fear that he may have to endure
r greater and more terrible torments and am completely at a loss to
know what lies ahead of us . My dear Karl remains confident and
cheerful and considers all the pressures that we have to endure
only heralds of a coming and complete victory of our view oflife.
So far he has been unquestioned in Paris and he wants to remain
there and have us j oin him. But should he not feel safe anymore,
then Geneva would be the next place to emigrate to. I would like
that. I would like to spend the few months of summer in such a
heavenly, natural environment. I am hoping to receive definite
.
travel orders in the next letter.2i1
The travel orders that soon came were not for Geneva, but
Paris . After taking tearful leave of her mother, who asked
herself anxiously whether she would ever see her prodigal
daughter again, she journeyed to Paris with Lenchen and the
children, where she was received by Karl in a small but
expensive apartment in the rue de Lille. She requested Lina to
send her books and furniture from Trier to Paris, but not to the
apartment in town, for she had found a cheaper one in
the suburbs . However, four days later Marx was informed by
94 RedJenny
the French authorities that his permission to stay in Paris was
cancelled and he was exiled to the Morbihan, a marshy,
godforsaken region o f Brittany .
Marx protested vehemently against this 'disguised assassi
nation attempt', as he called the expulsion order, and informed
Engels that he would emigrate to England and publish a
German paper in London. He counted on Engels' co-operation.
What was to happen to his family, he did not know. Jenny,
Lenchen and the children should of course join him in London.
But how? There was no money for the crossing. Jenny again
had to ask her mother for help, though her mother was
becoming increasingly impatient with her daughter's vaga
bond life. And she did not even know that Jenny was six
months' pregnant and expecting her fourth child in Novem
ber. Marx urged Jenny to pawn some of her silver in Paris. He
left France on 24 August; Jenny was to follow him to England
three weeks later. Once again it was her job to find the money
for the j ourney somehow.
She discovered that Paris, in spite of the revolution a few
months earlier, again showed its old sparkle. ' Aristocracy and
bourgeoisie are feeling safe after the unfortunate 1 3 June and.
the new victories of their party. By the 1 4th all the great men,
who had gone into hiding, came out of their hiding places,
plus their coaches and servants, and there is splendour and
magnificence in the bright streets of Paris. '21 She left the
continent with a heavy heart. With the unfailing help of
Lenchen, she succeeded in settling her financial affairs by
the middle of September and boarded a Channel steamer in
Calais. When the chalk cliffs of Dover loomed up, she looked
longingly for her husband. But Karl had not come to receive
his exiled family. 'Georg Weerth met me, when I arrived in
London sick and exhausted with my three little persecuted
children. '22
The tone of sadness that vibrates through this sentence
would dominate the next and bleakest chapter in Jenny's life.
8
Top left: The Marx family's London flat, in Dean Street, where they lived from
May 1850 to October 1856. Top n:�ht: Helene Demuth, the faithful 'Lenchen',
housekeeper with the Marx family from 1845. Bottolll left: Grafton Terrace, the
Marx family's second London home, where they lived from October 1856.
BollolII righl: 1 Modena Villas, the Marx family's third London house, where they
lived from March 1864
The Hells oj London 97
But even there they could not stay long. One morning the
innkeeper appeared, refused to bring them breakfast and told
them to leave his hotel at once. Thanks to some financial help
she received j ust in time from her mother, Jenny and her
children found two rooms in the house of a Jewish lace-dealer,
'where we struggled hard all through the summer ' . 3
While his family tried to cope somehow with .daily life,
Marx worked tirelessly organizing and propagating his
communist ideas. His battle cry was: 'The Permanent Rev
olution' . He wrote pages and pages of articles about it for
his Neue Rheinische Zeitung Political Economy Review which
was published in Hamburg, and of which four single numbers
and one double appeared between March and November
1 850.
Together with Engels, he organized the Communist
League, sent emissaries to Germany, France, Switzerland and
even to America, to make propaganda for the League and to
collect money for German refugees in England. He wrote
polemic articles against the representatives of the German
petit-bourgeois democrats, such as Gottfried Kinkel, and put
up every homeless party comrade. This often led to unpleasant
surprises, as when the former Prussian Lieutenant August
Willich arrived in London after his adventures in the Palatinate
free corps and, as Jenny said, 'settled in with us as a communist
Jrere et comp agnon. He appeared in our bedroom early in the
morning, a real Don Quixote in a grey woollen jacket and,
instead of a belt, a red cloth around his waist and tried, with
Prussian horse-laughs , to hold forth at length about "natural"
communism. But Karl made short work of his effort. And he
98 RedJenny
did not fare any better with me when he tried to wheedle out
the worm that is in every marriage. ' 4
With the hoped-for royalty income from the political
economic review arriving only occasionally and scantily, the
financial condition of the family became increasingly pre
carious . Jenny addressed further appeals for help to her mother
and to friends like Weydemeyer, the leader of the Frankfurt
Communist League. She implored him to send the money
from the magazine immediately to London, where it was
urgently needed for her hungry family.
Marx meanwhile, in co-operation with English Chartists
and French socialists, founded a world-league of revolution
ary communists in April 1850, with the aim of overthrowing
all classes and of subj ugating them to the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The participants in such conspiratorial meetings,
which took place on the first floor of 20 Windmill Street in
Soho, were reliable party comrades who took an oath to keep
all party affairs secret . Police spies nevertheless managed to
infiltrate the meetings .
Among the Prussian authorities with a n interest in the
activities of the London German communists, it was the
Minister of the Interior, Ferdinand von Westphalen, J enny' s
half-brother, w h o particularly wanted t o know what his
brother-in-law was doing. He therefore sent to London a
crack agent, Wilhelm Stieber, who later became the chief of
Bismarck's secret service. Stieber arrived in London as a
newspaper editor called Schmidt, allegedly to visit the Great
Exhibition. After succeeding in the infiltration of German
communist meetings, he sent a long report to Berlin, in which
he states that under Marx's chairmanship even regicide was
discussed: 'in a meeting the day before yesterday, where Marx
and Wolff were chairmen, one of the participants shouted:
"The mooncalf will not escape her fate. English steel is the best
steel in the world, and the guillotine is waiting for every
crowned head". 's
Since the expression ' mooncalf' obviously referred to
Queen Victoria, the Prussian Minister Otto von Manteuffel
The Hells of London 99
already pregnant again ' and anticipated the birth of a fifth child
and the future with despair'. 9 When she arrived after a stormy
crossing and 'fifteen hours of terrible sea-sickness, tired and
apprehensive', 1 0 she noted to her horror, that Karl's uncle did
not recognize her. 'I got the familiar hug only after I had
introduced myself. 11 And that is all that she did get. When she
indicated that unless he would help them now,
Death Street
dignation between the lines , that her faithful and untiring maid,
who was practically a member of the family, had left her'.'
But Marx protested against that. Lenchen's flight would
look like a confession of guilt and damage her reputation as
well as his . The best solution was to give up the child to an
English family for adoption. We can only guess at Lenchen's
feelings about this proposal, which was carried out. We know
from many accounts of Jenny's daughters that she was very
fond of children. Her will proves that she loved her son,
whom she could see only secretly , up to the end of her life: for
when she died in 1 890, nine years after Jenny, she left him the
entirety of her modest fortune.
She knew, of course, who Frederick's father was, but she
also knew that an illegitimate child could not be educated
together with the legitimate children of the head of the Marx
Party. If she wanted to keep her son, she would have to leave
the Marx family. But that was practically impossible, for how
should she take care of herself and her child, not to mention
the fact that Marx was not only the father of her child, but the
man she loved? She was the only person before whom the
fearless fighter for a better world order trembled. 'It has been
said that nobody is a great man to his valet. To Lenchen Marx
was certainly not great. But she would have died for him' , 8
according to Liebknecht.
The suspicion and then the certainty that Karl was the father
of Len chen's child was a hard blow for Jenny. She had left her
family and fatherland out of love for him, she was sharing the
hopeless misery of his refugee existence out of love for him,
helped him with his work and was always at his side when he
needed her. Karl too loved and needed her, but he was a man
forced by circumstances to live in the closest proximity with
two women, both of whom loved him. Whenever one was
gone, the other was present. The temptations were obvious.
In the end Jenny silently accepted a menage a trois, although it
hurt her. And Lenchen, obliged to keep her relationship to
Marx a secret while she lived, was allowed to lie in the same
grave with him and Jenny.
1 06 RedJenny
During the time of Lenchen 's approaching confinement,
Marx fled into the solitude of the reading room of the British
Museum, perhaps partly because of guilt feelings or because
he could not bear to watch Jenny's sadness. But his work
on a study of capitalist economics required extensive research
which could only be carried out in a library . Every morning
about 9 o'clock he left the flat in Dean Street and returned
home only in the evening , sometimes after midnight, at the
end of an extensive pub-crawl down Tottenham Court Road
with youthful admirers like Liebknecht. He left Lenchen with
the responsibility for his three children and his ailing wife. She
also had to find money for food for the family, which often
meant a visit to the pawnbroker; once she even pawned her
master's shoes.
The only ray of light in these gloomy years was an inquiry
from Charles Anderson Dana, the editor of the New York
Daily Tribune, asking Marx whether he wanted to become the
European correspondent of this, the largest American news
paper. The fee for an article was £1 and the paper was interested
in two articles a week . The idea of a regular income made
Jenny and Lenchen absolutely rapturous and Marx quickly
accepted Dana's o ffer, although his knowledge of English was
not yet good enough to write formal articles. However, Marx
was sure that Engels would do him this good turn, too. And
he was right. Every week Engels sent him one or two articles
from Manchester, which Marx redirected from London to
New York and for which he received the promised fee. It was
often not easy for Engels to find the time to write these articles :
'I am sitting here up to my ears in work. Eleven business
letters lie on my desk which 1 still have to write today and it is
almost 7 o'clock . However, 1 will concoct an article for Dana,
if possible tonight but at the latest by tomorrow evening. '9
How urgently the American money was needed in the Marx
household is shown in a letter from Jenny to Weydemeyer,
who had emigrated to New York . She begged him to 'urge
Dana to name a house in London, where we can collect the fees
more quickly' III for people in America do not know 'how
Death Street 1 07
A t Easter of the same year, 1852, our poor little Franziska fell sick
with a severe case of bronchitis. For three days the poor child
fought for her life, suffering very much. Her poor, lifeless body
rested in the little garret room, all we others moved into the front
room, and when night came we made our beds on the floor and
our three living children lay next to us and we wept for the little
angel who was resting cold and dead near us. The death of our dear
child happened at the time of our most abject poverty. Our
German friends were not able to help us at that moment . . . With
fear in my heart I ran to a French refugee, who lived near us and
had visited us. He gave me at once £2 with deep sympathy, and the
little coffin, in which my poor child now rests in peace, was paid
for with them. She had no cradle when she came into the world
and even her last home was long in coming. 12
Dearest heart, no matter how bad your picture is, it is a very great
help to me and I understand now, how even the 'black Madonnas ',
the most disgraceful portraits of the Mother of God, could find
undying admirers, even more admirers than the good portraits . In
any case, none of any of these black madonna pictures has ever
been more loved, looked at and adored than your photograph. I
have you right here, in front of me and carry you in my hands,
kissing you from head to foot and sigh, kneeling in front of you:
'Madam, I love you ' . 40
Jenny smiled when she read these last words from the
familiar Heine poem . But then there were passages in this long
love letter that moved her to tears :
Death Street 115
The moment you are away from me, my love for you appears
for what it is, a giant that contains all the energy of my mind
and all the character of my heart. I feel again that I am a man,
because I feel a great passion, and the diversity that studies and
modern education give us, and the scepticism with which we
necessarily criticize all subjective and objective impressions, can
easily make us all small and weak and cross. But my love, not for
Feuerbach's man, not for Moleschott's metabolism, not for the
proletariat, but my love for the loved one and particularly for you,
makes the man again a man. 41
When Jenny read these words she would have liked to rush
to Manchester at once to prove to her beloved husband that she
too still had the same feelings for him that she had had fourteen
years ago - in spite of everything. But Caroline's 81 st birthday
was on 1 1 July andJenny wanted to celebrate it with her because
she knew that it was probably the last time she could be with
her beloved mother on that day. In fact, Caroline died twelve
days after her birthday. Once again, as so often inJenny's life,
there was a sudden change from j oy to sadness.
She was the only relative at her mother's grave and had to
take care of the estate, which meant entering into negotiations
with her half-brother Ferdinand in Berlin. She was pleased
that he answered at once and very cordially, too. He called her
'my dear cherished Jenny ' 42 and lamented the death of 'our
dear honoured mother . . . what an irreparable loss for you
and all of us' . 4:1 Concerning Caroline's estate, there was no
question in Ferdinand's mind 'that you and Edgar are the
heirs ' . 44 In case there were debts , or 'if you need money at the
moment, please write me and I shall send it at once ' . 45 Such
words were balm to Jenny's ears . If Ferdinand only knew what
financial difficulties she had had to cope with in her life! She
informed Karl at once that she could dispose of her mother's
estate and Karl wrote Engels: 'I received a letter from my wife
today. She seems much affected by the death of the old
woman. She will spend eight to ten days in Trier to auction off
the insignificant personal effects of the old woman and share
the proceeds with Edgar. '4I>
1 16 RedJenny
The dissolution of her mother's household was a very sad
affair for Jenny, because with it she lost her last ties to her
homeland . The thought that she would soon have to live in
Dean Street again made her sick . She wrote to her husband
that, before coming to London with the children, she would
travel to Jersey and spend September and O ctober there
resting from the strains of her German experience. Karl wrote
'the plan is excellent', 47 but he did not know how to finance it.
He was destitute once again because the New York Daily
Tribune had rejected some of his articles .
In the end he and Jenny decided to leave the Street of Death
as soon as the inherited money arrived and to move 'with a
joyful heart into a small house at the foot of the romantic
Hampstead Heath, not far from the charming Primrose
Hill ' . 48 'When we slept for the first time in our own beds, sat
on our own chairs and even had a parlour with second-hand
furniture in rococo style, or rather "bric-a-brac", we really
believed we lived in a magic castle and we payed homage to
our young magnificence with drums and trumpets. ' 49
10
II
First we drank port, then claret, i.e. red Bordeaux, then cham
pagne. Marx was completely drunk after the red wine. That was
exactly what I wanted, for he became more candid than he would
have been otherwise. I ascertained many things that I might only
have suspected. In spite of his condition, Marx was in complete
control of the conversation up to the end. He gave the impression
not only of rare mental superiority but of an important person
ality. I would go through fire for him, if he had as much heart as
mind, as much love as hate . . . I regret, for the sake of our
I
common goal, that this man does not have a noble heart in
I addition to his eminent mind. But I am convinced that the most
!
dangerous personal ambition has eaten up everything good in
him. He makes fun of the fools that believe his proletarian
catechism, just as he does of the communists a la Willich and of the
bourgeois. The only people he respects are the aristocrats, the real
ones, aristocrats from conviction. He says he needs a force to drive
them from power and has found that force only in the prolet
arians, which is why he is basing his system on them. In spite of all
his assurances to the contrary, and perhaps because of them, I have
the impression that the purpose of all his activities is to attain
personal power.2'J
because Karl was being far too thorough: 'I simply cannot
stand the analysis of the Techow letter; there seems to be a
snag . . . Unfortunately no steps have been taken to find a
publisher' . 30 It soon became obvious that it was impossible to
find a German publisher for Herr Vogt. Marx had it printed in
London at his own expense, at a cost of £25, a sum his family
could have lived on for several months . His hopes that he
might recoup his investment by sales of the pamphlet turned
out to be illusory. The bomb - as he called the pamphlet that
he threw into the German party landscape - proved to be a
dud. 'The deliberate silence of the press', writes Jenny, 'was of
course responsible for the sale of the book not being as good as
we had every right to expect' . 3 1 Only Karl's closest friends
found the sarcastic wit of the pamphlet exciting and con
sidered it an important chapter in the history of their time.
Jenny fell ill shortly after she had copied the manuscript and
handed it over to the printer. 'I was seized by the most terrible
fever and the doctor had to be called in. He came on 20
November, examined me carefully for a long time and said
after a long silence: "My dear Mrs Marx, 1 am sorry to say you
have smallpox - the children must leave the house immedi
ately". '.12 The following days and weeks were terrible. The
children were sent to the Liebknechts' , who lived nearby, and
Karl and Lenchen, who had been vaccinated, took care of the
gravely ill Jenny . Her fever shot so high that she had to put ice
on her lips and from time to time Bordeaux wine. She could
hardly swallow and was losing her hearing rapidly: 'Finally
my eyes closed and I did not know whether they would
remain forever in eternal darkness. '33
Even after the crisis had passed she was shocked to see her
disfigured face in the mirror. 'I looked like a rhinoceros that
belonged in the zoo rather than a member of the Caucasian
race' . 34 The girls wept when they saw their mother whom
they had left five weeks ago as a good-looking woman. It was
months before she again looked like a human being.
Two events occurred at this tim e that were of great import
ance to the Marx fa mily. On the accession to the throne
At the Edge of the Abyss 1 27
of King William I of Prussia in January 1 861 , an amnesty was
declared for all political emigrants permitting them an un
hindered return home. The second event was the election of
Lincoln to the presidency of the United States and the be":'
ginning of the conflict between the northern and southern
states . This conflict, which grew into the Civil War, caused
the editorial department of the New York Daily Tribune to give
notice to all its foreign correspondents; the American people,
who were now completely absorbed in their own affairs, were
no longer interested in events abroad. As a result of this
decision, Marx lost his only regular source of income.
When the burden of debts had again risen so high, as a
consequence ofJenny's illness and Karl's liver complaints, that
the bailiff appeared, ' Karl decided to undertake a raid to
Holland, to the country of his forefathers, of tobacco and
cheese. He wants to see ifhe can wheedle a few coins out of his
I
uncle. Ifhe succeeds, he will make a secret trip to Berlin to see
III
As usual the joy was short-lived, for the Dutch money was
soon spent and Jennychen 's health deteriorated visibly. She
was suffering from an obstinate cough that emaciated her and
worried her parents greatly for several years . Tussy too, who
had just started school, became ill. She suffered from a kind of
j aundice, a disease that mostly affected adults. Jenny tried in
vain to get some household money by selling some of her
husband's book s . And, as always, Marx turned to Engels for
help . 'My wife tells me every day she wished she were in the
grave with her children, and 1 cannot really blame her for it,
for the humiliations, vexations and torments which she has to
suffer, are indeed indescribable' . 49
While Jenny tried to keep her family going by repeated trips
to the pawnshop, Marx worked desperately on his book on
the history of capitalism and its inevitable collapse. 'I am
expanding this volume', he wrote to Engels, 'because the
German dogs judge the value of books by their cubic con
tents '. 50 But his hopes of obtaining an advance from a German
publisher remained unfulfilled . This was the situation when
Lassalle wrote, saying he would be coming to London for a
few weeks in July on the occasion of the 1862 Exhibition .
Jenny was horrified when she heard this and on the last pages
of her autobiographical notes she describes how revolted she
was by Lassalle's theatrical posturing and claims of genius . She
was very angry that he 'wanted to become the messiah of the
German workers ' 5 1 and that he espoused her husband 's idea
without understanding them . Marx, who tried to get a loan
from Lassalle, was also glad when 'the Jewish Nigger' 52 left
At the Edge of the Abyss 131
again, for 'the fellow would rather throw his money into the
dirt than lend it to a friend . . . He assumes he has to live like a
Jewish baron, or like a Jew raised to the rank of a baron
(probably by the Countess) . Imagine, this fellow, who knows
what's going on in America, hence knows the crisis in which I
find myself, had the audacity to ask me i f I would entrust one
of my daughters to Countess Hatzfeldt as her "lady com
panion" . . . and since I didn't have any business to take care of
right now but was merely doing some theoretical work, I
might just as well kill my time with him. ' 53
It may seem surprising that, despite these bitter lines, Marx
informed Lassalle, before the latter's departure in August
1 862, of his precarious financial situation as a result of the loss
of his A merican income and that Lassalle was willing to sign
a promissory note for 400 thalers. Thus, catastrophe was
averted once again, the bailiff left and Jenny could go to the
seaside at Ramsgate for some weeks with the children. This
was particularly important for Jennychen, whose health was
very poor. Marx called her ' the most excellent and gifted child
in the world. But she is suffering here for two reasons: first,
because of her health and secondly, because of our bourgeois
troubles. '54
While his family was trying to forget their London diffi
culties at Ramsgate, Marx travelled to his Dutch relations and
once again to his mother in Trier. But he failed to get another
advance on his paternal inheritance. His old mother told him
only that he should finally get another j ob because he ob
viously could not make a living as a journalist. Uncle Lion
Philips, too, who had always helped him, suggested he apply
[or a position at the London railway office that he would
procure for him . Marx wrote to a surprised Engels that he was
considering entering a railway office: however, his bad hand
writing prevented him from getting the position!
By the end of the year things were so bad, despite Engels'
help, that Marx decided to send his wife to Paris to approach a
rich French friend [or support. In her autobiographical notes
Jenny relates what happened there:
1 32 RedJenny
I arrived at the good friend's home in bitter cold and sick with
worries, only to find that he had suffered a stroke and was hardly
recognizable. He died a few days after my coming. I returned
home desperate and immediately on entering our house heard the
terrible and painful news that a few hours before my arrival our
good, dear, faithful Marianne, Lenchen's sister, had passed away
from a heart illness, gently and blessedly like a big child. The
good, faithful, hard-working girl had been with us for five years. I
loved her and was so much attached to her that her loss hurt me
deeply. I lost a loyal, devoted, friendly creature whom I shall
never forget. She was conducted to her place of eternal rest on the
second day of Christmas. 55
'living in sin' with this Irish textile worker. If Jenny had been
wise, she would have given the appearance of sympathy by
writing a few words. As it was, Engels was deeply hurt by the
indifference of his friend and Jenny, 'for all my friends,
including mere philistine acquaintances, have shown me more
sympathy and friendship on this occasion which distressed me
grievously. ' 59
By way of apology, Marx wrote to Engels that the news of
Mary's death had reached them at a time when the bailiff was
in the house, a butcher was pestering for payment of a bill,
when they had neither coal nor food and Jennychen was ill in
bed. 'What really made me angry was the fact that my wife
thought I had never given you a true picture of our real
situation' . 60 But he had finally brought his wife to accept the
following proposal: 'I shall write to all my creditors that 1 will
declare myself bankrupt by filing a bill in the court of bank
ruptcy, if they don't stop bothering me . . . My two oldest
children will get positions as governesses . . . Lenchen will
take up another position, and 1 will move with my wife and
Tussychen into the same City Model Lodging where the red
Wolff once lived with his family. '61
Engels was horrified at this, for he considered a declaration
of bankruptcy by the leader of the communist world move
ment unthinkable, even though he was upset with Marx.
Since he did not have any large amount of cash available at the
moment, 'he dared making a very risky deal' 62 by signing over
to Marx a bankable bill of £ 1 00 made out to a customer of the
firm Ermen and Engels. In addition, Jenny received some
money from a rich Jewish lady in Germany, who had heard
how badly off the family was. Once again they were safe for a
while and Marx could continue his researches in the British
Museum. In addition to his studies, he watched the political
events in America and on the Continent with great interest.
He was particularly impressed by the revolutionary uprising
of the Polish people against their Russian oppressors . 'What
do you think about this Polish affair?'63 he asked Engels. 'This
much is certain, the era of revolution is fairly open again in
1 34 RedJenny
Europe ' . 64 Engels, too, thought that the Poles were 'really
tremendous fellows'65 and believed that revolution was also
standing at Russia's door. They both considered publishing a
manifesto to spread the idea in Germany that the re-establish
ment of a Polish nation was in the Germans' interest. But
nothing came of it because Marx was temporarily prevented
from writing by an eye infection.
However, it was not only his eyes that made working
difficult. He was alarmed when painful boils appeared all over
his body, and illness was indeed a constant guest in the family:
'My wife has been confined to bed for two weeks and is almost
deaf, God knows why. Jennychen again has a kind of diph
theria attack. It would be very kind if you could send some
wine for both of them (Dr Allen says it should be port for
,
Jennychen) . 66
And then something happened that was particularly detri
mental to the health of Karl and Jenny: On 23 May 1 863
Ferdinand Lassalle was elected President of the General
German Workers' Union, the first independent organization
of German workers. Engels considered it a scandal that
Lassalle had been elected and not Marx . He admonished his
friend to finish his book ' so that we have something sub
stantial to talk about' . 67 Jenny, too, felt that 'the ill-fated book
is weighing on all of us like a nightmare. If only the leviathan
were launched. ' 611 But that could not be done for the time
being, for the furunculous boils that had afflicted Karl for
years turned into large, bloody boils, carbuncles, which had to
be removed surgically. In the presence ofJenny and Lenchen,
who had to wash off streaming, purulent blood, Dr Allen cut a
carbuncle as large as a fist out of Marx's back, without taking
the time to get pain-relieving drugs, because he considered the
disease life-threatening .
Jenny reports that Karl's serious illness lasted four weeks .
During this period she lay at night on the floor next to her
husband's bed, comforted him and gave him wine that Engels
had sent. Since there was again no housekeeping money, she
sent Lenchen to the pawnshop with some silver spoons. She
At the Edge of the Abyss 1 35
Po litics as Fate
Jennychen has striking dark hair and complexion and looks really
fine with her childlike round, rosy cheeks and her deep, sweet
eyes; Laura, some degrees brighter, lighter and clearer, is really
prettier than her older sister because she has more regular features
and because her sparkling greenish eyes, with their dark brows
and long eyelashes, radiate a constant fire ofjoy. Both girls have
figures of more than medium size and a very delicate shape . . .
The third, the little one, is a real paragon of charm, grace and
childish folly. She is the light and life of our house. 1
D r. Karl Marx
and Frau Dr. Jenny Marx
nee von Westphalen
invite the pleasure of your
company .
at a ball given at their residence
Then came the sudden news . I thought my heart would burst with
joy and happiness . . . Edgar was the ideal of my childhood and
youth, my dear, my only companion. I clung to him with all my
soul. My little Edgar was named after him . . . Then he arrives
and is, alas, so changed , so sick, so miserable that I hardly
recognize him. Only now, little by little, can I slowly recognize
the old features in his face and see again the playmate of my
childhood. He has taken part in the war in Texas for three years
and has suffered beyond description; he lost everything, every
thing, including his health . He is now here to recover a bit; he will
then go to Berlin to my brother and his other relatives and try his
luck there! The poor boy! It is well known how rich, distinguished
relatives are, especially if they are godfearing. One fecls at such
moments only what it means to be poor. 1.\
Let me advise you, if you already have a copy of the book by Karl
Marx, if you have not worked your way through the dialectic
subtleties of the first parts, as I have, read those that deal with the
original accumulation of capital and the modern theory of colon
ization . I am convinced that you will be in complete agreement
with them, as I am. Of course, Marx does not have a specific
remedy on hand - for which the bourgeois world, which also now
calls itself socialistic, clamours - no pills , no ointment, no lint to
cure the gaping, bleeding wounds of our society; but it seems to
me that, from the historic process of development of modern
society, he has brought the practical results and applications to
their boldest conclusions and that it was no mean feat to lift up the
1 48 RedJenny
astonished philistine, by means of statistical facts and dialectic
manoeuvres, to the dizzying height of these sentences : 'Violence is
the midwife of any old society that is pregnant with a new one. It is
itself an economic force . . . much of the capital that appears today
in the U nited Sta tes without any birth certificate was capital
accumulated from the blood of English children . . . If money
comes into the world with blood on its cheeks, then capital is
oozing blood and grime from head to foot from all pores ' . Or the
whole passage: 'The sands of capitalistic private property are
running out', etc. to the end.
I must honestly confess that the simple pathos of this passage
has moved me and that the whole matter is now as clear as sun
light. '"
how unpleasant matters have become here in the past few months,
as can be seen from the fa ct thatJennychen has accepted a position
Politics as Fate 1 49
- behind my back - as a tutor in an English family. Although I
found the whole matter very unfortunate (the child has to teach
little children almost all day long) - I don't have to tell you about
that - I agreed to it only on the stipulation that the engagement
was only binding for a month, because I thought it was good for
Jennychen to be distracted by any kind of occupation and to get
out of these four walls . My wife has been in a hysterical state for
years - understandable from the circumstances but for that reason
not more pleasant - and is torturing the children to death with her
lamentations, crankiness and ill humour, although no children
could bear it in a more j olly way. 38
The assertion that Jenny had been ' torturing her children to
death for years' is certainly exaggerated; it is true that she had
been physically and mentally destroyed by the daily worries
that she had to endure for years and that she was often very
brusque with her girls, because she had to hide the family's
true financial condition from them. Engels' offer of a regular
pension rescued her from the depressing uncertainty of her
present life.
II
A cab stops in front of the house, mysterious steps are going back
and forth, there is a whispering and murmuring in the house, and
suddenly a voice comes from upstairs : 'A big statue has arrived' .
If they had shouted: fire, fire the house is on fire, the Fenians
have come, we could not have rushed up more confused, more
stunned, and there it stood in front of our eyes in all its colossal
magnificence, its ideal purity the old Jupiter tonans, undamaged,
intact ! ! . . . Then the debates began at once where the most
dignified niche was for the new 'dear God who art in heaven and
on earth ' . 51
Retired
Revolutionaries
The failure of the Paris Commune led to one of the great
turning-points in the life of Marx and his family. The time was
obviously not yet ripe for the establishment of a communist
order of society. For Marx this meant that the theoretical
reasons for its inevitability simply had to be more convinc
ingly stated. He planned to do this in a second, revised edition
of the first volume of Das Kapital and continue it in a second
volume. But because of the constant quarrels within the
International , in which he was perforce involved, he did not
have time for serious work.
After long discussions with Engels he decided to resign his
position as Head of the International at the convention planned
for The Hague in September 1 872 - but only if the followers of
Bakunin were prevented from taking over the control of the
General Council . 'The life and death of the International are
at stake at the International Congress (The Hague opens
September 2) and before I resign I shall try to protect it from
disruptive elements' , ' Marx wrote to Kugelmann, whom he
offered a mandate as a delegate in the hope that he would
attend the Congress and vote for him. Kugelmann came and
1 60 RedJenny
did as he was told, although he disliked international political
meetings.
His daughter reported that her father met Mrs Marx for the
first time in The Hague: ' a slender, almost youthful-looking
woman, who was passionately interested in all party affairs,
indeed totally engrossed in them' , 2 and went on to hint darkly
that Jenny's influence was baleful - ' Some time ago Jennychen
said, without mentioning any names : " Unfortunately, some- .
body is driving the Moor to this agitation; one could hate her
for that" . ' 3 But it would be ridiculous to hold Jenny respon
sible for Karl's political activities . He was his own master and
nobody, not even his wife, could divert him from his chosen
path. How strong his will was became apparent at The Hague
congress, where he succeeded in expelling the very popular
Bakunin from the International.
In his personal life, Marx was no less determined, as the next
incident reveals . Among the French communards who had
fled to London there were two who visited the Head of the
International, not only because they sought his advice but
because they were attracted to his two daughters, Jennychen
and Tussy. The younger of the two, Charles Longuet, the
former editor of the socialist paper La Rive Gauche, was no
stranger. He had been associated with the Marx family in
1 866, when his friend Paul Lafargue married Laura Marx. He
now fell in love with Jennychen (who reciprocated) and duly
received permission from her parents to marry him in 1 872.
But the other communard, likewise a French journalist, was
Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, a Count by birth who had given
up his title because of his revolutionary convictions. He was 34
years old, highly intelligent and actively engaged in editing the
magazine Rouge et Noir. He had come to Marx to get advice
concerning the translation of his book Histoire de fa Commune
de 1871 into English and German . Marx was greatly interested
in this project and personally supervised the translation into
German .
The English translation was done by his 1 7-year-old
daughter Tussy, who fell pas sionately in love with the author
Retired Revolutionaries 161
My dearest Moor,
I would like to ask you for something now, but you must first
promise not to get angry. I would like to know, dear Moor, when
I may see L. again. It is very hard never to see him. I have really tried
to be patient, but it is so very hard and I feel I cannot stand it any
longer. I do not expect you to say that he may come here. I do not
wish that myself, but could I not go for a walk with him now and
again? You have permitted me to go for walks with Outin and
Frankel . Why not with him? Nobody will be surprised to see us
together, because everybody knows that we are engaged . . .
When I was very sick in Brighton (during one week I fainted
two or three times every day) , L. came to visit me and every time I
felt stronger and happier. I could then more easily bear the heavy
workload lying on my shoulders . It has been so long since I have
1 62 RedJenny
been together with him, and I am so miserable, although I am
honestly trying to be cheerful and happy. But I cannot do it
anymore. Please believe me, dear Moor, if I could see him now
and again, it would do me more good than all Mrs. Anderson 's
medicine. I am sure of it.
In any case, dearest Moor, if I may not see him now, tell me
please, when I may see him. It would be something to look
forward to and it would be less difficult to wait, if it were not as
indefinite as now. My dearest Moor, please do not be angry with
me for having written this and forgive me, iff cause you concern .
Your Tussys
physical and mental pain. It hurt her that her three daughters
the two married ones, Laura and Jenny, but Tussy also - had a
much stronger bond with their father than with her. When
Marx went to Karlsbad for the cure with Tussy, she stayed
home or went alone or with Lizzy to Ramsgate or some other
English seaside resort. Only once, in 1 877, when Karl was
about to go to Karlsbad again on the advice of his doctor, he
wrote to Engels: 'I intend to start for Neuenahr and not
Karlshad, if possible on August 1 2th, for the following reasons:
first, because of the cost; you know that my wife is suffering
badly from impaired digestion, and since, in any case, I am
taking Tussy, who also had a painful attack again, my wife
would be greatly offended if she had to stay behind. ' w Jenny
would probably not have been offended, for she had long
since accepted the fact that Karl did what he wanted to do.
Besides, she had established her own way of life. She took
care of her grandchildren, liked to go to the theatre and went
often, and gave Shakespeare recitations as she had done as a
girl.
Her father had introduced her to the world of Shakespeare
and now, as her life was approaching its end, it was to
Shakespeare she looked again. She was so much impressed by
the performance of a young English actor, Henry Irving, as
Hamlet that she wrote a critical review of it, which Tussy gave
to a correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung: 'It would be
wonderful if you could get Mama's review published in the
Frankfurter . . . Mama asks me to tell you she does not wish
her name to appear in the Frankfurter, but if you want to
indicate who has written the review, you may do so "among
friends" . ' II The review was published and several others
followed . One of the last she wrote, which was published in
the Frankfurter Zeitung in February 1 877, begins with an
ironic introduction , in very much Marx's own style, about
the 'collapse' of the International Conference in Constanti
nople because of Turkey's refusal to grant autonomy to
Hercegovina, Bulgaria, etc . 'The tru mpet of war is silent and
the philistine blathering about politics, quietly puts his fearful
1 64 RedJenny
mind at rest, slumbers peacefully and lulls himself into golden
dreams of peace and prosperity'. 12
Then she describes the great event of the week, the per
formance of Shakespeare's Richard III given before an English
public for the first time in the complete and original text. The
play disappeared from the stage for half a century after
Shakespeare's death; it was later performed in a mutilated
version. But now Irving had the courage to perform the play
'as it was written' : 'The great mass of people who besieged the
doors of the Lyceum last Monday, proved how successful the
experiment was. Immediately after the first monologue of
Glou[ ce )ster
I would like to thank all those who have helped me with this
. work by answering the many questions I asked them. Here I
am thinking above all of Jiirgen Rojan, the Director of the
Central European Department of the Internationaal Instituut
voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam, and of the librarian
of the Karl-Marx-Museum in Trier, Dr Karl Konig. In Eng
land l owe thanks to Mrs ,Ivonne Kapp, author of the two
volume work on Eleanor Marx, my former student Denys
Clark, to the Thames Water Authority for specific infor
mation concerning the sanitary conditions of the Marx homes
in Dean Street and Grafton Terrace and also the librarian of
the Royal Society of Health. I am indebted to my colleague
Professor Charles White, for drawing my attention to the
poem on Jenny Marx. In the library of my own university -
Portland State University - two people have given me much
help during my long efforts to understand Jenny Marx:
Evelyn Crowell, responsible for inter-library loans and, last
but not least, our librarian Elmer Magnuson. The English
version of this book, which I wrote in German, owes much to
the expert advice of my dear wife Mollie, the Manager of
Peters Translation Service.
Bibliog rap hy
Introduction
1 . MEGA III, 1 , p. 337.
2. Kapp, p. 298.
1. Rebellious Blood
1. MEW XIV, p. 433.
2. Krosigk, p. 175.
2. A Childhood in Trier
1 . Krosigk, p. 1 83.
2. Ibid . , p. 15.
3. Raddatz, p. 36.
4. Krosigk, p. 17.
5. Goethe, Faust Part II, Act V.
6. MEGA 1, 1 , p. 1 2 .
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
17. MEGA I, 2, p. 3 1 1 .
IS. Ibid.
19. MEW I, p. 372.
20. Nicolajewsky, p. 6S.
6. Exile in Brussels
1 . Krosigk, p. 59.
2. Born, p. 39.
3. Mohr, p. 216.
4. MEGA III, I, p. 263.
5. Freiligrath, p. 43.
6. Ibid. , p. 1 1 5.
7. Hackel, I, p. 30.
8. Ibid. , p. 1 1 6.
9. MEGA III, I, p. 479.
1 72 RedJenny
to. MEGA I I I , 1, p. 263.
1 1 . Ibid . , p. 480.
12. Born, p. 41 .
13. Mohr, p. 1 09.
14. MEW III. p. 35.
15. MEGA III, 1, p . 517.
16. Ibid . , p. 518.
17. I b i d. • p. 519.
18. Padover. p . 1 1 2.
19. MEGA III. 2. p. 10.
20. Ibid . • p. 20.
21 . Ibid . • p. 16.
22. IISG. Brussels 1 847-8.
23. MEGA III. 2. p. 219.
24. Ibid . • p. 253.
25. Ibid . • p. 1 25.
26. Ibid.
27. Deutsche Brnsseler Zejfutl.�, 9 Dec. 1 847.
28. Ibid . • 6 Jan. 1 848.
29. Mohr. p. 207. .
30. IISG, Feb . 1 848.
31 .MEW IV. p . 530.
32. MEGA III. 2. p. 389.
33. Mohr. p. 208.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid . • p. 209.
36. Ibid.
37. Born, p . 49.
9. Death Street
1. Mayer, p. 5S.
2. MEW XXX, p. 24S.
3. MEGA III, 3, p. 99.
4. Ibid. , p. l OS.
5. Mohr, p. 216.
6. Ibid.
7. Born, p. 39.
8. Mohr, p. 1 09.
9. MEW XXVIII, p . 85.
to. Ibid. , p. 490.
11. Ibid.
12. Mohr, p. 217.
13. Ibid.
14. Stieber, p. 32.
15. Ibid . , p. 30.
16. Ibid . , p. 33.
17. Ibid.
IS. MEW XXVIII, p. 641 .
19. Ibid . , p . 642.
20. Ibid . , p. 1 28.
21 . Ibid.
1 74 RedJenny
22. Mohr, p. 220.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. MEW XXVlll, p. 370.
26. Ibid . , p. 37t .
27. Ibid . , p. 423.
28. Mohr, p. 244.
29. MEW XXVlll, p. 44t .
30. Ibid . , p. 442.
31 . Ibid. , p. 444 .
32. IISG, Jenny to Lassalle, April 1 86t .
33. MEW XXVIII, p. 415.
34. 28June 1 855.
35. MEW XXVIII, p. 438.
36. Ibid.
37. Archiv II, p. 1 76.
38. MEW XXX, p. 671 .
39. Ibid . , XXIX, p . 40.
40. Ibid . , p. 532.
41 . Ibid.
42. IISG, F 1 32.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. MEW XXIX, p. 67.
47. Ibid .
48. Archiv, p. 1 77.
49. Ibid.
1. Mohr, p. 1 1 3.
2. Krosigk, p. 97.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid . , p. 98.
5. Mohr, p. 222.
6. Ibid . , p. 22 1 .
7. Ibid.
8. MEW XXIX, p. 1 50.
9. Ibid . , p. 1 S t .
10. Ibid . , p . 1 56.
11. Ibid . , p. 267.
1 2. Ibid., p. 343.
13. Ibid. , p. 344.
14. Ibid. , p. 345.
15. Krosigk, p. 1 03.
16. MEW XXIX, p. 374.
Notes 1 75
17. MEW XXIX. p. 374.
18. Ibid . , XXIX, p. 385.
19. Ibid . , p. 442.
20. Ibid p. 653.
.•
22. Ibid p. 1 1 .
.•
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid XXIX. p. 654.
.•
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid p. 38.
.•
29. Vogt, p. 1 5 1 f.
30. MEW XXX, p. 683.
31 . Mohr. p. 256.
32. Ibid p. 257.
.•
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid p. 259.
.•
61 . Ibid . , p. 315.
62. Ibid p. 318.
.•
64. Ibid.
1 76 RedJenny
65. MEW XXX. p. 324.
66. Ibid . • p. 342.
67. Ibid p. 347.
. •
1. Archiv. p. 1 77.
2. Ibid p. 1 78.
.•
3. Ibid. , p. 1 79.
4. MEW XXXIII, p. 703.
5. Archiv, p. 1 82.
6. MEW XXX, p. 665.
7. Payne, p. 355.
8. Mohr, p . 232.
9. MEW XXXI, p. 417.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid . , p. 10.
12. Ibid p. 59l .
.•
2t . Ibid p. 583.
.•
----- - -------
1 78 RedJenny
2. Mohr, p. 310.
3. Ibid. , p. 31 1 .
4. Ibid. , p . 312.
5. Kapp, p. 1 53.
6. MEW XXXIII, p. 703.
7. Die Tiichter, p. 1 59.
8. Mohr, p. 288.
9. Ibid.
10. MEW XXXIV, p. 52.
11. Shakespeare}, CV, p. 55.
12. Ibid . , p. 65.
13. Ibid . , p. 66.
14. Mohr, p. 347.
Postscript