Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society

The Life of Marx and the Development of His Work

Michael Heinrich, Alex Locascio

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781583677360
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Biografías políticas

For over a century, Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism has been a crucial resource for social movements. Now, recent economic crises have made it imperative for us to comprehend and actualize Marx’s ideas. But without a knowledge of Karl Marx’s life as he lived it, neither Marx nor his works can be fully understood. There are more than twenty-five comprehensive biographies of Marx, but none of them consider his life and work in equal, corresponding measure. This biography, planned for three volumes, aims to include what most biographies have reduced to mere background: the contemporary conflicts, struggles, and disputes that engaged Marx at the time of his writings, alongside his complex relationships with a varied assortment of friends and opponents.

This first volume will deal extensively with Marx’s youth in Trier and his studies in Bonn and Berlin. It will also examine the function of poetry in his intellectual development and his first occupation with Hegelian philosophy and with the so-called “young Hegelians” in his 1841 Dissertation. Already during this period, there were crises as well as breaks in Marx’s intellectual development that prompted Marx to give up projects and re-conceptualize his critical enterprise. This volume is the beginning of an astoundingly dimensional look at Karl Marx – a study of a complex life and body of work through the neglected issues, events, and people that helped comprise both. It is destined to become a classic.

1

FORGOTTEN YOUTH
1818–1835

The young man made an impression, a tremendous impression: “Be prepared to meet the greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher living now. When he will appear in public (both in his writings as well as at the university), he will draw the eyes of all Germany upon him. . . . [He] is still a very young man, hardly 24 years old; but he will give the final blow to all medieval religion and politics; he combines the deepest philosophical seriousness with a cutting wit. Can you imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine, and Hegel combined—not thrown together—in one person? If you can—you have Dr. Marx.” (Hess 2004: xii)

Moses Hess (1812–1875), who wrote these lines in 1841 to his friend Berthold Auerbach, was six years older than Marx, and the author of two books in which he had attempted to give the most recent philosophy a political twist. The young Marx, in contrast, had at this point not published anything other than two poems. Nonetheless, his friends regarded him as a future star in the philosophical firmament.

The young man did not just make an impression upon his friends. Just twenty-four years old and without practical experience in any profession, in October of 1842 he was made part of the editorial staff of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. This was not a small local rag, but rather the mouthpiece of the liberal Rhineland bourgeoisie. Well appointed with capital as a joint-stock company, the Rheinische Zeitung was on its way to becoming one of the most important German newspapers.

How could it be that the young Marx was able to make such an impression upon his environment so early in his life? Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, at the time a tiny little city in the far-western part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He spent his childhood and youth in Trier with numerous siblings, attended gymnasium,¹³ received his first sparks of intellectual stimulation, and very early on made the acquaintance of his later wife, Jenny von Westphalen. Family, school, friends, the environment in which one grows up, experiences and conflicts during one‘s youth and childhood—all of this has a considerable influence upon a person‘s development. Early hopes and successes can have long-term effects just as much as early fears and failures. But we know nothing about the hopes and fears of Marx the youth. His childhood and youth, the phase of life before his Abitur exam in 1835, is “lost.” Marx did not keep a diary or compose memoirs of his youth, and there are no eyewitness reports of his youth, no letters from third parties in which he’s mentioned. Not even isolated observations by relatives, acquaintances, or teachers have survived. Even later, when Marx was a well-known personage, none of his fellow pupils published any kind of recollections concerning him. Only his youngest daughter Eleanor shared two small anecdotes after his death, both unspecific in terms of time period. Otherwise, only a few pieces of information can be gleaned from official documents.

WHAT WE KNOW FOR SURE

Karl Marx came into this world in Trier on May 5, 1818, a Tuesday, around two o’clock in the morning, as the child of Heinrich Marx and his wife, Henriette, née Presburg. That‘s what is recorded in the birth register of the city of Trier, which gives the child’s first name as “Carl.” (Monz 1973: 214).¹⁴ Marx usually wrote “Karl”; the double name “Karl Heinrich” that shows up in many biographies was used only during his time as a student.¹⁵

Karl was not his parents’ first child; in 1815, their son Mauritz David and in 1816 daughter Sophie had been born. However, Mauritz David died in 1819. In the years following, further siblings were born: Hermann (1819), Henriette (1820), Louise (1821), Emilie (1822), Caroline (1824), and Eduard (1826), so that Karl grew up with seven siblings total. However, not all of them would go on to live long lives: Eduard, the youngest brother, was eleven when he died in 1837. Three other siblings were hardly older than 20 at the time of their death: Hermann died in the year 1842, Henriette in 1845, and Caroline in 1847. In all cases, the cause of death was given as “consumption” (tuberculosis), a widespread illness in the nineteenth century. The three remaining sisters lived considerably longer; they also survived their brother Karl. Sophie died in 1886, Emilie in 1888, and Louise in 1893.

Parents Heinrich (1777–1838) and Henriette (1788–1863) had married in 1814. Both came from Jewish families that converted to Protestant Christianity. Karl Marx was baptized on August 26, 1824, along with his then six siblings. At this point, his father had already been baptized; the exact date, however, is not known. His mother was baptized a year later, on November 20, 1825. On the occasion of the baptism of her children, according to the entry in the church register, she wanted to wait with her own baptism out of consideration for her still-living parents, but she wanted her children to be baptized (Monz 1973: 242).

Marx’s father was a well-regarded lawyer in Trier, and his income allowed his family a certain affluence. Both the house on Brückengasse (today Brückenstraße), which the family rented and in which Karl was born,¹⁶ as well as the somewhat smaller, but centrally located house on Simeonstraße that the family purchased in the autumn of 1819 and in which young Karl grew up, were among the better bourgeois homes of the city (Herres 1993: 20).

As the school tuition payments verify, the twelve-year-old Karl was accepted in the winter semester of 1830–31 to the Quarta, that is, the third grade, of the Trier gymnasium (Monz 1973a: 11). He took the abitur exam in 1835, at the age of seventeen; his Abitur tasks are, except for a poem that’s probably even older, his earliest texts. We don’t know whether Karl attended an elementary school. Elementary schools at this time were not particularly good, and since Karl began with the third grade of gymnasium, he presumably received private instruction before his admission. The bookseller Eduard Montigny mentions in a letter to Marx from the year 1848 that he had once given him writing lessons (MEGA III/2:471).

Personal information about Marx’s youth is only available from two anecdotes handed down by his daughter Eleanor. Twelve years after Marx’s death, she wrote: “My aunts [Marx’s sisters] say that as a little boy he was a terrible tyrant to his sisters, whom he would ‘drive’ down the Markusberg at Trier full speed and, worse, would insist on their eating the ‘cakes’ he made with dirty dough and dirtier hands. But they withstood the ‘driving’ and ate the ‘cakes’ without murmur, for the sake of the stories Karl would tell them as a reward for their virtue” (E. Marx, 1895: 245).

In a biographical sketch prepared shortly after Marx’s death, Eleanor writes that he was “At once much loved and feared by his school fellows—loved because he was always doing mischief, and feared because of his readiness in writing satirical verse and lampooning his enemies” (E. Marx 1883: https://www.marxists.org/archive/eleanor-marx/1883/06/karl-marx.htm).

Eleanor reports that among Marx‘s earliest playmates was his future wife, Jenny von Westphalen, and her younger brother Edgar. The latter attended the same school as Marx and also received confirmation along with him on March 23, 1834 (Monz 1973: 254, 338). How the children‘s friendship came about and when it began, however, remains unknown. We know that Marx‘s older sister Sophie was friends with Jenny, but whether it was the two girls or the two boys Karl and Edgar who first made friends, or whether the children‘s friendship was first initiated through the friendly relationship between their fathers, is not known.

Edgar was the only classmate that Marx remained friends with for long after his school days. We don’t know whether he maintained friendly relations with other classmates during his school days. But it would be somewhat hasty to conclude from this lack of knowledge that he had no friends, a point to which I‘ll return at the end of the chapter.

Eleanor also discloses that the young Karl was intellectually stimulated primarily by his father and his future father-in-law, Ludwig von Westphalen. It was from the latter that he “imbibed his first love for the “Romantic” School, and while his father read him Voltaire and Racine, Westphalen read him Homer and Shakespeare.” The fact that Marx dedicated his doctoral dissertation rather emotionally to Ludwig von Westphalen in 1841 demonstrates how important the latter was to him.

That’s everything we know for sure about Karl Marx from the time before his Abitur exam. However, we can factor in his environment, living conditions in Trier, his family relations, and school. Particularly with regard to his father and father-in-law, a few things have been discovered in the last few decades. Neither personal characteristics nor later developments can be deduced from his environment, but it constitutes an initial background against which the young Marx processed his early experiences.

TRIER BETWEEN IDYLL AND PAUPERISM

Marx was born into a provincial city. In 1819, Trier had hardly more than 11,000 inhabitants; furthermore, about 3,500 soldiers were stationed in Trier (Monz 1973: 57). This was not an especially large population, even if one takes into consideration that back then most people lived in the countryside and cities had far fewer inhabitants than today. Despite its small number of inhabitants, Trier, which was surrounded by a town wall until well into the nineteenth century, had a considerable spread. Construction was extensive, with many open spaces, which were used inside the city as farmland and gardens or as pastures. In 1840, the undeveloped spaces in Trier still outnumbered the developed ones, and alongside houses made of stone were one-story houses made of wood, in one neighborhood there were even “barracks the likes of which nearly no other tiny country town has” (Kentenich 1915: 746).

The Trier in which Marx grew up was characteristically rural; it had only two main streets, the rest of the town consisting of side alleys and little streets (ibid.: 747). How the conditions of buildings and hygiene must have been is made clear by the prohibitions of a police order from 1818 (reprinted in full in ibid.: 713ff.). The order said that from now on house construction would be allowed only along an established alignment; houses in danger of collapse (of which there were apparently not a few) had to be torn down; flues and stovepipes could no longer lead directly to the street but had to be extended to the roof; diverting sewage from kitchens, stables, and commercial enterprises onto the street was prohibited; also prohibited was pouring wastewater and emptying chamber pots onto the open street; and it was no longer permissible to slaughter pigs and calves on the street.

Within Trier, there were important remnants of Roman buildings; outside of the city there was an impressive landscape. Both were important for Marx’s youth. Comprehensive lessons in Latin found vivid illustration in the Roman buildings and collections of classical antiquities, and the landscape was inviting for strolls and hikes. As can be gleaned from the dedication of his dissertation (MECW 1: 27), the young Karl had undertaken extensive hikes with his future father-in-law, Ludwig von Westphalen. The city’s appearance at the time is depicted by Ernst von Schiller (1796–1841), the second-oldest son of the poet Friedrich von Schiller and a judge at the district court of Trier between 1828 and 1835. In a letter from June 1, 1828, to his sister Emilie, he wrote:

Rather long, interrupted by many gardens, the city stretches along the right bank of the Mosel River, over which there runs a stone bridge of eight arches. At the northern end, the city is closed by the Porta Nigra, a gigantic building . . . within the city, on the eastern side, there stands on a gigantic square the palace of the 30th infantry regiment. In the southeastern corner of the city there still lie the very large ruins of the Roman baths and the amphitheater. . . . In the south and the north of the city are the splendid buildings of formerly wealthy abbeys under imperial immediacy [a status granted by the Holy Roman Empire to give institutions autonomy from local rulers]. . . . On the left bank of the Mosel, right behind the bridge arise jagged rocks, red in color; between them are large almond and chestnut trees. Upon these rocks, one sees a hermitage and at its highest point, a lonely cross, from which one glances into the steep depths. Behind these rocks, high mountains project, with a beautiful high forest of chestnut, oak, and beech trees . . . between the rocks, there’s a forest stream that flows into the Mosel which, from a distance of 15 minutes from its outlet, plunges from a height of 70 feet into a ravine where the sun never shines. Here it is splendid; constantly cooled, and with no sound other than the fall of the forest stream. On the mountains and rocks, one looks down upon the city as if upon a map. It is a quite beautiful valley. All of these natural beauties are so near that one can reach them and return within a few hours. (Schmidt 1905: 335)

Trier’s History and Cultural Life

Trier, founded by the Romans around 16 BC, is one of the oldest German cities. In the first few centuries after Christ, Trier developed into one of the largest Roman cities north of the Alps, and in the fourth century was one of the residences of the Western Roman Emperor, with around 80,000 inhabitants. In the immediate vicinity of the most famous Roman building in Trier, the Porta Nigra, in Simeonsstraße, was the house in which Karl Marx grew up.

In the Medieval and Early Modern periods, the population of Trier declined drastically due to wars, plagues, and famine. In 1695, it contained fewer than 3,000 people (Kentenich 1915: 534). Since the Middle Ages, Trier and its surrounding territories had constituted an electorate (German: Kurfürstentum). The archbishop of Trier was one of three spiritual electors who, along with the four secular electors, chose the German kings. Not only many churches and monasteries, but also the palace mentioned by Schiller, originate from the period of the electorate. Starting in the twelfth century in Trier, a prestigious relic was preserved, the “Holy Tunic,” supposedly the tunic worn by Jesus. When this tunic is exhibited publicly, which is rarely, it attracts massive numbers of believers. Karl Marx’s wife, Jenny, saw such an exhibition in 1844 during her visit to Trier, which she reported on.

The strong position of the Catholic Church in Trier was not shaken by the Reformation; at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Protestants in Trier were an infinitesimally small minority. The architectural consequences of Catholicism were characterized by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who got to know Trier in 1792, as follows: “The city itself is striking; it lays claim to possessing more ecclesiastical buildings than any other town of the same size; this it would be difficult to deny, for inside the walls it is crowded, nay, overwhelmed, with churches, chapels, monasteries, convents, colleges, and other buildings for knightly orders and fraternities to meet; outside it is beset by abbeys, institutions, and Carthusian monasteries.”

Goethe had participated in the first military campaign against revolutionary France. The armies of the old monarchist Europe, the Europe that looked down on the new France with contempt, had to retreat before the cannonades of the Battle of Valmy, which would become famous. During the retreat, Goethe spent some time in Trier, where he made the acquaintance of a young teacher from whom he learned about the city during their walks together and with whom he enjoyed “many pleasant talks on scientific and literary subjects” (Goethe 1884: 176). This young teacher, Johann Hugo Wyttenbach (1767–1848), was for a good forty years or so after Goethe’s stay the director of the gymnasium of Trier, where he taught the young Karl. We will return to him.

When Karl Marx was born, twenty-six years after Goethe’s visit, the cityscape had changed considerably. In 1794, Trier was occupied by French troops. Revolutionary France had not only beaten back the monarchist powers but had made considerable territorial conquests. French rule brought a decisive revolutionary break to Trier, which fundamentally changed life in many areas. In 1798, French law, which was very progressive at the time, was introduced, followed in 1804 by the Napoleonic Code Civil. With that, aristocratic privileges were abolished, and all citizens were equal before the law. The hereditary subservience of the peasantry and guilds was abolished and the freedom to exercise a trade of one’s choosing was introduced. Court trials were made public, and for punitive matters, juries were summoned; that is, there was a reliance upon the participation of citizens, which was reflected in verdicts. The power of the Church was restricted, and the obligation to wed before a civil registry office introduced.

From 1802 on, most of the monasteries and abbeys in Trier were abolished, and numerous buildings torn down. Most Church property was transferred to the state and subsequently auctioned off. Since individual Church properties were sold as undivided units, considerable means were required to buy them, which only the urban bourgeoisie possessed. After purchase, the properties were divided and further sold at a large profit. The consequence was an enormous growth in wealth of the already well-heeled ruling class (Clemens 2004).

Above all, after 1800 the French occupation was advantageous for industry and trade: Trier obtained access to French markets; sales to the French came from wallpaper manufacturers, a porcelain ...