The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-03-16
by Eleanor Mara


May 5, 1918, of Jewish parents. His
father, man of great talents-was
a lawyer, strongly imbued with
French eighteenth century ideas of
religion, science, and art; his mother
was the descendant Of Hungarian
Jews, who in the seventeenth CEN
fury settled in Holland.
Among his earliest friends and
playmates were Jenny afterwards
his wife) and Edgar Won Westpha-
len. From their father, Baron Won
Westphalen himself half Scott :,
--...-!. Marx imbibed his first love for
the Romantic School; and while his
father read him Voltaire and Ra-
cine, Westphalen read him Homer
and Shakespeare. These always re-
manned his favorite writer's.
At once much loved and feared by
his schoolfellows loved because
he was always in mischief, and fear
ed because of his readiness in writ
ing satirical verse and lampooning
his enemies - Karl Marx passed
through the usual school routine,
and then proceeded to the univer-
sites of Bonn and Berlin, where, to
please his father, he for time stud
led law, and, to please himself, he
studied history and philosophy. In
1912, he was about to take up po-
sition at Bonn University as Privat-
dozent (instructor), but the political
movement which had begun in Ger
many since the death of Frederick
William III in 1910 attracted him
into another career.
The chiefs of the Rhenish liberals,
Camphausen and Hansemann, had
founded the "Rheinische Zeitung" at
Cologne, with the cooperation of
Marx, whose brilliant and bold criti-
cism of the provincial Landtag Gre
ated such sensation, that, although
only twenty-four years old, he was
offered the chief editorship of the
paper. He accepted it, and there
with began his long struggle with
all despotisms, and with Prussian
despot:am in particular.
In the same year, 1843, Marx had
married his old friend and playfel-
low, to whom he had been engaged
for seven years, Jenny Won West
phalen, and with his young wife
proceeded to Paris. Here, together
with Arnold Ruge, he published the
utsch-franzosische Jahrbucher,"
in which he began the long series of
his socialist writings. His first con-
tribution was a critique on Hegel's
philosophy of law; the second, an es-
say on the Jewish problem.
When the "Jahrbucher" ceased to
appear, Marx contributed to the
journal "Vorwaerts," of which he is
usually said to have been the editor.
AS matter of fact. the editorship
of this paper, to which Heine, Over
beck, Engels, ETC., contributed, seems
to have been carried ON in some
what erratic manner, and really
responsible editor never existed.
Marks next publication was Die
heilige Fdmilie (The Holy Family,
written jointly with Engels, satiri-
cal critique directed against Bruno
Bauer and his school of Hegelian
idealists.
This same year, Marx founded a
German Working Mans Club at
Brussels, and, what is of more i'm
portance, Joined, together with his
political friends, h e Communist
League. The whole organization of
the League was changed by him !;
from hole-and-corner conspiracy it
was transformed into an organiza-
ton for the propaganda of Commu-
mist principles, and was only secret
because existing circumstances made
secrecy a necessity. Wherever Ger
man Working Mems Clubs existed
the League existed also, and it was
the first socialist movement of an
international character, English
men, Belgians, Hungarians, Poles,
and Scandinavians being members
it was the first organization OF
the Social Democratic Party.
In 1S47, a congress of the League
was held in London, at which Marx
and Engels were present as dele
gates; and they were subsequently
appointed to write the celebrated
Manifesto of the Communist Party
first published just before the rev.