About him as a person, his historical conditions, his life, his loved ones. Does anyone have any favorite biographies or even just passages from primary or secondary sources? Alternatively, if anyone has the time, what do you think is most important or interesting to understand about Karl Marx as a person, or perhaps about the historical context he lived in?

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Some of my favorite anecdotes about Marx:

    • Named all his daughters Jenny, after their mother
    • Broke a bunch of street lamps one drunken night in London in a rowdy fit, then hid from the police in an alleyway
    • Got into a duel as a university student with a Prussian soldier. Came away with a scar above his eye.
    • His wife one time sold his pants for food
    • One time a Prussian cop went to the Marx household as part of an investigation, but had to leave because the cigar smoke was so thick
    • Had he and his wife lived a bit longer, and were in better health, Marx would have probably published a book on calculus. He was very interested in mathematics towards the end of his life, particularly differential and integral calculus.
    • Had a thing for nicknames. His closest friends called him Mohr (he had a darker complexion than most Germans). His kids called him Nick or Charlie. He frequently gave other people nicknames too. My favorite is he gave the name ‘Jollymeier’ to Carl Schorlemmer, Marx’s friend and one of the founders of organic chemistry.
    • He had a wide and varied social life, despite being so poor and of ill-health. He made friends easily. People were always coming and going in his house or staying over, including August Willich, who’d serve as a Union general in the American civil war
    • One of the people who attended Marx’s funeral was Wilhelm Liebknecht, father of Karl Liebknecht, who’d go on to found the Spartacus League with Rosa Luxemburg.