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]
    ·
    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.
    • DoubleShot [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      What about when August Willich challenged him to a duel an Marx was like "nah I'm not getting into that shit".

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        That duel did occur, with Konrad Schramm standing in for Marx. Schramm was a member of the Communist League and an associate of Marx. That duel is kind of funny because after setting a time and date, Willich and Schramm then both discovered pistol dueling wasn't legal in the UK, so instead they held it in Belgium.

        Schramm got shot in the head in the duel, but apparently survived and died of TB 8 years later.

        • DoubleShot [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Dueling is one of those things from history I just cannot wrap my head around. Especially a duel among comrades.

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
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            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Throughout most of European history it operated as a pressure relief valve. It was conflict resolution among nobility, more than that it kept the noble class united. Most duels weren't to the death, they were declared over when one person forfeited or had their blood drawn. Both parties in a successful duel were considered honorable, both the winner and the loser, so both had reputation to gain even if they lost.

            Even though they weren't fighting to the death, people did frequently die in them. That's part of how they worked as a uniting force among nobles. Even the threat of a duel was frightening, because even a simple scratch on the cheek could lead to infection, fever, and death. Even winning a duel was often deadly, because even if you kill your opponent, your wounds could also prove lethal. So, more often than not, nobles would choose to play nice with one another and resolve mutual conflicts in diplomatic ways, or just use their own soldiers, because the alternative was a swordfight that could kill both of them.

            August Willich was a Prussian army officer and grew up among people with noble titles. Dueling was the culture he was acclimated to. I don't know much about Schramm, but in my head I've imagined the story as he saw the duel as defending Marx against some haughty guy with a noble title trying to inject something as ridiculous as dueling between comrades. Schramm might have seen victory against Willich as proof of how proletariat revolutionaries could defeat aristocrats. Schramm was also only 27 years old at the time and full of piss and vinegar, so he also might not have been thinking straight to begin with.

            I hope that explains it.

          • mazdak
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            edit-2
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator