Karl Marx: 15 Interesting facts you should know on his 197th birthday

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Karl Marx

If we think of philosophers whose ideologies had changed the scenario of the world, then Karl Marx's name will surely be commemorated. The German thinker was a socialist, economist, journalist, sociologist, and a revolutionist. His writings and theories made the foundation for modern international communism. In his professional life, he faced major criticism from the German and French governments for his intense and extremist writings that pushed him to start the 'The Communist Manifesto' in 1848 with fellow German companion and thinker 'Friedrich Engels'. From thereafter, he never looked back.

Today, on his 197th birthday, let us look at the key moments of his career

Marx was born on May 5,1818 to Heinrich Marx, a successful attorney and Henrietta Pressburg, both of Jewish descent, in Trier, Kingdom of Prussia in the German Confederation

He enrolled in the University of Bonn and was engaged to Jenny von Westphalen. He became a close associate of her father Ludwig von Westphalen, who was an important figure in the Faculty of Law in the University of Bonn. He influenced Marx to study Romanticism and Saint-Simonian politics

After a brief stint, he enrolled in the University of Berlin in the following year where he studied law. It was during this time that he became deeply interested in philosophy and had a keen interest in the late G.W.F. Hegel, a popular figure of that time and was the topic of discussion among European circles

He became a member of the 'Hegelians' who challenged the ideas of various issues including religion, politics and ethics

By 1837, he completed a short fictional novel 'Scorpion and Felix' and a drama 'Oulanem', along with other writings in the form of shorts and poetries that remain unpublished

He wrote his Doctoral thesis 'The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature', which he completed in 1941, which was advised by his Hegelian friend Bruno Bauer. He submitted it to the University of Jena whose faculty awarded him the Ph.D. degree

In 1842, he began to work as a journalist in the 'Rheinische Zeitung' (Rhineland News), where later he became the editor. There he presented his radical views on the right winged European governments and names that brought him under the radar of the Prussian Government who scanned every issue. After it featured an article that criticised the Russian monarchy, it was banned for its 'seditious' content

He married Jenny in 1843 in a Protestant church and moved to Paris. There he met Friedrich Engels who along with Marx went onto become prominent figures in philosophy

In 1848, the first issue of the 'The Communist Manifesto' written by Marx and Engels where they represented all of history as a series of class struggles and said that working to be the new ruling class pushing away the capitalists

He worked as a correspondent in the 'New York Daily Tribune' although he hardly earned a living salary mostly supported by Engels

In 1867, he published the 'Das Capital' where he wrote about the law and applications of economics in the modern society as a dynamic system and elaborated on the capitalist theory, labour value surplus, foreign trade and world market

Based on it, he kept researching on 'The Theories on Surplus Values' which discussed theoretical and political aspects of various economists, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo

He continued to work on the second and third volumes of Das Capital, which were released by Engels posthumously after Marx's death

During the last decade of his life, his health deteriorated resulting in his death on March 14, 1883. He passed away in his armchair

He was buried at the Highgate Cemetery in London. His tombstone is engraved with the last line from the The Communist Manifesto and a quote from 'Theses of Feuerbach'

Karl Marx never got the reputation that he deserved in his life, leading a poverty and grief stricken life where his wife and his eldest daughter had died before him, which had made a devastating impact on him and his health. His work was read and respected by Russian leader and Communist Vladimir Lenin, who followed Marx's works very closely and helped him gain recognition.

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