Page:Zelda Kahan - Karl Marx His Life And Teaching (1918).pdf/5



About this time Marx married the playmate and friend of his childhood and youth, Jenny von Westphalen. Herself a highly-intelligent and well-educated woman, Marx could not have had a better helpmate for life. From the day of her marriage to the day of her death, she shared all the joys and sorrows, all the hopes and aspirations of her husband. They were devoted to one another. Their daughter, Eleanor, relates how, when her mother, in the autumn of 1880, was so ill that she could scarcely even rise from her couch, her father also had an attack of pleurisy which kept him in bed in a separate room. "Mohr" (that was the name by which Marx was known to the family circle and friends because of his black, shaggy hair and beard), she says, "recovered from his sickness this time. Never shall I forget the morning when he felt strong enough to go into dear mother's room. They were young once more together—she a loving girl, and he an adoring youth who, together entered on their life—not an old man wrecked by sickness and a dying old woman who were taking leave of each other for life." Mehring states that one of the most sworn enemies of this worst of atheists and communists nevertheless characterised this marriage as having been consummated in heaven.

After the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung Marx and his wife went to Paris. There he worked for a short time on the Französische Jahrbücher Deutsche, and later on the Paris Vorwaerts. Whilst working on the former Karl Marx became acquainted with Frederick Engels, and henceforth these two became the closest possible personal, political and literary friends. By this time Marx had already reached the first beginnings of the fundamentals of his conception of materialism, of which we shall speak later. He had reached it mainly from the philosophic side. On the other hand, Engels, who had lived for a long time in England, the cradle of modern industry, had come to similar conclusions from a study of the practical conditions of industrial life in England. The two thus complemented each other, and together they were able to