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Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, in the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine, the third of seven children. His father, Heinrich Marx (1777–183😎, born Herschel Mordechai (the son of Levy Mordechai (1743-1804) and wife Eva Lwow (1753-1823)) was descended from a long line of rabbis but converted to Lutheran Christianity, despite his many deistic tendencies and his admiration of such Enlightenment figures as Voltaire and Rousseau, in order to be allowed to practice Law. Marx's mother was Henriette née Pressburg (1788–1863). His siblings were Sophie (d. 1883) (m. Wilhelm Robert Schmalhausen), Hermann (1819-1842), Henriette (1820-1856), Louise (1821-1893) (m. Johann Carel Juta), Emilie, Caroline (1824-1847) and Eduard (1834-1837). His mother was the grand-aunt of industrialists Gerard Philips and Anton Philips and a maternal descendant of the Barent-Cohen family through her parents Isaac Heijmans Presburg (Presburg, c. 1747 – Nijmegen, May 3, 1832) and wife Nanette Salomon Barent-Cohen (Amsterdam, c. 1764 – Nijmegen, April 7, 1833), the daughter of Salomon David Barent-Cohen (d. 1807) and wife Sara Brandes, in turn the uncle and aunt by marriage of Nathan Mayer Rothschild's wife.


Marx in 1882Soon after losing his job as editor of Rheinische Zeitung, a Cologne newspaper,[7] Karl Marx was married to Jenny von Westphalen, the educated daughter of a Prussian baron, on June 19, 1843 in Kreuznacher Pauluskirche, Bad Kreuznach. Their engagement was kept secret at first, and for several years was opposed by both the Marxes and Westphalens. From 1844 to 1848, Marx enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle, with income derived from the sale of his works, his salary, gifts from friends and allies: a large inheritance from his fathers death, long delayed, also became available in March 1848.[8] During the first half of the 1850s the Marx family lived in poverty and constant fear of creditors in a three room flat on Dean Street in Soho, London. Marx and Jenny already had four children and three more were to follow. Of these only three survived to adulthood. Marx's major source of income at this time was Engels, who was drawing a steadily increasing income from the family business in Manchester. This was supplemented by weekly articles written as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. Inheritances from one of Jenny's uncles and her mother who died in 1856 allowed the family to move to somewhat more salubrious lodgings at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town a new suburb on the then-outskirts of London. Marx generally lived a hand-to-mouth existence, forever at the limits of his resources, although this did extend to some spending on relatively bourgeois luxuries, which he felt were necessities for his wife and children given their social status and the mores of the time.

Marx's children by his wife were: Jenny Caroline (m. Longuet; 1844–1883); Jenny Laura (m. Lafargue; 1845–1911); Edgar (1847–1855); Henry Edward Guy ("Guido"; 1849–1850); Jenny Eveline Frances ("Franziska"; 1851–1852); Jenny Julia Eleanor (1855–189😎; and one more who died before being named (July 1857).


Karl Marx's Tomb at Highgate Cemetery LondonFollowing the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last fifteen months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on March 14, 1883. He died a stateless person[9] and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, on March 17, 1883. The messages carved on Marx's tombstone are: “WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE”, the final line of The Communist Manifesto, and Engels' version of the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach:[10]

“ THE PHILOSOPHERS HAVE ONLY
INTERPRETED THE WORLD IN

VARIOUS WAYS - THE POINT

HOWEVER IS TO CHANGE IT
”

The tombstone was a monument built in 1954 by the Communist Party of Great Britain with a portrait bust by Laurence Bradshaw; Marx's original tomb had been humbly adorned.[11] In 1970, there was an unsuccessful attempt to destroy the monument, with a homemade bomb.[12][13]

Several of Marx's closest friends spoke at his funeral, including Wilhelm Liebknecht and Friedrich Engels. Engels' speech included the words:

“ On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep — but forever.[1] ”

In addition to Engels and Liebknecht, Marx's daughter Eleanor and Charles Longuet and Paul Lafargue, Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, also attended his funeral. Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, gave a short statement in French. Two telegrams from workers' parties in France and Spain were also read out. Together with Engels' speech, this was the entire programme of the funeral. Also attending the funeral was Friedrich Lessner, who had been sentenced to three years in prison at the Cologne communist trial of 1852; G. Lochner, who was described by Engels as "an old member of the Communist League" and Carl Schorlemmer, a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the Royal Society, but also an old communist associate of Marx and Engels. Three others attended the funeral — Ray Lankester, Sir John Noe and Leonard Church — making eleven in all.

Marx's daughter Eleanor became a socialist like her father and helped edit his works.