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Karl Marx (1818–1883) was born into a solid middle-class family and grew up in the city of Trier (Trè ves in French) in the Rhineland area of Germany. His father was a middle-rung government bureaucrat. At the age of 25, in 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen. They remained a devoted couple throughout their lives, with a family of five children, one of whom died at an early age. The family had to endure a rather harsh life because Marx, after completing his formal education, immediately embarked upon a career of revolutionary writing that left him with no stable source of income and led government officials to consider him as a persona non grata. At times the Marx family was assisted financially by Frederick Engels (1820–1895), whose father was a well-off industrialist. Marx had met Engels for the first time in 1844. Engels, who became Marx's lifelong collaborator, was distinguished for his own intellectual writings.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137460295_1

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