Karl Marx

            Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Prussia. He attended the university of Bonn and later the university at Berlin, where he studied in law, while majoring in history and philosophy. After his education, Marx associated himself with the "Left Hegelians," along with Bruno Bauer, which were a group who formed atheistic and revolutionary ideas from Hegel's philosophy. The Young Hegelians practiced philosophical idealism. Here he first meet Arnold Ruge and Ludwig Feuerbach. In 1842 Marx and Bruno Bauer were asked to contribute to the Rheinische Zeitung, a German paper, in Cologne. At the time Marx started, the paper had only 400 subscribers. Marx in October of 1842, became editor-in-chief, and decided to move from Bonn to Cologne. As the paper became more and more revolutionary and widely read, the government decided to censor, and eventually suppress it. The paper was banned in March of 1843. At this time, it had more than 3,400 subscribers from all over Germany. Karl Marx was married to his childhood friend Jenny von Westphalen, in 1843. Later in the fall of that year Marx along with another Left Hegelian, Arnold Ruge, moved to Paris and began publication of a radical journal entitled Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher. Due to the problems in publishing such a radical paper, only one issue appeared. Karl met his closest friend in September of 1844, when Frederick Engels arrived in Paris. Together they participated in the activities of many revolutionary communities. They formed the theory and ideas of revolutionary proletarian socialism, also known as communism. Also in 1844, Marx wrote a revolutionary book called the Holy Family. It is a materialist view of the history of man. Basically, it was a critique on his former philosophy group, "The Young Hegelians." It expressed the view of history being mans activities. " History' is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his own aims.