Jenny Marx (1814–1881)

Wife, assistant, and close comrade-in-arms of Karl Marx, the great mentor of the proletariat, and a great woman.

Jenny was born on February 12, 1814, in Trier, Germany, into a noble family. Her father, Ludwig von Westphalen, was a businessman and later became a Privy Councilor of the Prussian government. In her youth, Jenny was well educated and was the “Queen of the Ball” of Trier at the time. Jenny and Marx had been good friends since childhood, and in the summer of 1836, Marx, a first-year law student at the University of Bonn, returned to Trier to propose to Jenny, after which Jenny made a lifelong commitment to the 18-year-old Marx. After seven years of waiting, Marx and Jenny married in Kreuznach. During these seven years, she could only accompany her fiancé Marx with her thoughts and letters from afar, except for a few occasions when she had met him. In their subsequent marriage, Jenny and Marx had seven children, but only three daughters, Jenny, Laura and Eleanor, survived. Yanni has wholeheartedly supported Marx’s academic career, including copying Marx’s manuscripts, correcting errors and polishing, was Marx’s “secretary” and the first reader of his works. Jenny was also responsible for Marx’s correspondence work, and followed Marx into exile in France, Belgium, England and other parts of the world, where he was hostile to and persecuted by the reactionary class. Throughout her difficult and turbulent life, she supported Marx’s cause and the international workers’ movement until her death on December 2, 1881, in London. In his speech at Jenny’s funeral, Engels spoke highly of Jenny’s great life and called her “noble-hearted woman”.