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Karl Marx
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(Key words: influential, socialist, acceptance, engage, friend, Communism, expel, poverty, health, pass away)
History is economics in action.
-- Karl Marx
The philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) is without a doubt the most influential (1) socialist thinker in the 19th century. Although he was largely ignored by scholars in his own lifetime, his social, economic and political ideas gained rapid acceptance in the socialist movement after his death.
Marx was born into a comfortable middle-class home in Trier, Germany on May 5, 1818.
At the age of 17, Marx entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Bonn. After his 19th birthday, he became engaged (2) to childhood friend Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, a prominent (3) member of Trier society and man responsible for interesting Marx in romantic literature and politics.
But Marx's parents opposed the engagement of a young man of his age, so the wedding date was fixed for 1843, a long time in the future, but, as he later wrote, "they seemed but so many days to me, because I loved her so much." Having played together as children and become engaged as a young man and girl, the couple "would go hand in hand through the battle of life".
In the autumn of 1843, Marx went to Paris in order to publish a radical (4) journal. It was in Paris in September, 1844 that he first met life-long friend and associate Frederick Engels (1820-1895). Marx and Engels were both active in various revolutionary groups and together worked out the theory of "Communism".
Marx was expelled (5) from Paris at the end of 1844 and moved to Brussels.
During the first half of the 1850s, the Marx family lived in poverty in London. Marx and Jenny already had four children and two more were to follow. Of these only three survived (6). Marx's major source of income at this time was Engels who was trying a steadily increasing income from the family business in Manchester.
During the last decade of his life Marx's health declined. And the deaths of his eldest daughter and his wife clouded the last years of his life.
On March 14, 1883 Marx passed away peacefully in his armchair. He was buried at Highgate Cemetery in London.
Question
1. Why did Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen become engaged in 1937 but hold wedding ceremony in 1943?
Notes: 1. (adj.) 有影响力的 2. (adj.) 订婚的 3. (adj.) 显要的 4. (adj.) 激进的 5. (v.) 驱逐 6. (v.) 存活
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