Carl Marx - with a capital 'C' was born in Trier in the German Rhineland at 2 am on the 5th May 1818.

His father Heinrich was descended from a long line of Rabbis and was well respected amongst the Jewish community for his skill in the courtroom. But though Trier was one of the major towns of the Rhineland, it was also one of the poorest. (One winter, a charity kitchen ladled out 57,315 portions of soup to the needy). As Heinrich's clients began to leave the city in search of employment, his work had suffered so badly that shortly before Karl's birth he had taken an unprecedented step and converted to Christianity.

When Karl left school aged seventeen, his academic qualifications were no better than average, though his grades were good enough for entrance to Bonn University. He studied law, at his father's insistence, but was an inattentive student. After an incident during which he was arrested for dueling, Karl returned home to Trier and was enrolled at Berlin University, an institution renowned for its hard working ethic and fine law department. Karl realised that he would never make a lawyer and when Heinrich Mark died in 1838 of chronic inflammation of the liver, he applied himself to his favoured subject and left the university in 1841 with a Doctorate in Philosophy.

Marx returned to Trier to marry his childhood sweetheart Jenny Von Westphalen and accepted a position as editor of a liberal daily newspaper in Cologne. Within weeks of arriving in Cologne, Karl began publishing articles based on his own radical political views which attacked 'class privileges' and the 'tyranny of bureaucratic officialdom', and the paper's subscribers quadrupled within two months - as did government interest. The paper was banned in March 1843, but, as luck would have it, Karl was offered the position of editor on a similar publication in Paris. There history repeated itself. The French government took exception to Karl's articles and within two years he was expelled. Shortly before he escaped across the border into Belgium, he made the acquaintance of the man who was to become his closest ally in the troubled years ahead - Friederich Engels.

In 1849, with most of Europe a closed door, Karl arrived in London accompanied by Jenny, their three children and their faithful maid Lenchen, and they moved into a squalid two-roomed flat in Dean Street, Soho. Sick, exhausted by the persecution and almost destitute, they spent a miserable summer on the brink of starvation. A few months later, on 5th November 1849, Karl's luck turned when he received an enquiry from The New York Tribune asking whether he was interested in becoming their European correspondent. That same day, Jenny gave birth to a little baby boy who they named Heinrich. Marx gladly accepted the position with the Tribune, charging £1 an article, but their baby boy was not so fortunate.
As Jenny later wrote:

"The loss of our dear child happened at the time of our most abject poverty. The poor child drank in so much worry and quiet sorrow that he never slept a night from his birth, teetering between death and a miserable life. When he lay resting cold, I ran to a French refugee who lived near us and had visited us. He gave me at once £2 with deep sympathy, and the little coffin in which my poor child now rests in peace, was paid for with them. He had no cradle when he came into the world and even his last home was a long time coming".

By the time they moved out of Dean Street in 1856 and into their first real family home - a small house in Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town - Jenny had borne two other children and the Grim Reaper had laid claim to them both. Lenchen their maid, also had a child - registered as Henry - and Engels who often visited, accepted paternity. Money worries plagued them continually and the only light on their horizon seemed the imminent publication of the first volume of 'Das Kapital' and the royalties it would generate. In the first year, 'Das Kapital' sold just two hundred copies.

Engels proved their saviour. His family were wealthy textile manufacturers and when he retired, he provided a yearly pension of £350 to Marx. The years of poverty had however taken their toll. Jenny died of cancer of the liver on 2nd December 1881 and Karl lived on without her for only another 15 months. Engel's speech at the grave side, said it all:

"On the 14th March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. We found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep. Marx was the best hated man of his time, slanders were heaped upon him, but he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers - from the mines of Siberia to all parts of Europe and America. He had many opponents, though hardly one personal enemy. His name will endure through all the ages, and so will his work".

Before he died in 1895, Engels had ensured that Marx's remaining work was published and on his death bed, he made an amazing confession. He confided that Lenchen the maid's baby was not his offspring but rather had been fathered by Marx. When Lenchen, who lived to a ripe old age, departed this life, the Marx family insisted it was only proper that she be laid to rest in the family tomb.