Karl Marx grew up a brilliant, spoiled child, who bullied his younger sisters and taunted
his schoolmates with sarcastic witticisms—in addition to entertaining both with imaginative
stories.
He had a swarthy complexion that in later years earned him the nickname “The Moor”—a
name used far more often in his inner circle (including his children) than was his real
name.
His neighbor, Baron von Westphalen, took a great interest in Marx as a youth, and the
learned baron would often take long walks with him discussing Homer, Shakespeare, Voltaire,
or other great writers in any of a number of languages that the baron spoke.
As a young man, Karl Marx attended the University of Bonn for one year.
There he was an enthusiastic student, but also an enthusiastic drinker, and took part
in rowdiness and at least one duel.
His father transferred him to the University of Berlin, a larger and more serious institution.
But the selfindulgent, bohemian and spendthrift habits that Marx had exhibited at Bonn continued
at Berlin, where he was sued several times for non-payment of debts.
His father’s letters show growing recriminations directed not only at his son’s prodigious
capacity to waste money—a talent he never lost throughout his life—but also at a more
disturbing personal characteristic, egomania.
One of Marx’s many poems of this period says: Then I will wander godlike and victorious
Through the ruins of the world And, giving my words an active force, I will feel equal
to the creator.
The themes of destruction, corruption, and savagery run through Marx’s poems of this
era, two of which were published in a small literary magazine of the time under the title
“Savage Songs.”
There was nothing political about these writings.
Marx had not yet turned his attention in that direction.
He was simply, as one biographer said, “a man with a peculiar faculty for relishing
disaster.”
A contemporary description of Marx as a student depicts the same demonic personality—again,
not yet in a political context: But who advances here full of impetuosity?
It is a dark form from Trier, an unleashed monster, With self-assured step he hammers
the ground with his heels And raises his arms in all fury to heaven As though he wished
to seize the celestial vault and lower it to earth.
In rage he continually deals with his redoubtable fist,
As if a thousand devils were gripping his hair.
In short, Marx’s angry apocalyptic visions existed before he discovered capitalism as
the focus of such visions.
Marx entered the University of Berlin a few years after the death of its most famous professor—G.W.F.
Hegel, whose posthumous influence was even greater than during his lifetime.
Marx began to associate with a group called the Young Hegelians, who were preoccupied
with philosophy in general and religion in particular—or rather, with atheism, for
they were radical critics of Christianity.
Marx’s formal studies languished; he took only two courses in his last three years at
the University of Berlin.
Marx became a “bohemian student, who merely regarded the university as his camping ground”
and he was largely self-taught.
The death of his father in 1838, and his long engagement to Jenny von Westphalen eventually
made it necessary that he prepare to bring his studies to a close.
Although he had studied at the University of Berlin, he applied for a doctorate at the
University of Jena—an easier institution, noted as a diploma mill.
His doctoral dissertation was on two ancient materialist philosophers, Democritus and Epicurus.