KARL MARX

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38 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
who denies God is compelled against his will to pray to the Almighty...
everyone should submit to what was the faith of Newton, Locke and
Leibnitz.' 17
Heinrich Marx was also closely connected with the Rhineland liberal
movement. He was a member of a literary society, the Trier Casino Club,
founded during the French occupation and so called from its meeting
place. The liberal movement gained force after the 1830 Revolution in
France, and the Club held a dinner in 1834 (when Karl was sixteen)
in honour of the liberal deputies from Trier who sat in the Rhineland
Parliament. This dinner - part of a campaign for more representative
constitutions - was the only one held in Prussia, though many such were
held in non-Prussian areas of Germany. Although Heinrich Marx was
extremely active as one of the five organisers of this political dinner, the
toast he eventually proposed was characteristically moderate and deferential.
The nearest he got to the demands of the liberals was effusively to
thank Frederick William III, to whose 'magnanimity we owe the first
institutions of popular representation'. He ended: 'Let us confidently
envisage a happy future, for it rests in the hands of a benevolent father,
an equitable king. His noble heart will always give a favourable reception
to the justifiable and reasonable wishes of his people.' 18 Several revolutionary
songs were then sung and a police report informed the Government
that Heinrich had joined in the singing. The dinner caused anger in
government circles, and this anger was increased by a more radical demonstration
two weeks later, on the anniversary of the founding of the
Casino Club, when the 'Marseillaise' was sung and the Tricolor brandished.
The Prussian Government severely reprimanded the provincial
governor and put the Casino Club under increased police surveillance.
Heinrich Marx was present at this second demonstration but this time
refrained from joining in the singing: he was no francophile and hated
what he termed Napoleon's 'mad ideology'. 19 Although his liberal ideas
were always tempered by a certain Prussian patriotism, Heinrich Marx
possessed a sympathy for the rights of the oppressed that cannot have
been without influence on his son. 20
The Marx family had enough money to live fairly comfortably. Heinrich's
parents had been poor and, although his wife brought a fair dowry,
he was a self-made man. The building in which Marx was born was a
finely constructed three-storey house with a galleried courtyard. 21 However,
Heinrich rented only two rooms on the ground floor and three on
the first floor, in which he housed seven people as well as exercised his
legal practice. Eighteen months after Karl's birth, the family bought and
moved into another house in Trier, considerably smaller than the previous
one, but comprising ten rooms - and with a cottage in the grounds. 22