KARL MARX

TRIER, BONN AND BERLIN
49
our time, you have always been able, inspired by a profound and
burning idealism, to perceive, behind the veils that hide it, the shrine
that burns at the heart of this world. You, my fatherly friend, have
always been for me the living proof that idealism is no illusion, but the
true reality. 52
II. STUDENT DAYS
In October 1835, at the early age of seventeen, Marx left home for the
university. His whole family turned out at four o'clock in the morning to
see him off on the steamer that took sixteen hours to travel down the
Mosel to Coblenz, where the following day he took a further steamer
down the Rhine to Bonn; on the third day he registered himself as a
student in the Law Faculty at the University of Bonn. The enthusiasm
for romanticism that Baron von Westphalen had aroused in Marx - thus
supplanting to some extent the Enlightenment rationalism of home and
school - was increased by the year spent at Bonn. The city itself was
scarcely larger than Trier. But the university - with 700 students - served
as the intellectual centre of the Rhineland; the dominant outlook there
was thoroughly romantic and the most popular lectures (which Marx
attended) were those given by the old A. W. Schlegel on philosophy and
literature. In general, politics was little discussed: the university, like most
in Germany, had experienced a wave of free speech and anti-government
activity in the early 1830s, but this had been thoroughly suppressed. Marx
began the year with great enthusiasm for his work, putting himself down
for nine courses, which he subsequently reduced to six on his father's
advice, three of which were on literary subjects. His first end-of-term
report said that he followed all six courses with zeal and attention. The
second term, however, following an illness from overwork at the beginning
of 1836, he reduced the number of courses to four and gave much less
time to formal studies.
His father continually complained of his son's inability to keep his
family informed of his activities: on his arrival in Bonn he left them three
weeks without news and then produced only two short letters in three
months. He was also spending much more money than his family could
afford - a lifelong characteristic. During the first semester, Marx shared
a room with a highly respected philosophy student from Trier (who had
entered the university a year earlier), became one of the thirty members
of the Trier Tavern Club and was soon one of its five presidents. The
activities of the club were largely confined to drinking and Marx entered
so fully into the spirit that he found himself imprisoned by the university