Headline Story: The Little-Known Story of the Great Marx and Yanni

In December 1881, Yanni, the wife of the great proletarian thinker and revolutionary Marx, died, and her son-in-law Longe published an obituary in the socialist magazine Justice, recalling The Extraordinary Life of Lady Yanni. The obituary talks about when Marx married Madame Yanni, because Marx was Jewish, Lady Yanni's family was firmly opposed to their marriage out of racial prejudice, and Yanni always loved Marx unswervingly...

Marx read the obituary written by Longe and was furious. He immediately wrote to Longe's wife and daughter, saying that at that time, in Madame Yanni's family, there was no such racial prejudice as Mr. Longe's so-called racial prejudice. I hope that Mr. Longe will not take it for granted, be self-righteous, and please do not preach it like this again in the future, so I will be grateful.

Most of The information about Longue's story about his father-in-law and mother-in-law's past marital experiences should come from his wife. Marx was Jewish, and it is also true that Madame Yanni married him despite her family's opposition. Why, however, did Marx get angry at his son-in-law's statement? The fundamental reasons for this can only be attributed to Marx's lifelong concern for his Jewish identity. Marx did not like the Jewish idea of money worship, and he believed that Judaism was a greedy religion of money. Therefore, Marx believed in Christianity.

(Marx and Yanni)

Marx grew up in a Jewish family

The Jewish people are a very good people, and many great heroes have been born in this nation. For thousands of years, however, the Jewish people have suffered and been devastated by discrimination. During World War II alone, nearly 6 million Jews were brutally killed. In European countries, in particular, anti-Semitism was deeply entrenched and became a curse that entangled the Jewish people.

On May 5, 1818, Marx was born in a Jewish family in Trier, Germany, his grandfather and father were Jewish "rabbis", intellectuals and teachers among Jews. The "rabbis" are a special class that often plays an important role in religious activities and is the presiding officer in the religious ceremonies of Judaism. By the time of Marx's father, their family belonged to the first generation of "liberated" Jews, meek and obedient, baptized, and became Christians. Therefore, Marx received a Christian education from childhood to adulthood and did not feel that many Jews were suffering from injustice in Germany.

In June 1843, Marx married Yanni, the girlfriend of Qingmei Zhuma.

Yanni came from a well-known family in Tellier, and Marx's family had a low social status, and the marriage between the two belonged to the "wrong door", which was the main reason why Mrs. Yanni's family opposed their marriage. In addition, Yanni was recognized as the most beautiful girl and "ball queen" in the city of Trier, and many handsome aristocratic youths fell for it, and there was no shortage of suitors, but she favored Marx, who was four years younger than her.

Yanni bravely chose sister-brother love, she broke through the world's concepts, agreed to Marx's marriage proposal, and privately made a lifelong relationship with him, becoming his revolutionary partner who depended on life and death.



II. Marx Wrote On the Jewish Question

After graduating from the Faculty of Law at the University of Berlin in 1842, Marx had been writing for the Rheinische Zeitung, and in October of the same year he became its editor-in-chief.

In 1843, Marx wrote in a letter to the German political commentator Luger, a young Hegelian: "The Jewish chief here [in Cologne] has just come to see me and asked me to help them in the petition of the Jews to Parliament." I will do it for them, though the Jewish faith disgusts me. This is the only written record of Marx's contact with the Jewish community. Marx did not identify with his Jewish identity, but was very concerned with the Jewish question.

In 1844, Marx wrote "On the Jewish Question". In the article, he said that the secular morality of the Jews was selfishness, their secular beliefs were bargaining, and their secular God was money. The true God of the Jews is the bill of exchange. "Money is the God of the Jews, and there can be no other God before it."

These fierce anti-Semitic rhetoric express Marx's uncompromising hostility to the Jewish exploiters and his dispassionate analysis of the actual fate of the Jews. Marx pointed out that "the social emancipation of the Jews is the liberation of society from the Jewish spirit."

Lenin believed that Marx's "On the Jewish Question" marked Marx's transformation from idealism and revolutionary democracy to materialism and communism. It can be said that it was precisely through thinking and analyzing the current situation, future, and destiny of the Jews that Marx began to build the rudiments of Marxism.

In 1845, Marx wrote the Feuerbach Theses. In it, he refers to the Paris Exchange as "the synagogue where stocks are traded," and places special emphasis on the Jewish identity of the Fulds, Rothildes, and other Parisian financiers. In 1856, Marx wrote in an article for the New York Tribune, "Behind every tyrant there is a Jew, and behind every pope there is a Jesuit." ”

In Marx's pen, the Jewish exploiters are mercenary and aid and abett, which is simply the source of evil. It can be seen that the purpose of his critique of the Jewish exploiters is consistent.

Marx's Jewish friend, Lassalle

In 1849, Marx caused the displeasure of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia for publishing an article in the newspaper criticizing the Russian Tsar. The King of Prussia, after receiving protests from the Tsar, ordered the ban on the Rhine, and Marx lost his job. On 16 May, the Prussian government ordered marx's expulsion.

During his exile in Paris, Marx met Friedrich Engels. The two were like-minded and at first sight. Together, they studied and discussed, wrote their first co-authored book, The Holy Family, and began their long-term close collaboration. Marx immersed himself in learning, diligent in reading and thinking, but his daily life was very careless, casual, and not good at financial management, which directly led to his family often falling into poverty. Engels was the son of a wealthy family, and he often sponsored Marx, and helped Marx ghostwrite some articles and complete the work of the press.

In nineteenth-century Europe, the workers' movement was in full swing. At that time, Lassalle was a well-known leader of the German workers' movement, and he founded the All-German Workers' Federation and served as its president. Lassalle was loved and embraced by the German workers and attracted the attention of Marx in exile. Later, the two became friends. Lassalle was born into a wealthy Jewish satin merchant family, seven years younger than Marx. He once pointed out that the poverty of the working class is caused by the iron law of wages. This view is similar to Marx's theory of surplus value.

Lassalle's personality, grotesque behavior, and political fanaticism, his fascination with power and the opposite sex sometimes even reached the level of madness. On the surface, Marx and Lassalle were comrades in the same trench, but in reality, they looked very close. Marx disagreed with Lassalle's theory of the revolutionary struggle of the working class, and an extremely sharp debate ensued between them.

In 1862, LaSalle traveled from Berlin to London to visit Marx. In order to welcome Lassalle's arrival, Mrs. Yanni sent everything that could be used in the family to the pawnshop and warmly welcomed Lasalle with the money exchanged. Unbeknownst to Lassalle, Lassalle ate and drank in Marx's house without scruples, and the scene seemed very awkward.

One day, When Lassalle saw that Marx was looking anxious, he asked him if he was in any financial difficulties. Marx replied that the landlord was in a hurry to collect the rent these two days. The baker also came to him to demand money to pay him back, otherwise he would stop serving food and go to court to sue him. The family is already scratching its head, and it is about to run out of food and cooking. Lassalle immediately said that he could lend Marx fifteen pounds unconditionally, but if he wanted to borrow more, he would have to come forward to guarantee it. So Marx borrowed another sixty pounds from him.

Marx lived in exile in London, and the economy was very poor. At one point, they even took the maid's shoes to the pawnshop to keep the expenses going. At this time, Lassalle's arrival not only did not send charcoal in the snow, but took advantage of the fire and robbery and took the opportunity to lend money, which made Marx very angry. The friendship between the two also ended.

In August 1864, LaSalle dueled for a woman. The other side shot him in the stomach, and three days later, LaSalle died.

This is really "suffering to see the hearts of the people", and through the loan to Marx, Lassalle's mercenary Jewish inferiority has been thoroughly exposed. Lassalle brought marx nothing but debt and hatred. In Marx's letters to Engels, he referred to Lassalle as a "Jewish baron" and a "Jewish ghost." And ironically, because of the racial confusion caused by the Jews fleeing Egypt, the blood of the Negro must have flowed into Lassalle's veins. There is no doubt that Lassalle was another Jew who made Marx sad and disappointed.

Marx's transcendence of Jewish identity

In Marx's lifetime, there were countless arguments like Lassalle's. Among them, there is no shortage of political theorists with anti-Semitic tendencies. The Russian anarchists Bakunin, Proudhon, Arnold Lugar and Yugan Dühring, among others, deliberately or unconsciously ridiculed and ridiculed the Jews while engaging in fierce polemics with Marx. Marx fiercely countered their views without mentioning his Jewish origins, which he remained silent about.

In the article, Marx's son-in-law Longe mentions that Madame Yanni's family opposed their marriage, and emphasizes that its roots lie in Marx's Jewish identity, which invisibly violates Marx's taboo, like unveiling his old scars. No wonder Marx was furious. Marx's taboo of his Jewish identity was by no means due to his dislike of Jewish ancestry, but out of the greedy pursuit of money by Jewish exploiters, which led to widespread hatred of Jews in society.

Marx was ashamed to associate with these greedy Jews, and his vision had transcended the limitations of classes and nations.

Dedicated to the revolutionary cause and living a life of wandering, Marx was deported from four countries and eventually became a stateless wanderer. Parents, Jewish ancestry, class, nationality, these are all predestined, but Marx did not succumb to the unfairness of fate. Marx's "On the Jewish Question" put forward the ideas of religious emancipation, political emancipation and human emancipation, pointing out that the bright future of the Jews is to rise up in revolution and liberate themselves.

Marx went on to cry out for the "liberation of all mankind", in which he envisioned that the proletariat should take the lead in revolution in Western Europe, the most capitalistly developed region. Then "the proletarians of the whole world unite" to build a classless, stateless world of unity and bring about a world revolution. As Marx said in the Communist Manifesto: "What the proletarians lose in the revolution is only chains, and what they gain will be the whole world." ”

At 2:30 p.m. on March 14, 1883, the great thinker and revolutionary Marx died in his London apartment. After his death, he was buried with his wife Yanni in Highgate Cemetery on the northern outskirts of London.

【About the Author】Liu Yong, a native of Mianyang, Sichuan, is now a civil servant, loves to write literature and history, and sometimes publishes poems in newspapers and periodicals, and books such as "Wen Tong Commentary" are published.

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Editor-in-charge: Kong's crowd

Editor: Han Xiongliang

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