Karl Marx had seven children with his wife, Jenny von Westphalen.
Jenny Caroline (May 1, 1844 – January 11, 1883)
Nicknamed “Jennychen,” she was born in Paris, France, and was the eldest of Karl Marx’s children. She engaged in social activism and was a writer for the socialist press in the 1860s. She also worked as a German and French language teacher. At the age of 28, she married Charles Longuet, with whom she had six children. Ten years later, at 38, she died of bladder cancer.
Jenny Laura (September 26, 1845 – November 26, 1911)
Laura was born in Brussels, Belgium. Like her elder sister, she was also a social activist. She married Paul Lafargue in 1868, and together they accomplished decades of political work. They had three children, but they all died in infancy. The couple translated Marx’s writings into French and disseminated his ideas. In November 1911, after deciding that they had given their all to the movement, Laura and Lafargue committed suicide by injecting themselves with cyanide. Their suicide letter ended with “Long live Communism! Long Live the international socialism!”
Charles Louis Henri Edgar (February 3, 1847 – May 6, 1855)
Charles was born in Brussels, Belgium, and was nicknamed “Mush.” He was named after his uncle, Edgar, the brother of his mother. Charles died at the age of eight.
Henry Edward Guy (September 5, 1849 – November 19, 1850)
Jenny Eveline Frances (March 28, 1851 – April 14, 1852)
Jenny Julia Eleanor (January 16 1855 – March 31, 1898)
Eleanor was born in London and was also a social activist. She was the first to translate the novel Madame Bovary into English. In 1898, Eleanor discovered that her partner of 14 years, Edward Aveling, had clandestinely married a 22-year-old actress, Eva Frye. Following the example of Emma Bovary in Flaubert’s novel, she ingested cyanide and died.
An unnamed child
A child was born to Karl and Jenny on the 6th of July, 1857. The child died on the same day