he attributed the child to Engels, who accepted this comedy. Marx drank heavily. Riazanov, director of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, admits this fact in his book Karl Marx, Mai, Thinker aid Revolutionist.
Eleanor was Marx’s favorite daughter. He called her Tussy and frequently said, “Tussy is me.” She was shattered when she heard about the scandal of illegitimacy from Engels on his deathbed. It was this that led to her suicide.
It should be noted that Marx, in The Communist Mаnifesto, had railed against capitalists “having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal.” Such hypocrisy was not out of character for Karl Marx.
There was an even darker spot in the life of Marx, the great revolutionary. The German newspaper Reichsruf (January 9, 1960) published the fact that the Austrian chancellor Julius Raab donated to Nikita Khrushchev, then director of Soviet Russia, an original letter of Karl Marx. Khrushchev did not enjoy it, because it was proof that Marx had been a paid informer of the Austrian police, spying on revolutionaries.
The letter had been found accidentally in a secret archive. It indicated that Marx, as an informer, reported on his comrades during his exile in London. He received $25 for each bit of information he turned up. His notes were about the revolutionary exiles in London, Paris, and Switzerland.
One of those against whom he informed was Ruge, who considered himself an intimate friend of Marx. Cordial letters between the two still exist.
Rolv Heuer describes Marx’s ravaged financial life in Genius and Riches:
While he was a student in Berlin, the son of papa Marx received 700 thalers a year pocket-money.
This was an enormous sum because at that time only 5 percent of the population had an annual income greater than 300 thalers. During his lifetime, Marx received from Engels some six million French francs, according to the Marx Institute.
Yet he always lusted after inheritances. While an uncle of his was in agony, Marx wrote, “If the dog dies, I would be out of mischief.” To which Engels answers, “I congratulate you for the sickness of the hinderer of an inheritance, and I hope that the catastrophe will happen now “
“The dog” died, and Marx wrote on March 8, 1855,
A very happy event. Yesterday we were told about the death of the ninety-year-old uncle of my wife. My wife will receive some one hundred Lst; even more if the old dog has not left a pate of his money to the lady who administered his house.
He did not have any kinder feelings for those who were much nearer to him than his uncle. He was not even on speaking terms with his mother. In December 1863 he wrote to Engels,
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