The Marx He Knew

In a dusty cigar shop, old Hans is asked to tell of Karl Marx—and begins with a childhood brawl: Marx gave him a black eye, and Hans bloodied Marx’s nose.

John Spargo’s account begins in Trier, where Hans Fritzsche recalls the boy he knew before the world knew his name. Clever, mischievous, and happiest among his sister Sophie and Jenny von Westphalen, Karl turns schoolyard quarrels into comic verse—and makes even a hated teacher wince. But the boys’ paths diverge: poverty sends Hans to work, while Karl’s missteps at university leave his father fearing his brightest hopes have failed. In Hans’s affectionate, teasing voice, Marx emerges not as a distant thinker but as a friend, a son, and a young man still becoming himself. What did Hans see in the boy everyone expected to become someone great?

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