Jenny von Westphalen

Johanna Bertha Julie Jenny Edle von Westphalen (12 February 18142 December 1881) was a German theatre critic and political activist. She married the philosopher and political economist Karl Marx in 1843. Background Jenny von Westphalen was born in the small town of Salzwedel in Northern Germany to a fairly recently ennobled family that had been elevated into the petty nobility. Her father, Ludwig von Westphalen (1770–1842), was a civil servant and former widower with four previous children, who served as Regierungsrat (government councillor) in Salzwedel and in Trier. Her paternal grandfather , the son of a Blankenburg postmaster, had been ennobled in 1764 as Edler von Westphalen by Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick for his military services. He had served as the duke's de facto "chief of staff" during the Seven Years' War. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanie Wishart (1742–1811), was a Scottish noble: her father, the Very Rev Dr George Wishart, (son of William Wishart Principal of Edinburgh University) a descendant of the 9th Earl of Angus, and the 3rd Earl of Marischal, the latter in turn a direct descendant of King James I, of the House of Stuart, while her mother Anne Campbell was the daughter of John Campbell (both a grandson of Sir James Campbell and of Sir Robert Campbell, grandson of Robert Sempill, 3rd Lord Sempill and John Stewart, 4th Earl of Atholl), heir of the Ardkinglas branch of the Clan Campbell, and part of the family of the Dukes of Argyll, who were for centuries Scotland's most powerful family. This would lead to an incident in 1854, when Karl Marx was arrested trying to pawn some of Jenny's Argyll silverware bearing the ducal insignia; the police suspected that a German refugee could not have acquired Argyll's property legally. Her mother Carolina Heubel (1780–1856) was from a middle-class family, whose father was a retired military horse-care expert. Jenny von Westphalen's brother Edgar von Westphalen (1819–1890), was a schoolmate and friend of Karl Marx. Another brother, Ferdinand Otto Wilhelm Henning von Westphalen, was the conservative Interior Minister of Prussia, 1850–58. Although he was one of the leading conservative forces in 19th century Prussia, Ferdinand would remain on amiable terms with Karl and Jenny Marx.