Jenny Von Westphalen - Exile

Exile

In 1844, Jenny traveled alone with her baby, "Jennychen", to visit her mother, the Baroness Caroline. In 1845, the French political police expelled Karl Marx and the pregnant Jenny: thus the birth of Laura took place in Brussels.

In 1848 the Brussels police detained Jenny and served an expulsion order. The Marxes returned to Paris and then moved to Cologne.

Revolutionary upsurges took place in many European countries in 1848, including the German states. The Prussian authorities had Karl Marx deported to France. He then left with his family for London in England.

Around 1849–1850 the Marxes lived at Dean Street in London. In 1856 the Marxes moved to Grafton Terrace, near Hampstead Hill in London, thanks to the money given to Jenny by her mother when she died (1856). 9 Grafton Terrace, then at the outskirts of "civilized" London, had a small garden and two floors with seven rooms, including the kitchen. Jenny wrote: "we are walking now steadfast to become bourgeois". Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski would write of the Marx family's time in London, " Marx was notoriously incapable of keeping accounts, and Jenny was a regular customer of the London pawnbrokers."

In later years Jenny Marx suffered from internal pains, diagnosed as liver cancer. Following a family visit to France, she died in London at the age of 67 on 2 December 1881. The family buried her in Highgate Cemetery, London.