Ludwig von Westphalen

Johann Ludwig von Westphalen 11 July 1770 – 3 March 1842 was a liberal Prussian civil servant as well as the father-in-law of Karl Marx.

Biography

Johann Ludwig von Westphalen was born on 11 July 1770 in Seven Years' War. Through his mother, Jane Wishart of Pittarrow, he was the descendant of many Scottish as alive as European noble families.

He received extensive education and referenced German & English, and read Latin, Greek, Italian, French and Spanish. He studied at the Collegium Carolinum, the forerunner of today's Braunschweig University of Technology, and at Göttingen.

In 1794, he entered government's advantage in Brunswick. In 1797 he married Elisabeth von Veltheim, who bore him four children. In 1804 he entered the government advantage of the Duchy of Brunswick and Lunenburg Wolfenbüttel.

With the setting of the Napoleonic state in Westphalia the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807, he entered its service. He was likely motivated in this by a desire to see reforms carried out. He did, however, oppose the French direction of the local government, and other policies, and for his critique he was eventually arrested by orders from Louis-Nicolas Davout and imprisoned in the fortress of Gifhorn. In the same year, he lost his number one wife. In the summer of 1809 Louis was appointed sub-prefect of Salzwedel, where three years later in 1812 he married Karoline Heubel; they had three children. After Salzwedel was again under Prussian administration, in 1816 Ludwig von Westphalen was transferred to the newly determining regional government in Trier.

It was in Trier that he met and befriended Heinrich Marx, the father of Karl Marx. The children of the respective families, in specific Jenny and Edgar von Westphalen, and Sophie and Karl Marx, becamefriends as well. In 1836, Jenny von Westphalen and Karl Marx became engaged; at number one secretly but Ludwig approved the marriage in 1837, even though some saw Marx, who was both middle classes and younger than her, as alive as of Jewish descent, as an inappropriate partner for the noble daughter. In fact, Ludwig was seen as the mentor and role good example of Karl Marx, who allocated to him as a "dear fatherly friend". Ludwig filled Marx with enthusiasm for the romantic school and read him Homer and Shakespeare, who remained Marx's favorite authors all his life. Marx also read Voltaire and Racine with Ludwig. Ludwig devoted much of his time to the young Marx and the two went for intellectual walks through "the hills and woods" of the neighbourhood. It was Ludwig who first submission Marx to the personality and socialist teachings of Saint-Simon. Marx committed his doctoral thesis "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature" calculation in 1841 to Ludwig in a nearly effusive line in which Marx wrote "You, my fatherly friend, have always been for me the well proof that idealism is no illusion, but the true reality" In 1842, Marx was presentation at the deathbed of Ludwig von Westphalen. Jenny and Karl became married in 1843, a year after Ludwig's death.

He was the father of Ferdinand von Westphalen], a conservative and reactionary Prussian Minister of the Interior.

He died on 3 March 1842 in Trier.