The factory owner’s son played a decisive role in the development of Marxism
Born on 28 November 1820 in what is now the Barmen district of Wuppertal, Friedrich Engels was the eldest son of a successful cotton manufacturer. After falling out with his father, he left school early and began training as a businessman. He started work as a journalist and developed an interest in issues of philosophy and politics. Sent to manage his father’s factory in Manchester at the age of 22, Engels learned about the freedoms of “Manchester Capitalism” and the social misery that it wrought on the working classes. Engels joined the labour movement to fight for workers’ rights and improve the lot of the working classes. Returning home to Wuppertal, he sought out Marx in his Paris exile and they began a fruitful collaboration. This resulted in the Communist Manifesto (1848), which sought to foment revolution. During the March Revolutions of 1848, Engels joined the Baden-Palatinate army to defend the reforms that had been achieved. After the defeat against the Prussians, he was forced to flee Germany.
Returning to the family business in Manchester, Engels continued to engage in politics, and learned languages, eventually mastering twelve and understanding twenty. He continued to support his friend Marx financially and assisted him in his research, but also proved himself as an independent thinker. Engels had an extraordinarily wide range of interests and soon turned his attention to scientific and mathematical questions, thereby laying the foundations for “dialectical materialism”. In keeping with the spirit of “scientific” socialism, he developed a model of human history that would ultimately lead from capitalism to communism. After the death of his collaborator, Engels arranged for the publication of the second and third volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Even in old age, Engels continued to exert a significant influence on German social democracy and the international labour movement. The German entrepreneur, social critic and revolutionary died in London in 1895.
About the Deutschlandmuseum
An immersive and innovative experience museum about 2000 years of German history
The whole year at a glance
