Helena Demuth

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Lenchen Demuth in the 1870s

Helena "Lenchen" Demuth (born December 31, 1820 in St. Wendel , Saarland , † November 4, 1890 in London ) was the housekeeper of Jenny and Karl Marx .

Life

Helena was the daughter of the day laborer and baker Michel Demuth (1788–1826) and Maria Katharine Creutz (1791–1848). Her parents married on February 16, 1808 in St. Wendel and had seven children, of which Helena was the fifth.

Helena Demuth came in 1837 as a maid in the house of the government councilor Johann Ludwig von Westphalen in Trier . In 1845 his wife Caroline von Westphalen sent Helena to Brussels to support her daughter Jenny Marx . From May 1857 her half-sister Anna Maria Creuz, called Marianne, who was almost fifteen years younger, also worked in the Marx family household until her death in 1862. Helena Demuth followed the Marx family to Paris in 1848 , to Cologne in 1848/49 , to Paris again in 1849 and then to London in final exile in 1849 . As well as being a cook, she was a good friend of the children they called Nimmy . Occasionally she also played chess with Karl Marx, who lost to her, as Wilhelm Liebknecht said.

Helena Demuth gave birth to a boy in 1851, but did not reveal the father's name. Little Henry Frederick Demuth (called Freddy ) (born June 23, 1851 in London , † January 28, 1929 there ) was given into a foster family in London called Lewis. Contrary to some claims in literature, Friedrich Engels did not recognize Frederick's fatherhood, and Eleanor Marx also called him her 'half-brother'. In October 1851 Jenny Marx tried to find a wet nurse for Henry Frederick Demuth from the Devalek family in Brussels, who had also looked after their son Edgar in 1847. Since it did not go with the ideas of Marx in the socialist movement that Marx should have "cheated", all documents were withdrawn from research on January 2, 1934 on Stalin's orders as secret documents.

After Marx's death in 1883, Helena Demuth moved in with Engels , who from then on ran the household. Together with him, she arranged Marx's historical estate and discovered the manuscripts for Volume Two of Capital .

In October 1890, Helena Demuth fell ill with cancer and died on November 4th. In her will of November 4, 1890, she designated her son Frederick Lewis Demuth as a universal heir, who inherited £ 95 and her personal property. At the request of Marx's daughters Eleanor and Laura Lafargue , she was buried in the family grave of the Marx family in Highgate Cemetery . Engels gave a funeral speech at her grave. In a letter to Helena Demuth's nephew, Adolf Riefer , Engels wrote: “The deceased made a will in which she accepted the son of a deceased friend, whom she, so to speak, as a child from an early age, and who gradually became a good and capable mechanic formed, Frederick Lewis, has used her sole. For a long time he has accepted the name Humility out of gratitude and with your consent. "

Entry in the Confession book Jenny Marx (daughter)

Helena Demuth signed on March 1, 1868 as follows.

question answer
Your favorite virtue ( Your favorite virtue ) Determination ( decision )
... quality in man ( ... quality in man ) Mut ( courage )
... in the woman ( ... in woman ) Good mood ( Good temper )
Main Feature ( chief characteristic ) The love of the small Marx ( Love to the young Marx )
Conception of happiness ( Idea of happiness ) A meal eat that I have not cooked ( To eat a dinner I hav'nt created )
... misery ( ... misery ) To be dependent on others ( To be dependent on others )
Vice that I apologize ( Vice excuse I ) Waste ( prodigality )
... abhor ( ... detest ) Egoismus ( Egotism )
What you reject ( Your aversion ) a curmudgeon ( a miser )
The person who loves me at least ( The character I most dislike Ferdinand Lassalle ( Lasalle )
Favorite activity ( Favorite occupation ) Daydream ( Building castles in the air )
... hero ( ... hero ) My biggest soup pot ( My biggest saucepan )
... heroine ( ... heroine ) My coffee pot ( My coffeepot )
... poet ( ... poet ) The one about whom I least know ( The one I know least of )
... writer (... Prose writer) Eugène Sue ( Eugène Sue )
... flower ( ... flower ) Rose ( rose )
... color ( ... color ) Blue ( Blue )
... dish ( ... Dish ) Pig ( pork )
... Maxime ( ... Maxim ) Live and let live!

Helen Demuth

March 1 st / 68

Honors

Lenchen Demuth bronze sculpture by Kurt Tassotti (location: old city wall in St. Wendel)

The Helene Demuth School in St. Wendel was named after her, a special needs school which, however, merged in 2011 with the Buchwald School in Mosberg-Richweiler to form the Bliestal School in Oberthal . In 2012 an almost life-size bronze statue by Lenchen Demuth (artist: Kurt Tassotti ) was erected in St. Wendel on Balduinstraße as a souvenir in the local area where her parents' house was thought to be at the time. The actual parental home was in the "ditch".

Allegedly Helena Demuth, in truth Mary Ellen Burns 1875 or 1876

photo

Many books show a photograph that is supposed to represent Helena Demuth in 1845. Since no other photo of the Marx family is known before 1860, this assignment was doubtful. Since the photographer of this photo was Eduard Schultz (1841–1913), Plöckstrasse 79 in Heidelberg , the photo could not depict Helena. However, Engels stayed in Heidelberg with his niece Mary Ellen Burns in 1875 and 1876 in order to bring them to a girls' school. This is why this picture shows Mary Ellen Burns.

literature

  • Herbert Eulenberg : Helena Demuth . In: Vorwärts , Berlin supplement from January 15, 1929
  • Karl Kautsky : Lenchen Demuth . In: Vorwärts , Berlin supplement of February 2, 1929
  • Heinz Monz: Helena Demuth from St. Wendel. In: Heimatbuch des Landkreis St. Wendel . XIII. Vol., 1969/1970, pp. 46-54.
  • Yvonne Kapp : Eleanor Marx. Vol. 1. Family Life (1855-1883). London 1972.
  • Manfred Dammeyer: Good spirit with Marx and Engels: Helena Demuth. Lienau & Ruppel, 1978.
  • Gerhard Bungert , Marlene Grund (eds.): Karl Marx, Lenchen Demuth and the Saar. Queißer, Dillingen 1983, ISBN 3-921815-42-8 .
  • Ruth Zimmermann: Jenny Marx and her daughters: women in the shadow of the revolutionary. Herder, Freiburg 1984.
  • Michael Knieriem : An unpublished letter from Friedrich Engels on the death of Helena Demuth. In: Wuppertaler Rundschau. November 8, 1984.
  • Heinrich Gemkow : Helena Demuth - "a loyal comrade". In: Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 11. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1989, pp. 324-348. Digitized
  • Heinz Monz: One last trace in Saarburg's twin town Saarebourg. Odyssey of a letter about Helena Demuth. In: Yearbook of the district of Trier-Saarburg. 1989, pp. 195-199.
  • Heinrich Gemkow, Rolf Hecker : Unknown documents about Marx's son Frederick Demuth. In: Contributions to the history of the German labor movement. Berlin 1994, No. 4, pp. 43-59.
  • Yvonne Kapp: New evidence from old sources . In: The personal and the political. The Journal of the Socialist History Society. Issue 6, London Autumn 1994, pp. 17-27. ISBN 0-7453-0810-4
  • Heinz Monz: Demuth, Helena. In: Trier Biographical Lexicon. Overall processing: Heinz Monz. Verlag der Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Koblenz 2000, ISBN 3-931014-49-5 , pp. 78–79.
  • Heinrich Gemkow: Helena Demuth (1820-1890). A life in the shadow of others. From nanny in Trier to housekeeper in London. In: Irina Hundt (ed.): From the salon to the barricade. Women in the Heine Age . JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01842-3 , pp. 415-424.
  • Manfred Schöncke, Rolf Hecker: A photograph by Helena Demuth? On Engels' trip to Heidelberg in 1875. In: Marx-Engels Yearbook 2004. Ed. By the International Marx-Engels Foundation Amsterdam . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2005, pp. 205-218. (on-line)
  • Izumi Omura, Shunichi Kubo, Rolf Hecker, Valerij Fomičev (eds.): Karl Marx is my father. The documentation of Frederick Demuth's parentage. Karl Marx is my father. A documentation on the origins of Frederick Demuth. Far Eastern Booksellers, Tokyo 2011, ISBN 978-4-87394-004-5 . Japanese, English and German
  • Marlene Ambrosi: Helena Demuth. Verlag Michael Weyand, Trier 2018, ISBN 978-3-942429-34-4 .
  • Roland Geiger: Lenchen Demuth - from the life of the housekeeper by Karl Marx. Roland Geiger Historical Research, St. Wendel 2018, ISBN 978-3-939460-25-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jenny Marx: Brief outlines of an eventful life. In: Mohr and General. Berlin 1964, p. 206.
  2. Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels December 24, 1862: “But now the greatest bad luck. Marianne (Lenchen's sister), who cured Allen for heart disease a year ago, began to feel unwell on the day my wife left. Tuesday evening, 2 hours before my wife's arrival, she was dead. Me and Lenchen during the seven days of hospital maintenance ”. (MEW Volume 30, p. 303.)
  3. ^ Wilhelm Liebknecht: A stormy chess match. In: Mohr and General. Berlin 1964, pp. 105-110.
  4. Birth certificate see: Karl Marx is my father. P. 83.
  5. Frederick Demuth to Jean-Laurent-Frederick Longuet April 10, 1912 ( Karl Marx is my father. P. 163)
  6. Eleanor Marx to Laura Lafargue December 19, 1890: “We should none of us like to meet our past, I guess, in flesh and blood.” (Yvonne Kapp: Eleanor Marx. P. 291)
  7. François Devalek to Jenny Marx, October 15, 1851. (Rolf Hecker, Angelika Limmroth (ed). Jenny Marx's letters.. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2014, pp 111-112.)
  8. "It can be assumed that the child to be cared for was the ten-week-old Frederick Demuth [...]" Angelika Limmroth: Jenny Marx. The biography. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2014, pp. 152–153, here p. 153.
  9. ^ Karl Marx is my father. P. 212.
  10. ^ Heinrich Gemkow, Rolf Hecker: Unknown documents about Marx's son Frederick Demuth. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. Berlin 1994, No. 4, pp. 43-59.
  11. ^ Karl Marx is my father. P. 85 f.
  12. ^ The People's Press . London. vol. 1. No. 38 of November 22, 1890
  13. Friedrich Engels 12 to Adolf Riefer November 1890. In: Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe . Department III. Correspondence. Vol. 30 Friedrich Engels correspondence October 1889 to November 1890 . Arranged by Gerd Callesen and Svetlana Gavril'čenko. With the collaboration of Regina Roth and Renate Merkel-Melis †. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-006024-8 , p. 566.
  14. ^ Family Marx private. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-05-004118-8 , Fig. 39 and pp. 310-311.
  15. Manfred Schöncke, Rolf Hecker: A photograph by Helena Demuth? To Engels' trip to Heidelberg in 1875.