Che Guevara

Ernesto Guevara was born to Celia de la Serna and Ernesto Guevara Lynch on June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. In reference to Che's "restless" nature, his father declared "the first thing to note is that in my son's veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels." Growing up in a family with leftist leanings, Guevara was introduced to a wide spectrum of political perspectives even as a boy. His father, a staunch supporter of Republicans from the Spanish Civil War, often hosted many veterans from the conflict in the Guevara home.

Though suffering crippling bouts of acute asthma that were to afflict him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete, enjoying swimming, soccer, and golf. He was an avid rugby union player and earned himself the nickname "Fuser"—a contraction of El Furibundo (raging) and his mother's surname, de la Serna—for his aggressive style of play. His schoolmates also nicknamed him "Chancho" ("pig"), because he rarely bathed, and proudly wore a "weekly shirt."

Guevara learned chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by age 12. During adolescence and throughout his life he was passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo Neruda, John Keats, Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, Gabriela Mistral, César Vallejo, and Walt Whitman. He could also recite Rudyard Kipling's "If" and José Hernández's "Martín Fierro" from memory.The Guevara home contained more than 3,000 books, which allowed Guevara to be an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests including Karl Marx, William Faulkner, André Gide, Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne. Additionally, he enjoyed the works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Vladimir Lenin, and Jean-Paul Sartre; as well as Anatole France, Friedrich Engels, H.G. Wells, and Robert Frost.
A 22-year-old Guevara in 1951

As he grew older, he developed an interest in the Latin American writers Horacio Quiroga, Ciro Alegría, Jorge Icaza, Rubén Darío, and Miguel Asturias. Many of these authors' ideas he would catalog in his own handwritten notebooks of concepts, definitions, and philosophies of influential intellectuals. These included composing analytical sketches of Buddha and Aristotle, along with examining Bertrand Russell on love and patriotism, Jack London on society, and Nietzsche on the idea of death. Sigmund Freud's ideas fascinated him as he quoted him on a variety of topics from dreams and libido to narcissism and the oedipus complex. His favorite subjects in school included philosophy, mathematics, engineering, political science, and sociology.

In 1948, Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. But in 1951, he took a year off from studies to embark on a trip traversing South America by motorcycle with his friend Alberto Granado, with the final goal of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo Leper colony in Peru, on the banks of the Amazon River. Guevara used notes taken during this trip to write an account entitled The Motorcycle Diaries, which later became a New York Times best-seller, and was adapted into a 2004 award-winning film of the same name.

Witnessing the widespread poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement throughout Latin America, and influenced by his readings of Marxist literature, Guevara began to view armed revolution as the solution to social inequality. By trip's end, he came to view Latin America not as collection of separate nations, but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide liberation strategy. His conception of a borderless, united Hispanic America sharing a common 'Latino' heritage was a theme that prominently recurred during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he completed his studies and received his medical diploma in June 1953, making him officially "Dr. Ernesto Guevara".

On July 7, 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. On December 10, 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his Aunt Beatriz from San José, Costa Rica. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing through the "dominions" of the United Fruit Company, which convinced him "how terrible" the "Capitalist octopuses" were. This affirmed indignation carried the "head hunting tone" that he adopted in order to frighten his more Conservative relatives, and ends with Guevara swearing on an image of the then recently deceased Josef Stalin, not to rest until these "octopuses have been vanquished." Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala so as to "perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary".
Che Guevara's movements between 1953 and 1956, including his trip north to Guatemala, his stay in Mexico and his journey east by boat to Cuba with Fidel Castro and other revolutionaries

Guevara later remarked that through his travels of Latin America, he came in "close contact with poverty, hunger and disease" along with the "inability to treat a child because of lack of money" and "stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment" that leads a father to "accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident". It was these experiences which Guevara cites as convincing him that in order to "help these people", he needed to leave the realm of medicine, and consider the political arena of armed struggle.

In Guatemala City, Guevara sought out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was well-connected politically as a member of the left-leaning Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA, American Popular Revolutionary Alliance). She introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. Guevara then established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro through the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. During this period he acquired his famous nickname, due to his frequent use of the Argentine diminutive interjection che, a slang casual speech filler used similarly to "eh" or "pal."

Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and his economic situation was often precarious. On 15 May 1954 a shipment of Škoda infantry and light artillery weapons was sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz Government and arrived in Puerto Barrios, prompting a CIA-sponsored coup attempt. Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by the Communist Youth for that purpose, but frustrated with the group's inaction, he soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight, but soon after, Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. After Hilda Gadea was arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate, where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks later and made his way to Mexico.

The overthrow of the Arbenz regime cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. This strengthened his conviction that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions.Gadea wrote later, "It was Guatemala which finally convinced him of the necessity for armed struggle and for taking the initiative against imperialism. By the time he left, he was sure of this."

Guevara arrived in Mexico City in early September 1954, and renewed his friendship with Ñico López and the other Cuban exiles whom he had met in Guatemala. In June 1955, López introduced him to Raúl Castro who subsequently introduced him to his older brother, Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who had formed the 26th of July Movement and was now plotting to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. During a long conversation with Castro on the night of their first meeting, Guevara concluded that the Cuban's cause was the one for which he had been searching and before daybreak he had signed up as a member of the 26J Movement. By this point in Guevara’s life, he deemed that U.S.-controlled conglomerates installed and supported repressive regimes around the world. In this vein, he considered Batista a "U.S. puppet whose strings needed cutting."

Although he planned to be the group's combat medic, Guevara participated in the military training with the members of the Movement, and, at the end of the course, was called "the best guerrilla of them all" by their instructor, Colonel Alberto Bayo. The first step in Castro's revolutionary plan was an assault on Cuba from Mexico via the Granma, an old, leaky cabin cruiser. They set out for Cuba on November 25, 1956. Attacked by Batista's military soon after landing, many of the 82 men were either killed in the attack or executed upon capture; only 22 found each other afterwards. Guevara wrote that it was during this bloody confrontation that he laid down his medical supplies and picked up a box of ammunition dropped by a fleeing comrade, finalizing his symbolic transition from physician to combatant.
In his trademark olive-green military fatigues, 2 June 1959

Only a small band of revolutionaries survived to re-group as a bedraggled fighting force deep in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they received support from the urban guerrilla network of Frank País, the 26th of July Movement, and local campesinos. With the group withdrawn to the Sierra, the world wondered whether Castro was alive or dead until early 1957 when the interview by Herbert Matthews appeared in The New York Times. The article presented a lasting, almost mythical image for Castro and the guerrillas. Guevara was not present for the interview, but in the coming months he began to realize the importance of the media in their struggle. Meanwhile, as supplies and morale grew low, and with an allergy to mosquito bites which resulted in agonizing walnut-sized cysts on his body, Guevara considered these "the most painful days of the war."

As the war continued, Guevara became an integral part of the rebel army and "convinced Castro with competence, diplomacy and patience."Guevara set up factories to make grenades, built ovens to bake bread, taught new recruits about tactics, and organized schools to teach illiterate campesinos (peasants) to read and write.The man who three years later would be dubbed by Time Magazine: "Castro's brain", at this point was promoted by Fidel Castro to Comandante (commander) of a second army column.

As the only other ranked Comandante besides Fidel Castro, Guevara was an extremely harsh disciplinarian. Deserters were punished as traitors, and Guevara was known to send execution squads to hunt down those seeking to go AWOL. As a result, Guevara became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness. During the guerrilla campaign, Guevara was also responsible for the execution of a number of men accused of being informers, deserters or spies. Although he maintained a demanding and harsh disposition, Guevara also viewed his role of commander as one of a teacher, entertaining his men during breaks between engagements with readings from the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson, Cervantes, and Spanish lyric poets.

His commanding officer Fidel Castro has described Guevara as intelligent, daring, and an exemplary leader who "had great moral authority over his troops." Castro has further remarked that Guevara took too many risks, even having a "tendency toward foolhardiness".

Guevara was instrumental in creating the clandestine radio station Radio Rebelde in February 1958, which broadcast news to the Cuban people with statements by the 26th of July movement, and provided radiotelephone communication between the growing number of rebel columns across the island. Guevara had apparently been inspired to create the station by observing the effectiveness of CIA supplied radio in Guatemala in ousting the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

In late July 1958, Guevara would play a critical role in the Battle of Las Mercedes by using his column to halt a force of 1,500 men called up by Batista's General Cantillo in a plan to encircle and destroy Castro's forces. Years later, Major Larry Bockman of the United States Marine Corps would analyze and describe Che's tactical appreciation of this battle as "brilliant." As the war extended, Guevara led a new column of fighters dispatched westward for the final push towards Havana. In the closing days of December 1958, Guevara directed his "suicide squad" in the attack on Santa Clara, that became the final decisive military victory of the revolution. In the six weeks leading up to the Battle of Santa Clara there were times when his men were completely surrounded, outgunned, and overrun. Che's eventual victory despite the formidable odds and being outnumbered 10:1, remains in the view of some observers a "remarkable tour de force in modern warfare." Radio Rebelde broadcast the first reports that Guevara's column had taken Santa Clara on New Year's Eve 1958. This contradicted reports by the heavily controlled national news media, which had at one stage reported Guevara's death during the fighting. Batista, upon learning that his generals were negotiating a separate peace with the rebel leader, fled to the Dominican Republic the next day on January 1, 1959.

On January 8, 1959, Castro's army rolled victoriously into Havana. In February, the revolutionary government proclaimed Guevara "a Cuban citizen by birth" in recognition of his role in the triumph. When Hilda Gadea arrived in Cuba in late January, Guevara told her that he was involved with another woman, and the two agreed on a divorce, which was finalized on May 22. On June 2, 1959, he married Aleida March, a Cuban-born member of the 26th of July movement with whom he had been living since late 1958.

During the rebellion against Batista's dictatorship, the general command of the rebel army, led by Fidel Castro, introduced into the liberated territories the 19th century penal law commonly known as the Ley de la Sierra. This law included the death penalty for extremely serious crimes, whether perpetrated by the dictatorship or by supporters of the revolution. In 1959, the revolutionary government extended its application to the whole of the republic and to those it considered war criminals, captured and tried after the revolution. According to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, this latter extension was supported by the majority of the population, and followed the same procedure as those in the Nuremberg Trials held by the Allies after World War II.

To implement this plan, Castro named Guevara commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison, for a five-month tenure (January 2 through June 12, 1959). Guevara was charged with purging the Batista army and consolidating victory by exacting "revolutionary justice" against those considered to be traitors, chivatos (informants) or war criminals. Serving in the post as commander of La Cabaña, Guevara reviewed the appeals of those convicted during the revolutionary tribunal process. On some occasions the penalty delivered by the tribunal was death by firing squad. Raúl Gómez Treto, senior legal advisor to the Cuban Ministry of Justice, has argued that removing restrictions on the death penalty were justified in order to prevent citizens themselves from taking justice into their own hands, as happened twenty years earlier in the anti-Machado rebellion. With 20,000 Cubans estimated to have been killed at the hands of Batista's accomplices, and a survey at the time showing 93% public approval for the tribunal process, the newly empowered Cuban government along with Guevara concurred. Although the exact numbers differ, it is estimated that several hundred people were executed during this time.
Meeting with French existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in March 1960. Guevara was fluent in French.

On June 12, 1959, as soon as Guevara returned to Havana, Castro sent him out on a three-month tour of 14 countries, most of them Bandung Pact members in Africa and Asia. Sending Guevara from Havana allowed Castro to appear to be distancing himself from Che and his Marxist sympathies, that troubled both the United States and some of Castro's 26th of July Movement members. He spent 12 days in Japan (July 15–27), participating in negotiations aimed at expanding Cuba's trade relations with that nation. During this visit, Guevara secretly visited the city of Hiroshima, where the American military had detonated an atom-bomb 14 years earlier. Guevara was "really shocked" at what he witnessed and by his visit to a hospital where A-bomb survivors were being treated.

Upon returning to Cuba in September 1959, it was evident that Castro now had more political power. The government had begun land seizures included in the agrarian reform law, but was hedging on compensation offers to landowners, instead offering low interest "bonds", which put the U.S. on alert. At this point the affected wealthy cattlemen of Camagüey mounted a campaign against the land redistributions, and enlisted the newly disaffected rebel leader Huber Matos, who along with the anti-Communist wing of the 26th of July Movement, joined them in denouncing the "Communist encroachment." During this time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was offering assistance to the "Anti-Communist Legion of the Caribbean" who was training in the Dominican Republic. This multi-national force comprised mostly of Spaniards and Cubans, but also of Croatians, Germans, Greeks, and right-wing mercenaries, were plotting to topple Castro.

These developments prompted Castro to further clean house of "counter-revolutionaries", and appoint Guevara as Director of the Industrialization Department of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform on October 7, 1959 and as President of the National Bank of Cuba on November 26, 1959. This allowed him to retain his military rank.
Guevara being received in China by Chairman Mao Zedong, at an official ceremony in the Government palace, November 1960

On March 4, 1960, the French freighter La Coubre, carrying munitions from the port of Antwerp, exploded twice while being unloaded in Havana Harbor, killing well over 100 people. Guevara provided first aid to victims. It was at the memorial service for the victims of this explosion the following day that Alberto Korda took the famous photograph now known as Guerrillero Heroico.

Guevara desired to see a diversification in Cuba's economy, as well as an elimination of material incentives in favor of moral ones. He viewed capitalism as a "contest among wolves" where "one can only win at the cost of others," and thus desired to see the creation of a "new man and woman". An integral part of fostering a sense of "unity between the individual and the mass", Guevara believed, was volunteer work and will. To display this, Guevara "led by example", working "endlessly at his ministry job, in construction, and even cutting sugar cane" on his day off. He was known for working 36 hours at a stretch, calling meetings after midnight, and eating on the run. Alongside his work schedule he wrote several publications advocating a replication of the Cuban revolutionary model, promoting small rural guerrilla groups (foco theory) as an alternative to massive armed insurrection. During this time his wife Aleida encouraged him to explore classical music, which he came to love, with Beethoven as his favorite. Other luxuries which he afforded himself were maté, his favorite beverage, and Montecristo No. 4's, his cigar of choice.

Guevara did not participate in the fighting of the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, having been ordered by Castro to a secretly prearranged command post in Cuba's western Pinar del Río province, where he fended off a decoy force. During this deployment, he suffered a bullet grazing to the cheek when his pistol fell out of its holster and accidentally discharged.

In August 1961, during an economic conference of the Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Che Guevara sent a note of "gratitude" to U.S. President John F. Kennedy through Richard N. Goodwin, a young secretary of the White House. It read "Thanks for Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs). Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now it's stronger than ever." In response to U.S. Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon presenting the Alliance for Progress for ratification by the meeting, Guevara antagonistically attacked the United States claim of being a "democracy", stating that such a system was not compatible with "financial oligarchy, discrimination against blacks, and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan." Guevara continued, speaking out against the "persecution" that in his view "drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, and sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world."

Guevara, who was practically the architect of the Soviet-Cuban relationship, played a key role in bringing to Cuba the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During an interview with the British Communist newspaper The Daily Worker a few weeks after the crisis, Guevara still fuming, stated that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, they would have fired them off. Sam Russell, the British correspondent who spoke to Guevara at the time came away with "mixed feelings", calling him "a warm character" and "clearly a man of great intelligence", but "crackers from the way he went on about the missiles."

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born into a Jewish family in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire on March 14, 1879. His father was Hermann Einstein, a salesman and engineer. His mother was Pauline Einstein (née Koch). In 1880, the family moved to Munich, where his father and his uncle founded a company, Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, that manufactured electrical equipment based on Direct current.

The Einsteins were not observant of Jewish religious practices, and Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. Although Einstein had early speech difficulties, he was a top student in elementary school.
Albert Einstein in 1893 (age 14), taken before the family moved to Italy

When Einstein was five, his father showed him a pocket compass. Einstein realized that there must be something in the space, previously thought to be empty, that was moving the needle and later stated that this experience made "a deep and lasting impression". At his mother's insistence, he took violin lessons starting at age six, and although he disliked them and eventually quit, he later took great pleasure in Mozart's violin sonatas. As he grew, Einstein built models and mechanical devices for fun, and began to show a talent for mathematics.

In 1889, family friend Max Talmud, a medical student, introduced the ten-year-old Einstein to key science, mathematics, and philosophy texts, including Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Euclid's Elements (Einstein called it the "holy little geometry book"). From Euclid, Einstein began to understand deductive reasoning, and by the age of twelve, he had learned Euclidean geometry. Soon thereafter he began to investigate infinitesimal calculus.

In his early teens, Einstein attended the Luitpold Gymnasium. His father intended for him to pursue electrical engineering, but Einstein clashed with authorities and resented the school regimen. He later wrote that the spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning.

In 1894, when Einstein was fifteen, his father's business failed, as DC had lost the War of Currents to alternating current (AC). In search of business, the Einstein family moved to Italy, first to Milan and then, after a few months, to Pavia. During this time, Einstein wrote his first scientific work, "The Investigation of the State of Aether in Magnetic Fields". Einstein had been left behind in Munich to finish high school, but in the spring of 1895, he withdrew to join his family in Pavia, convincing the school to let him go by using a doctor's note.

Rather than completing high school, Einstein decided to apply directly to the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule (later Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)) in Zürich, Switzerland. Lacking a school certificate, he was required to take an entrance examination, which he did not pass, although he got exceptional marks in mathematics and physics. Einstein wrote that it was in that same year, at age 16, that he first performed his famous thought experiment visualizing traveling alongside a beam of light (Einstein 1979).

The Einsteins sent Albert to Aarau, Switzerland to finish secondary school. While lodging with the family of Professor Jost Winteler, he fell in love with the family's daughter, Marie. (Albert's sister Maja later married Paul Winteler.) In Aarau, Einstein studied Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. At age 17 he graduated, and, with his father's approval, renounced his citizenship in the German Kingdom of Württemberg to avoid military service, to finally enroll in 1896 in the mathematics and physics program at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Marie Winteler moved to Olsberg, Switzerland for a teaching post.

In the same year, Einstein's future wife, Mileva Marić, also entered the Polytechnic to study mathematics and physics, being the only woman in the group. During the next few years, Einstein and Marić's friendship developed into romance. Einstein graduated in 1900 from the Polytechnic with a diploma in mathematics and physics, whereas Marić failed her final exams. That same year, Einstein's friend Michele Besso introduced him to the work of Ernst Mach. The next year, Einstein published a paper in the prestigious Annalen der Physik on the capillary forces of a straw (Einstein 1901). He gained Swiss citizenship on 21 February 1901.

Following graduation, Einstein could not find a teaching post. After almost two years of searching, a former classmate's father helped him get a job in Berne, at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property, the patent office, as an assistant examiner. His responsibility was evaluating patent applications for electromagnetic devices. In 1903, Einstein's position at the Swiss Patent Office was made permanent, although he was passed over for promotion until he "fully mastered machine technology".

With friends he met in Berne, Einstein formed a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy, jokingly named "The Olympia Academy". Their readings included Poincaré, Mach, and Hume, who influenced Einstein's scientific and philosophical outlook.

During this period Einstein had almost no personal contact with the physics community. Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time: two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time.

Einstein and Mileva Marić had a daughter they called Lieserl, who was born in early 1902, probably in Novi Sad.Her fate is uncertain after 1903.

Einstein married Mileva on 6 January 1903, although his mother had objected to the match because she had a prejudice against Serbs and thought Marić "too old" and "physically defective." Their relationship was for a time a personal and intellectual partnership. In a letter to her, Einstein called Marić "a creature who is my equal and who is as strong and independent as I am." There has been occasional debate about whether Marić influenced Einstein's work, however, the overwhelming consensus amongst academic historians of science is that she did not. On 14 May 1904, Albert and Mileva's first son, Hans Albert Einstein, was born in Berne, Switzerland. Their second son, Eduard, was born in Zurich on 28 July 1910.

Albert and Marić divorced on 14 February 1919, having lived apart for five years. On 2 June of that year, Einstein married Elsa Löwenthal (née Einstein), who had nursed him through an illness. Elsa was Albert's first cousin maternally and his second cousin paternally. Together the Einsteins raised Margot and Ilse, Elsa's daughters from her first marriage. Their union produced no children.

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born at the Gasthof zum Pommer, an inn in Braunau am Inn, Austria–Hungary, on 20 April 1889, the fourth child of six. His father, Alois Hitler (1837–1903), was a customs official. His mother, Klara Pölzl (1860–1907), was Alois's third wife. She was also his cousin, so a papal dispensation was obtained for the marriage. Of Alois and Klara's six children, only Adolf and his sister Paula, seven years his junior, reached adulthood. Hitler's father also had a son, Alois, Jr., and a daughter, Angela, by his second wife.

Hitler had a troubled childhood, as his father was violent to him and violent towards his mother. Hitler himself said that, as a boy, he was often beaten by his father. Years later, he told his secretary: "I then resolved never again to cry when my father whipped me. A few days later I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end". Some historians believe a history of family violence committed by his father against his mother is indicated in a section of his book Mein Kampf in which Hitler describes in vivid detail an anonymous example of family violence committed by a husband against a wife. This along with beatings by his father against him could explain Hitler's deep emotional attachment to his mother while at the same time having deep resentment towards his father.

Hitler's family moved often, from Braunau am Inn to Passau, Lambach, Leonding, and Linz. The young Hitler was a good student in elementary school, but in the sixth grade, his first year of high school (Realschule) in Linz he failed and had to repeat the grade. His teachers said that he had "no desire to work". For one school year he was a student there at the same time as Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. Although both boys were exactly the same age, Hitler was placed two school years below Wittgenstein. It is a matter of controversy whether Hitler and Wittgenstein even knew of each other, and if so whether either had any memory of the other.

Hitler later said that his educational slump was a rebellion against his father, who wanted the boy to follow him in a career as a customs official; he wanted to become a painter instead. This explanation is further supported by Hitler's later description of himself as a misunderstood artist. After Alois died on 3 January 1903, Hitler's schoolwork did not improve. At age 16, Hitler dropped out of high school without a diploma.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler attributed his conversion to German nationalism to a time during his early teenage years when he read a book of his father's about the Franco-Prussian War, which caused him to question why his father and other German Austrians failed to fight for the Germans during the war.

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler, was an illegitimate child. For the first 39 years of his life he bore his mother's surname, Schicklgruber. In 1876, he took the surname of his stepfather, Johann Georg Hiedler. The name was spelled Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler, and was probably regularized to Hitler by a clerk. The origin of the name is either "one who lives in a hut" (Standard German Hütte), "shepherd" (Standard German hüten "to guard", English heed), or is from the Slavic word Hidlar and Hidlarcek. (Regarding the first two theories: some German dialects make little or no distinction between the ü-sound and the i-sound.)

Allied propaganda exploited Hitler's original family name during World War II. Pamphlets bearing the phrase "Heil Schicklgruber" were airdropped over German cities. He was legally born a Hitler, however, and was also related to Hiedler via his maternal grandmother, Johanna Hiedler.

The name "Adolf" comes from Old High German for "noble wolf" (Adel=nobility + wolf). Hence, one of Hitler's self-given nicknames was Wolf or Herr Wolf; he began using this nickname in the early 1920s and was addressed by it only by intimates (as "Uncle Wolf" by the Wagners) up until the fall of the Third Reich. The names of his various headquarters scattered throughout continental Europe (Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Wolfsschlucht in France, Werwolf in Ukraine, etc.) reflect this. By his closest family and relatives, Hitler was known as "Adi".

Hitler's paternal grandfather was most likely one of the brothers Johann Georg Hiedler or Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. There were rumors that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish and that his grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, became pregnant while working as a servant in a Jewish household. The implications of these rumors were politically explosive for the proponent of a racist and antisemitic ideology. Opponents tried to prove that Hitler had Jewish or Czech ancestors. Although these rumors were never confirmed, for Hitler they were reason enough to conceal his origins. According to Robert G. L. Waite in The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, Hitler made it illegal for German women to work in Jewish households, and after the "Anschluss" (annexation) of Austria, Hitler turned his father's hometown into an artillery practice area. Waite says that Hitler's insecurities in this regard may have been more important than whether Judaic ancestry could have been proven by his peers.

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

From 1905 on, Hitler lived a bohemian life in Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of architecture. His memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:

The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest.

Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:

In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfilment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.

On 21 December 1907, Hitler's mother died of breast cancer at age 47. Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the orphans' benefits to his sister Paula. When he was 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men on Meldemannstraße.

Hitler said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, which had a large Jewish community, including Orthodox Jews who had fled the pogroms in Russia. But according to a childhood friend, August Kubizek, Hitler was a "confirmed anti-Semite" before he left Linz, Austria. Vienna at that time was a hotbed of traditional religious prejudice and 19th century racism. Hitler may have been influenced by the writings of the ideologist and anti-Semite Lanz von Liebenfels and polemics from politicians such as Karl Lueger, founder of the Christian Social Party and Mayor of Vienna, the composer Richard Wagner, and Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the pan-Germanic Away from Rome! movement. Hitler claims in Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing antisemitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox Jew:

There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become Europeanised in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic antisemitism. Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?

If this account is true, Hitler apparently did not act on his new belief. He often was a guest for dinner in a noble Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings.

Hitler may also have been influenced by Martin Luther's On the Jews and their Lies. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside Wagner and Frederick the Great. Wilhelm Röpke, writing after the Holocaust, concluded that "without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."

Hitler claimed that Jews were enemies of the Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of Socialism and Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his antisemitism with anti-Marxism. Later, blaming Germany's military defeat in World War I on the 1918 revolutions, he considered Jews the culprits of Imperial Germany's downfall and subsequent economic problems as well.

Generalising from tumultuous scenes in the parliament of the multi-national Austrian monarchy, he decided that the democratic parliamentary system was unworkable. However, according to August Kubizek, his one-time roommate, he was more interested in Wagner's operas than in his politics.

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich. He wrote in Mein Kampf that he had always longed to live in a "real" German city. In Munich, he became more interested in architecture and, he says, the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Moving to Munich also helped him escape military service in Austria for a time, but the Munich police (acting in cooperation with the Austrian authorities) eventually arrested him. After a physical exam and a contrite plea, he was deemed unfit for service and allowed to return to Munich. However, when Germany entered World War I in August 1914, he petitioned King Ludwig III of Bavaria for permission to serve in a Bavarian regiment. This request was granted, and Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian army.
A young Hitler (left) posing with other German soldiers.

World War I

Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander), ending the war as a Gefreiter (equivalent at the time to a lance corporal in the British and private first class in the American armies). He was a runner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the Western Front, and was often exposed to enemy fire. He participated in a number of major battles on the Western Front, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of Ypres (October 1914), which became known in Germany as the Kindermord bei Ypern (Massacre of the Innocents) saw approximately 40,000 men (between a third and a half) of the nine infantry divisions present killed in twenty days, and Hitler's own company of 250 reduced to 42 by December. Biographer John Keegan has said that this experience drove Hitler to become aloof and withdrawn for the remaining years of war.

Hitler was twice decorated for bravery. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918, an honour rarely given to a Gefreiter. However, because the regimental staff thought Hitler lacked leadership skills, he was never promoted to Unteroffizier (equivalent to a British corporal). Other historians say that the reason he was not promoted is that he was not a German citizen. His duties at regimental headquarters, while often dangerous, gave Hitler time to pursue his artwork. He drew cartoons and instructional drawings for an army newspaper. In 1916, he was wounded in either the groin area or the left thigh during the Battle of the Somme, but returned to the front in March 1917. He received the Wound Badge later that year. Sebastian Haffner, referring to Hitler's experience at the front, suggests he did have at least some understanding of the military.

On 15 October 1918, Hitler was admitted to a field hospital, temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack. The English psychologist David Lewis and Bernhard Horstmann suggest the blindness may have been the result of a conversion disorder (then known as hysteria). Hitler said it was during this experience that he became convinced the purpose of his life was to "save Germany." Some scholars, notably Lucy Dawidowicz, argue that an intention to exterminate Europe's Jews was fully formed in Hitler's mind at this time, though he probably had not thought through how it could be done. Most historians think the decision was made in 1941, and some think it came as late as 1942.

Two passages in Mein Kampf mention the use of poison gas:

At the beginning of the Great War, or even during the War, if twelve or fifteen thousand of these Jews who were corrupting the nation had been forced to submit to poison-gas . . . then the millions of sacrifices made at the front would not have been in vain.

These tactics are based on an accurate estimation of human weakness and must lead to success, with almost mathematical certainty, unless the other side also learns how to fight poison gas with poison gas. The weaker natures must be told that here it is a case of to be or not to be.

Hitler had long admired Germany, and during the war he had become a passionate German patriot, although he did not become a German citizen until 1932. Hitler found the war to be 'the greatest of all experiences' and afterwards he was praised by a number of his commanding officers for his bravery. He was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918 even while the German army still held enemy territory. Like many other German nationalists, Hitler believed in the Dolchstoßlegende ("dagger-stab legend") which claimed that the army, "undefeated in the field," had been "stabbed in the back" by civilian leaders and Marxists back on the home front. These politicians were later dubbed the November Criminals.

The Treaty of Versailles deprived Germany of various territories, demilitarised the Rhineland and imposed other economically damaging sanctions. The treaty re-created Poland, which even moderate Germans regarded as an outrage. The treaty also blamed Germany for all the horrors of the war, something which major historians like John Keegan now consider at least in part to be victor's justice: most European nations in the run-up to World War I had become increasingly militarised and were eager to fight. The culpability of Germany was used as a basis to impose reparations on Germany (the amount was repeatedly revised under the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the Hoover Moratorium). Germany in turn perceived the treaty and especially, Article 231 the paragraph on the German responsibility for the war as a humiliation. For example, there was a nearly total demilitarisation of the armed forces, allowing Germany only six battleships, no submarines, no air force, an army of 100,000 without conscription and no armoured vehicles. The treaty was an important factor in both the social and political conditions encountered by Hitler and his Nazis as they sought power. Hitler and his party used the signing of the treaty by the "November Criminals" as a reason to build up Germany so that it could never happen again. He also used the "November Criminals" as scapegoats, although at the Paris peace conference, these politicians had had very little choice in the matter.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Born on October 15, 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned 49 on the day of Nietzsche's birth. (Nietzsche later dropped his given middle name, "Wilhelm".) Nietzsche's parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler (1826–1897), married in 1843, the year before their son's birth, and had two other children: a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph, born in 1848. Nietzsche's father died from a brain ailment in 1849; his younger brother died in 1850. The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsche's paternal grandmother and his father's two unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1861.

Nietzsche attended a boys' school and then later a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder, both of whom came from very respected families. In 1854, he began to attend the Domgymnasium in Naumburg, but after he showed particular talents in music and language, the internationally-recognized Schulpforta admitted him as a pupil, and there he continued his studies from 1858 to 1864. Here he became friends with Paul Deussen and Carl von Gersdorff. He also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. At Schulpforta, Nietzsche received an important introduction to literature, particularly that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and for the first time experienced a distance from his family life in a small-town Christian environment.
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1864.

After graduation in 1864 Nietzsche commenced studies in theology and classical philology at the University of Bonn. For a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester (and to the anger of his mother) he stopped his theological studies and lost his faith. This may have happened in part because of his reading about this time of David Strauss' Life of Jesus, which had a profound effect on the young Nietzsche, though in an essay entitled Fate and History written in 1862, Nietzsche had already argued that historical research had discredited the central teachings of Christianity. Nietzsche then concentrated on studying philology under Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl, whom he followed to the University of Leipzig the next year. There he became close friends with fellow-student Erwin Rohde. Nietzsche's first philological publications appeared soon after.

In 1865 Nietzsche thoroughly studied the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1866 he read Friedrich Albert Lange's History of Materialism. Both thinkers proved influential. Schopenhauer was especially significant in the development of Nietzsche's later thought. Lange's descriptions of Kant's anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased concern with science, Darwin's theory, and the general rebellion against tradition and authority greatly intrigued Nietzsche. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and to continue his study of philosophy.

In 1867 Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. However, a bad riding accident in March 1868 left him unfit for service. Consequently Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies again, completing them and first meeting with Richard Wagner later that year.

Nietzsche is commonly classified as a “German” philosopher by professionals and non-specialists alike. The “German” classification is not entirely straightforward because the modern nation of Germany did not exist at the time of his birth. Instead, a number of German states existed, and Nietzsche was a citizen of one of these, Prussia – for a time. When he accepted his post at Basel, Nietzsche applied for the annulment of his Prussian citizenship. The official response confirming the revocation of his citizenship came in a document dated April 17, 1869. Thus, officially he was stateless.

Nietzsche's feelings about his national identity were clearly complex. In Ecce Homo, he writes:

Even by virtue of my descent, I am granted an eye beyond all merely local, merely nationally conditioned perspectives; it is not difficult for me to be a "good European." On the other hand, I am perhaps more German than present-day Germans, mere citizens of the German Reich, could possibly be—I, the last anti-political German. And yet my ancestors were Polish noblemen: I have many racial instincts in my body from that source—who knows? When I consider how often I am addressed as a Pole when I travel, even by Poles themselves, and how rarely I am taken for a German, it might seem that I have been merely externally sprinkled with what is German.

A later revision of the same passage was discovered in 1969 among the papers of Peter Gast. In it Nietzsche is even more adamant about his Polish Identity. “I am a pure-blooded Polish nobleman, without a single drop of bad blood, certainly not German blood.”
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Yasser Arafat

Was a Palestinian leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, President of the Palestinian National Authority, and leader of the Fatah political party, which he founded in 1959. Arafat spent much of his life fighting against Israel in the name of Palestinian self-determination. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242.

Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of that country. While the majority of the Palestinian people, regardless of political ideology or faction, viewed him as a freedom fighter who symbolized their national aspirations, some Israelis described him as a terrorist for the attacks his faction led against civilians.

Later in his career, Arafat engaged in a series of negotiations with the government of Israel to end the decades-long conflict between that country and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2000 Camp David Summit. His political rivals, including Islamists and several PLO leftists, often denounced him for being corrupt or too submissive in his concessions to the Israeli government. In 1994, Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at Oslo. During this time, Hamas and other militant organizations rose to power and shook the foundations of the authority Fatah under Arafat had established in the Palestinian territories.

In late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat became ill and fell into a coma. While the exact cause of his death remains unknown, doctors spoke of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and cirrhosis, but no autopsy was performed. Arafat died on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75.

Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo to Palestinian parents. His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Gazan; whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafat's father worked as a textile merchant in Cairo's religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi, the only offspring born in Cairo. His mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem family. She died from a kidney ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age.

Arafat's first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise seven children alone, sent him and his brother Fathi to their mother's family in the Moroccan Quarter of the Old City. They lived there with their uncle Salim Abul Saud for four years. In 1937, their father recalled them to be taken care of by their older sister, Inam. Arafat had a deteriorating relationship with his father; when he died in 1952, Arafat did not attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's grave upon his return to Gaza.

Arafat (second from right) with other civil engineering students in Cairo University, September 1951

In 1944, Arafat enrolled in the University of King Fuad I and graduated in 1950. He later claimed to have sought a better understanding of Judaism and Zionism by engaging in discussions with Jews and reading publications by Theodor Herzl and other prominent Zionists. At the same time, he became an Arab nationalist and began procuring weapons to be smuggled into the former British Mandate of Palestine, for use by irregulars in the Arab Higher Committee and the Army of the Holy War militias. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Arafat left the University and, along with other Arabs, sought to enter Palestine to join Arab forces fighting against Israeli troops. However, instead of joining the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not join the organization. He took part in combat in the Gaza area (which was the main battleground of Egyptian forces during the conflict). In early 1949, the war was winding down in Israel's favor, and Arafat returned to Cairo from a lack of logistical support.

After returning to the University, Arafat studied civil engineering and served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956. During his first year as president of the union, the University was renamed Cairo University after a coup was carried out by the Free Officers Movement overthrowing King Farouk I. By that time, Arafat had graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and was called to duty to fight with Egyptian forces during the Suez Crisis; however, he never actually fought on the battlefield. Later that year, at a conference in Prague, he donned a solid white keffiyeh–different from the checkered one he adopted later in Kuwait, which was to become his emblem.


Arafat's original full name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was his first name; Abdel Raouf was his father's name and Arafat his grandfather's. Al-Qudwa was the name of his tribe and al-Husseini was that of the clan to which the al-Qudwas belonged. It should be noted that Arafat's clan, al-Husseini was based in Gaza and should not be confused with the well-known, but unrelated, al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem.

Since Arafat was raised in Cairo, the tradition of dropping the Mohammed or Ahmad portion of one's first name was common; notable Egyptians such as Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak did so. However, Arafat dropped also the Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf parts of his name as well. During the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasser, and in the early years of Arafat's guerrilla career, he assumed the nom de guerre of Abu Ammar. Both names are related to Ammar ibn Yasir, one of Muhammad's early companions. Although he dropped most of his inherited names, he retained Arafat due to its significance in Islam.

Rafael Caldera

Born January 24, 1916 was president of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1994 to 1999.

Caldera taught sociology and law at various universities before entering politics. He was a founding member of COPEI, Venezuela's Christian Democratic party. He first ran for president unsuccessfully in 1946 and tried again every time it was possible until finally succeeding in 1968, winning by a relatively scant 33,000 votes against a recently divided Acción Democrática party. When he was sworn into office in 1969, it marked the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another in Venezuela's history. During his first presidency, Caldera was able to pacify the country by granting an amnesty that allowed guerrilla fighters, who had been operating clandestinely for almost a decade, to reincorporate to society and participate in politics.

In 1993, Caldera split from COPEI, the party he had founded, to form a new political party, Convergence, which, supported by a coalition of many small leftist parties (MAS, MEP, PCV) as well as some centre-right parties (URD, MIN), raised Caldera to the presidency in December 1993. This was a fatal blow to the traditional parties which, leaderless and demoralized, garnered few votes in the election. He won a very narrow victory in that year's presidential election. During his second presidential period, he pardoned Hugo Chávez, who would eventually succeed him in 1999.

Rafael Caldera, was born in San Felipe, Yaracuy, were his parents Tomás Rafael Caldera Izaguirre and Rosa Sofía Rodriguez Rivero. Orphan from young age, was adopted by his aunt Maria Eva Rodriguez Rivero, who was married to lawyer Tomás Liscano, becoming part of a wealthy Venezuelan Roman Catholic family. He married with Alicia Pietri de Caldera (grand-daughter of Juan Pietri, and first-cousins with Arturo Uslar Pietri and Andres Boulton Pietri) in 1941, with whom he has six children: Mireya, Juan José, Rafael Tomás, Alicia Helena, Cecilia, and Andrés Antonio Caldera Pietri.

Caldera studied elementary school in San Felipe 1921 - 1922, enters at San Ignacio school of the Society of Jesus in Caracas 1923 - 1925, in 1926 returns to Yaracuy studying at Padre Delgado school, and secondary education again in Caracas (San Ignacio school) 1927 - 1931, made his superior studies in this city, at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) 1931 - 1938, obtaining a doctorate in the Faculty of Right and Political Sciences, later was professor of sociology and law in several universities including the UCV, was a student leader, which took him to the political world.

Between his educative curriculum, Caldera dominates languages like French, English, Italian, something of German and Portuguese. Also is a leading student of XIX Century humanist and educator Andrés Bello and has authored multiple books on politics, literature and Christian Democracy, and member of the Venezuelan Academy of the Language. As such, one of his achievements is the acceptance of millardo ("milliard", 10 9) by the Royal Spanish Academy in 1995 as an alternative to mil millones (in English: one billion).

Caldera has participated in educative and political circles, like the direction of the Venezuelan Institute of Labor rights (1958-1966) and the presidencies of the Venezuelan Association of Sociology (1958-1967), the Christian Democratic Organization of Latin America (1964-1968) and the World-wide Christian Democratic Union (1967-1968).

Hugo Chávez

born July 28, 1954 is the current President of Venezuela. As the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Chávez promotes a political doctrine of participatory democracy, socialism and Latin American and Caribbean cooperation. He is also a critic of neoliberalism, globalization, and United States foreign policy.

A career military officer, Chávez founded the left-wing Fifth Republic Movement after orchestrating a failed 1992 coup d'état against former President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Chávez was elected President in 1998 with a campaign centering on promises of aiding Venezuela's poor majority, and was reelected in 2000 and in 2006. Domestically, Chávez has maintained nationwide Bolivarian Missions, whose goals are to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social ills. Abroad, Chávez has acted against the Washington Consensus by supporting alternative models of economic development, and has advocated cooperation among the world's poor nations, especially those in Latin America.

Chávez's policies have evoked controversy in Venezuela and abroad, receiving anything from vehement criticism to enthusiastic support. The government of the United States claims that Chávez is a threat to democracy in Latin America. Many other governments sympathize with his ideology and/or welcome his bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements. In 2005 and 2006 he was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.

Hugo Chávez has been married twice. He first wedded Nancy Colmenares, a woman from a poor family originating in Chávez's own hometown of Sabaneta. Chávez and Colmenares remained married for eighteen years, during which time they had three children: Rosa Virginia, María Gabriela, and Hugo Rafael. They separated soon after Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. During his first marriage, Chávez also had an affair with young historian Herma Marksman; their relationship lasted nine years. Chávez is divorced from his second wife, journalist Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez.Through that marriage, Chávez had another daughter, Rosinés. Chávez has two grandchildren, Gabriela and Manuel.

Chávez was raised a Roman Catholic, although he has had a series of disputes with both the Venezuelan Catholic hierarchy and Protestant groups like the New Tribes Mission. Originally he kept his own faith a private matter, but over the course of his presidency, Chávez has become increasingly open to discussing his religious views, stating that both his faith and his interpretation of Jesus' personal life and ideology have had a profound impact on his left-wing and progressivist views. He often invokes God and asks for prayer in speeches, as he did when he asked Venezuelans to pray for Fidel Castro's health. He describes himself as Christian who grew up expecting to become a priest. According to him, as a result of this background his socialist policies have been borne with roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Ahmadinejad, born Mahmoud Saborjhian was the son of a blacksmith, born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan in Talysh family on 28 October 1956. The name, which derives from thread painter, a once common and humble occupation, was changed into Ahmadinejad, meaning the race of Mohammed or the virtuous race. According to his relatives, it was for "a mixture of religious and economic reasons." During the presidential campaign in 2009, political opponents have speculated that the name was changed in order to cover Jewish roots. In the 1950s, when he was still a baby, his family moved from Aradan to Narmak district in southern Tehran in search of more economic prosperity; It was during this time period that the Saborjhian family changed its name to Ahmadinejad.

In 1976, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took Iran's national university entrance contests. He has claimed that he ranked 132nd out of 400,000 participants that year, and soon enrolled in the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering. It is not clear what he did during the next ten years[citation needed].

After the Islamic Revolution, he became a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, an organization developed to prevent students from sympathizing or allying with the budding Mojahedin-e Khalq. According to a July 1, 2005 article of the New York Times, 6 former hostages of the 1979 US Embassy Crisis in Iran remember Ahmadinejad playing a major role in their captivity. During this crisis 52 American hostages were held for 444 days. William J. Daugherty, a former intelligence officer, colonel Charles Scott, commander Donald Sharer, lieutenant colonel David Roeder, and marine guard Kevin Hermening are five of the hostages who distinctly remember Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being involved directly and in a supervisory role in interrogations. For example, Mr. Roeder recalls, “He was one of the interrogators in the room . . . when they threatened me with my son’s kidnapping.” Mr Roeder also recalled “Mr. Ahmadinejad working in a supervisory role in one third or more of the 44 interrogations he underwent.” A follow up article on July 29, 2005 from the New York Times indicated an investigation into the matter by the US State Department was inconclusive. However at the time of the July 29th article none of the aforementioned six hostages had been interviewed. The White House did concede “Mr. Ahmadinejad was leader of the student movement that organized the attack on the embassy and the taking of American hostages." Admadinejad and Iranian officials deny he had any involvement with the hostage taking.

Some details of Ahmadinejad's life during the 1980s are not publicly known. But it is known that he held a number of administrative posts in the province of West Azerbaijan. It has been widely reported that after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, Ahmadinejad joined the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and served in their intelligence and security apparatus, but his advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi says "He has never been a member or an official member of the Revolutionary Guards", having been a Basiji-like volunteer instead. He was accepted to a Master of Science program at the same school in 1986, and eventually received his doctorate in 1997 in civil engineering and traffic transportation planning. During his doctoral studies at Tehran, he was the governor general of Ardabil Province (1993-1997). Ahmadinejad was a lecturer and member of the faculty at the university since 1989.

Ahmadinejad is married and has two sons and a daughter. One of his sons formerly studied at the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic).

Early political career

Ahmadinejad began his political career as governor to both Maku and Khoy in West Azarbaijan Province during the 1980s. He eventually became an advisor to the governor general of Kurdistan Province for two years and was appointed as the governor general of Ardabil Province in 1993. In 1997, Mohammad Khatami removed Ahmadinejad from his position in Ardabil, and Ahmadinejad returned to teaching. In 2003, however, Ahmadinejad returned to the political scene after the City Council of Tehran appointed him to the position of mayor, after a 12 percent turnout led to the election of Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran's conservative candidates in Tehran.

During his mayorship, he reversed many of the changes put into effect by previous moderate and reformist mayors, putting religious emphasis on the activities of the cultural centers founded by previous mayors, going on the record with the separation of elevators for men and women in the municipality offices, and suggesting that the bodies of those killed in the Iran–Iraq War be buried in major city squares of Tehran. Such actions were coupled with an emphasis on charity, such as distributing free soup to the poor.

After two years as mayor, Ahmadinejad was shortlisted in a list of 65 finalists for World Mayor in 2005 and was among 3 strong candidates for the top-10 list but became non-eligible because of his resignation. Out of the 550 nominated mayors, nine were from Asia.

He was not widely known when he entered the presidential election campaign, although he had already made his mark for rolling back earlier reforms. After his election to the presidency, Ahmadinejad resigned from his post as the mayor of Tehran. His resignation was accepted on 28 June 2005.

He is a member of the Central Council of the Islamic Society of Engineers, but his key support is inside the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (Abadgaran).

Presidency

Presidential campaign

Ahmadinejad generally sent mixed signals about his plans for his presidency, which some US-based analysts considered to have been designed to attract both religious conservatives and the lower economic classes. His campaign motto was, "It's doable and we can do it."

In his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad took a populist approach, with emphasis on his own modest life, and compared himself with Mohammad Ali Rajai, the second president of Iran. Ahmadinejad said he had plans to create an "exemplary government for the people of the world" in Iran. He is a self-described "principlist"; that is, acting politically based on Islamic and revolutionary principles. One of his goals has been "putting the petroleum income on people's tables", referring to Iran's oil profits being distributed among the poor.

Ahmadinejad was the only presidential candidate who spoke out against future relations with the United States. In an interview with Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting a few days before the elections, Ahmadinejad accused the United Nations of being "one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam." He has openly opposed the veto power given to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. In the same interview, he stated, "It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals. Should such a privilege continue to exist, the Muslim world with a population of nearly 1.5 billion should be extended the same privilege." He has defended Iran's nuclear program and has accused "a few arrogant powers" of attempting to limit Iran's industrial and technological development in this and other fields.

During his campaign for the second round, he said, "We didn't participate in the revolution for turn-by-turn government.…This revolution tries to reach a world-wide government." Also he has mentioned that he has an extended program on fighting terrorism in order to improve foreign relations and has called for greater ties with Iran's neighbours and ending visa requirements between states in the region, saying that "people should visit anywhere they wish freely. People should have freedom in their pilgrimages and tours."

As confirmed by Ahmadinejad, his ideological and spiritual mentor is Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a senior cleric from Qom. Mesbah is the founder of Haghani School of thought in Iran. He and his team strongly supported Ahmadinejad's campaign during presidential election in 2005.

Election and term
Main article: Iranian presidential election, 2005

Ahmadinejad became the sixth president of Iran on 6 August 2005, after winning 62 percent of the vote in the run-off poll, nearly twice that of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He received the presidential authorization from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei on 3 August 2005. During the authorization ceremony he kissed Khamenei's hand in demonstration of his loyalty to him. Ahmadinejad's current term will end in August 2009, but he will be eligible to run for one more term in office in the 2009 presidential elections.

Ahmadinejad was required to introduce his suggested ministers to Majlis for a vote of approval in 15 days, after which Majlis would have one week to decide about the ministers. Masoud Zaribafan, Ahmadinejad's campaign manager, mentioned that Ahmadinejad would probably introduce his cabinet on the same day of his vow, but that did not happen. The list was finally sent to the Majlis on 14 August 2005.

The parliament had held a private meeting on 5 August, when Ahmadinejad presented a shortlist of three or four candidates for each ministry, to know the opinion of Majlis about his candidates. The final list was officially sent to the Majlis on 14 August. After a few days of heavy discussions in Majlis, which started on 21 August 2005, Ahmadinejad's cabinet was voted for on 24 August.

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Max Weber

Weber was born in Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent politician in the National Liberal Party (Germany) and a civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a Protestant and a Calvinist, with strong moral absolutist ideas. Weber Sr.'s engagement with public life immersed the family home in politics, as his salon received many prominent scholars and public figures. Weber was strongly influenced by his mother's views and approach to life, but he did not claim to be religious himself. The young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the emperor and the pope" and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations". At the age of fourteen, he wrote letters studded with references to Homer, Virgil, Cicero, and Livy, and he had an extended knowledge of Goethe, Spinoza, Kant, and Schopenhauer before he began university studies. It seemed clear that Weber would pursue advanced studies in the social sciences.

Max Weber and his brothers, Alfred and Karl, in 1879

In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student. Weber joined his father's duelling fraternity, and chose as his major study Weber Sr.'s field of law. Along with his law coursework, young Weber attended lectures in economics and studied medieval history and theology. Intermittently, he served with the German army in Strasbourg.

In the autumn of 1884, Weber returned to his parents' home to study at the University of Berlin. For the next eight years of his life, interrupted only by a term at the University of Göttingen and short periods of further military training, Weber stayed at his parents' house; first as a student, later as a junior barrister, and finally as a Dozent at the University of Berlin. In 1886 Weber passed the examination for "Referendar", comparable to the bar association examination in the British and American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled The History of Medieval Business Organisations.Two years later, Weber completed his Habilitationsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Private Law. Having thus become a "Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship.

In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888 he joined the "Verein für Socialpolitik", the new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as the solving of the wide-ranging social problems of the age, and who pioneered large-scale statistical studies of economic problems. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left leaning Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890 the "Verein" established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht, meaning the influx of foreign farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly industrialising cities. Weber was put in charge of the study, and wrote a large part of its results. The final report was widely acclaimed as an excellent piece of empirical research, and cemented Weber's reputation as an expert in agrarian economics.
Max Weber and his wife Marianne in 1894

In 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist and author in her own right, who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death. The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at Freiburg University, before accepting the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896. Next year, Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved. After this, Weber became increasingly prone to nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. His condition forced him to reduce his teaching, and leave his last course in the fall of 1899 unfinished. After spending months in a sanatorium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife traveled to Italy at the end of the year, and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902.

After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish a single paper between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in fall 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare next to his colleagues Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart. In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It became his most famous work, and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cultures and religions on the development of economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works that was published as a book during his lifetime. Also that year, he visited United States and participated in the Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) at St. Louis. Despite his successes, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time, and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907. In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful, presumably because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals at the time.
Max Weber in 1917

During the First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. In 1915 and 1916 he sat on commissions that tried to retain German supremacy in Belgium and Poland after the war. Weber's views on war, as well as on expansion of the German empire, changed throughout the war. He became a member of the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. In the same year, Weber became a consultant to the German Armistice Commission at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution. He argued in favor of inserting Article 48 into the Weimar Constitution.This article was later used by Adolf Hitler to institute rule by decree, thereby allowing his government to suppress opposition and obtain dictatorial powers. Weber's contributions to German politics remain a controversial subject to this day.

Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then in 1919 at the University of Munich. In Munich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but ultimately never held a personal sociology appointment. Weber left politics due to right-wing agitation in 1919 and 1920. Many colleagues and students in Munich argued against him for his speeches and left-wing attitude during the German Revolution of 1918 and 1919, with some right-wing students holding protests in front of his home. Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on June 14, 1920.

Vladimir Lenin

Born in Simbirsk – later renamed Ulyanovsk after its most famous son – beside the Volga River in the Russian Empire, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova.

His father was a successful Russian official in public education who wanted democracy. The family was of mixed ethnicity, his ancestry being “Russian, Mordovian, Kalmyk, Jewish (see Blank family), Volgan German, and Swedish, and possibly others” according to biographer Dmitri Volkogonov. Lenin was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. In January 1886, Lenin’s father, a schoolmaster, died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and, in May 1887, when Lenin was 17 years old, his eldest brother Alexander was arrested and hanged for participating in a terrorist bomb plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III.

His sister Anna, who was with Alexander at the time of his arrest, was banished to his family estate in the village of Kokushkino, about 40 km (25 mi.) from Kazan.

These events radicalized Lenin, and his official Soviet biographies describe them as being central to the revolutionary track of his life. It is also significant, perhaps, that this emotional upheaval transpired in the same year he enrolled at the Kazan State University.

As Lenin became interested in Marxism, he was involved in student protests and was subsequently arrested. He was then expelled from Kazan University for his political ideals. He continued to study independently, however, and it was during this period of exile that he first familiarized himself with Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

Lenin was later permitted to continue his studies, this time at the University of Saint Petersburg, and, by 1891, had been admitted to the Bar.

In January 1892, Lenin was awarded a first class degree in law by the University. He also distinguished himself in Latin and Greek, and learned German, French and English, although his knowledge of the latter two languages was limited: he relied on Inessa Armand to translate an article into French and into English in 1917. In the same year he also wrote to S. N. Ravich in Geneva, “I am unable to lecture in French.”

Lenin practiced as a lawyer for some years in Samara, a port on the Volga river, before moving to St Petersburg in 1893. Rather than pursuing a legal career, he became increasingly involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts, joining the local Marxist group. On 7 December 1895, Lenin was arrested, detained by authorities for fourteen months, in cell 193 of the St Petersburg Remand Prison, and then released and exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia, where he mingled with such notable Marxists as Georgy Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia.

In July 1898, Lenin married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya and he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia in April 1899. In 1900, his exile came to an end, and he began his travels throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. Lenin lived in Zurich, Geneva (where he lectured and studied at Geneva University), Munich, Prague, Vienna, Manchester and London, and, during this time, he co-founded the newspaper Iskra (“The Spark”) with Julius Martov, who later became a leading opponent. He also wrote several articles and books related to the revolutionary movement, striving to recruit future Social Democrats. He began using various aliases, finally settling upon "Lenin"—"N. Lenin" in full. (The Western press often called him "Nikolai Lenin" - perhaps on the mistaken assumption that N. stood for Nikolai - however, he was virtually never referred to by this name in Russia or the Soviet Union, and Lenin himself never used it as a pseudonym.)

Lenin was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; РСДРП in Russian) and, in 1903, led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks. The names ‘Bolshevik’, or ‘Majority’, and ‘Menshevik’, or ‘Minority’, referred to the narrow outvoting of the Mensheviks in the decision to limit party membership to revolutionary professionals, rather than including sympathizers. The division was inspired partly by Lenin’s pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1901–02), which focused on his revolutionary strategy. It is said to have been one of the most influential pamphlets in pre-revolutionary Russia, with Lenin himself claiming that three out of five workers had either read it or had had it read to them.

In November 1905, Lenin returned from exile to Russia to support the 1905 Russian Revolution. In 1906, Lenin was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. At this time he shuttled between Finland and Russia but, in December 1907, with the revolution crushed by the Tsarist authorities, he returned back to European exile. Until the revolutions of 1917, he spent the majority of his time exiled in Europe, where, despite relative poverty, he managed to continue his political writings.
In response to philosophical debates on the proper course of a socialist revolution, Lenin completed Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909—a work which became fundamental in the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Lenin continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Prague Party Conference of 1912. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile, and it is believed that she was Lenin’s lover during this time. As writer Neil Harding points out however, although much has been made of this relationship, despite the “slender stock of evidence … we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate”.
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Memorial plate

When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist, and including luminaries such as Karl Kautsky) supported their various countries’ war efforts, Lenin was absolutely stunned, refusing to believe at first that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the Second International, which was composed of these parties. Lenin (against the war in his belief that the peasants and workers were fighting the battle of the bourgeoisie for them) adopted the stance that what he described as an “imperialist war” ought to be turned into a civil war between the classes. As war broke out, Lenin was briefly detained by the Austrian authorities in the town of Poronin, where he was residing at the time. On 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland, residing first at Berne and then Zurich. In 1915 he attended the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, convened in the Swiss town of that name. Lenin was the main leader of the minority Zimmerwald Left, who unsuccessfully urged against the majority pacifists that the conference should adopt Lenin's stance of converting the imperialist war into a class war. Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left urged a similar resolution at the next anti-war conference, also held in Switzerland at Kienthal (24-30 April 1916), but in the end settled for a compromise manifesto.

It was in Zurich in the spring of 1916 that Lenin wrote the notable theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which ironically popularized Kautsky's take in the 1900s. In this work Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. According to Lenin, in the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature.

Karl Marx

May 5, 1818–March 14, 1883 was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, sociologist, humanist, political theorist, and revolutionary credited as the founder of communism.

Marx summarized his approach to history and politics in the opening line of the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto (1848): “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, socialism will in its turn replace capitalism and lead to a stateless, classless society which will emerge after a transitional period, the "dictatorship of the proletariat". See, for example, Marx's comments in section one of The Communist Manifesto on feudalism, capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process: "We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged...the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property." Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1848),The Communist Manifesto

On the one hand, Marx argued for a systemic understanding of socio-economic change. He argued that the structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to communism:
“ The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. ”

(The Communist Manifesto)

On the other hand, Marx argued that socio-economic change occurred through organized revolutionary action. He argued that capitalism will end through the organized actions of an international working class, led by a Communist Party: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." (from The German Ideology)

While Marx remained a relatively obscure figure in his own lifetime, his ideas began to exert a major influence on workers' movements shortly after his death. This influence gained added impetus with the victory of the Marxist Bolsheviks in the Russian October Revolution in 1917, and few parts of the world remained significantly untouched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, in the Kingdom of Prussia's Province of the Lower Rhine as the third of his parents' seven children. His father, Heinrich Marx (1777–1838), born Herschel Mordechai, the son of Levy Mordechai (1743-1804) and Eva Lwow (1753-1823), descended from a long line of rabbis but converted to Lutheran Christianity (despite his many deistic tendencies and his admiration of such Enlightenment figures as Voltaire and Rousseau) in order to gain permission to practice law. Marx's mother, Henriette née Pressburg (1788–1863), was the grand aunt of industrialists Gerard Philips and Anton Philips and a maternal descendant of the Barent-Cohen family through her parents Isaac Heijmans Presburg (Pressburg, c. 1747 – Nijmegen, May 3, 1832) and wife Nanette Salomon Barent-Cohen (Amsterdam, c. 1764 – Nijmegen, April 7, 1833), the daughter of Salomon David Barent-Cohen (d. 1807) and wife Sara Brandes, in turn the uncle and aunt by marriage of Nathan Mayer Rothschild's wife.

Marx had the following siblings: Sophie (d. 1883) (m. Wilhelm Robert Schmalhausen), Hermann (1819–42), Henriette (1820–56), Louise (1821–93) (m. Johann Carel Juta), Emilie, Caroline (1824–47) and Eduard (1834–37).
Marx in 1882

Soon after losing his job as editor of Rheinische Zeitung, a Cologne newspaper, Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the educated daughter of a Prussian baron, on June 19, 1843 in the Pauluskirche at Bad Kreuznach. They had kept their engagement a secret at first, and for several years both the Marxes and the von Westphalens opposed the match. From 1844 through 1848, Marx enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle, with income derived from the sale of his works, his salary, gifts from friends and allies; a large inheritance from his father's death, long delayed, also became available in March 1848. During the first half of the 1850s the Marx family lived in poverty and constant fear of creditors in a three room flat on Dean Street in Soho, London. Marx and Jenny already had four children and three more were to follow. Of these only three survived to adulthood. Marx's major source of income at this time was Friedrich Engels, who was drawing a steadily increasing income from the family business in Manchester. This was supplemented by weekly articles written as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. Inheritances from one of Jenny's uncles and her mother who died in 1856 allowed the family to move to somewhat more salubrious lodgings at 9 Grafton Terrace, Kentish Town a new suburb on the then-outskirts of London. Marx generally lived a hand-to-mouth existence, forever at the limits of his resources, although this did to some extent depend upon his spending on relatively bourgeois luxuries, which he felt were necessities for his wife and children given their social status and the mores of the time.

Education

Marx's parents had him educated at home until the age of thirteen. After graduating from the Trier Gymnasium, Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn in 1835 at the age of seventeen; he wished to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field of study. At Bonn he joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner) and at one point served as its president. Because of Marx's poor grades, his father forced him to transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented University of Berlin, where his legal studies became less significant than excursions into philosophy and history. During this period, Marx wrote many poems and essays concerning life, using the theological language acquired from his liberal, deistic father, such as "the Deity," but also absorbed the atheistic philosophy of the Young Hegelians who were prominent in Berlin at the time. Marx earned a doctorate in 1841 with a thesis titled The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, but he had to submit his dissertation to the University of Jena as he was warned that his reputation among the faculty as a Young Hegelian radical would lead to a poor reception in Berlin.
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