Louise Juta

Louise Juta, born Louise (or Luise) Marx (14 November 1821 – 3 July 1893) was a bookseller and the sister of Karl Marx. Life Louise Marx was the sixth child of Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, and Henriette Pressburg, of Trier in the Prussian Rhineland. Growing up, her elder brother Karl was clearly the dominant child in the family. Louise's niece Eleanor Marx later recorded that Karl was “‘a unique and unrivaled storyteller. I have heard my aunts say that as a little boy he was a terrible tyrant to his sisters, whom he would ‘drive’ down the Markusberg at Trier full speed as his horses and, worse, would insist on their eating the ‘cakes’ he made with dirty dough and dirtier hands. But they stood the ‘driving’ and ate the ‘cakes’ without a murmur for the sake of the stories Karl would tell them as a reward for their virtue.” Heinrich, a Jew and the son of a rabbi, was baptized in about 1817. With her siblings, Louise was baptized on 26 August 1824 by the Protestant military pastor Mühlenhoff. Shortly after a bout of scarlet fever, she was summoned with her sister Emilie on April 8, 1838 to Trier, because her father was seriously ill with tuberculosis. Heinrich Marx died on 10 May 1838 in Trier. She received, like all underage siblings, a guardian. Therefore, not much could be invested in their education. She was given special consideration in her mother's various wills. She met Jan Carel Juta in Zaltbommel and they married on 5 June 1853 in a civil ceremony in Trier. On the 7 June a church wedding took place in Traben, in the presence of her mother Henriette Marx and her uncle Lion and aunt Sophie Philips. On 15 June 1853, a notarised contract was concluded in Zaltbommel, in order to regulate the difficult travel conditions for the long journey to South Africa.