Who was Jenny von Westphalen?

Jenny von Westphalen was an intelligent and highly admired woman who married Karl Marx in June 1843, following a seven-year engagement.1

She was four years older than Marx and came from a family of military and administrative distinction; notably, her half-brother later served as a reactionary Prussian minister of the interior. Her father, who was a follower of the French socialist Saint-Simon, was fond of Marx, despite opposition to the marriage from other members of her family. Shortly after their wedding, the couple moved to Paris, where they began their life together during a period of significant development in Marx's revolutionary and communist thought.1