Sorge's grandfather, Adolph Sorge, had served as the secretary for the First International during Marx's lifetime. Grandpa Adolph told Sorge, throughout his childhood, Marx stories: about Marx reading Shakespeare (in English) and the Greek tragedies (in Greek) every July; about Marx and Engels playing tennis (Marx always losing), as the officials of the First International watched them, moving their heads "left-right, left-right, like a clock pendulum"; about Grandpa Adolph, stopping by Marx's home and taking him to a bogus meeting, covering Marx's secret trysts with his (recently fired) housemaid; about Marx's pathological fear of dentists -- Engels or Grandpa having to go with him and hold his hand as the blood soaked his immortal beard; about holding, piously, the manuscript of The Communist Manifesto, knowing that it was something that was to change the world forever, "the world that philosophers theretofore only attempted to interpret."
 

 
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