Friedrich Engels

About Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) was a German philosopher, social scientist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose profound intellectual partnership with Karl Marx shaped modern political thought. His historical importance, earning him an HPI Rank of #359, stems primarily from his foundational contributions to Marxist theory, including co-authoring The Communist Manifesto and extensively editing and developing Marx's work, particularly Das Kapital, after Marx's death. Engels’ analysis provided critical economic and sociological underpinnings for subsequent socialist and communist movements worldwide.

In the modern digital landscape, Engels receives an attention level that aligns almost perfectly with his historical standing, exhibiting an Attention Gap of approximately 1x. His 2025 annualized Wikipedia pageviews totaled 607K. This near-perfect parity is noteworthy when compared to contemporaries like Hannah Arendt, another philosopher ranked lower at #818, who nonetheless garnered 985K views. Furthermore, Engels sees significantly less attention than figures with comparable historical influence, such as the political leader Benjamin Netanyahu (#744 importance), who attracted 6.7M views in the same year.

While his overall attention level is stable, the year-over-year change shows a modest increase of +2.1%, suggesting enduring relevance, though his recent 2025 momentum dropped by -6% between the first and third quarters.