1818-1883
Communist Philosopher

Early Years. One of nine children, Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, in Trier, Prussia. Although both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were Jewish rabbis and Talmudic scholars, after a Prussian decree in 1815 banned Jews from the higher ranks of society, his father, an ambitious and successful lawyer, renounced his Jewish heritage and became a Protestant. At age six Karl and his siblings were baptized as Christians in the Evangelical Established Church. Nine years later Karl was confirmed into the church, and for a time he embraced the Christian faith. He was educated at a recently secularized Jesuit high school, and in 1835 he entered Bonn University, leaving after a year to enroll at the University of Berlin. He studied the classics and philosophy, becoming acquainted with the Hegelian "dialectic" system that explained history as a process driven by the clashing of contrary ideas...