Essay on Karl Marx

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Essay on Karl Marx


Karl Heinrich Marx was the oldest surviving boy of nine children.
His father, Heinrich, a successful lawyer, was a man of the
Enlightenment, devoted to Kant and Voltaire, who took part in
agitations for a constitution in Prussia. His mother, born Henrietta
Pressburg, was from Holland. Both parents were Jewish and were
descended from a long line of rabbis, but, a year or so before Karl
was born, his father--probably because his professional career
required it--was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church.
Karl was baptized when he was six years old. Although as a youth
Karl was influenced less by religion than by the critical, sometimes
radical social policies of the Enlightenment, his Jewish background
exposed him to prejudice and discrimination that may have led him
to question the role of religion in society and contributed to his
desire for social change.

Marx was educated from 1830 to 1835 at the high school in Trier.
Suspected of harbouring liberal teachers and pupils, the school was
under police surveillance. Marx's writings during this period
exhibited a spirit of Christian devotion and a longing for self-sacrifice
on behalf of humanity. In October 1835 he matriculated at the
University of Bonn. The courses he attended were exclusively in the
humanities, in such subjects as Greek and Roman mythology and the
history of art. He participated in customary student activities, fought
a duel, and spent a day in jail for being drunk and disorderly. He
presided at the Tavern Club, which was at odds with the more
aristocratic student associations, and joined a poets' club that
included some political activists. A politically rebellious student
culture was, indeed, part of life at Bonn. Many students had been
arrested; some were still being expelled in Marx's time, particularly
as a result of an effort by students to disrupt a session of the Federal
Diet at Frankfurt. Marx, howev...