HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

Karl Heinrich Marx was the third of seven children in a Jewish family in Trier, Province of the Lower Rhine, in the Kingdom of Prussia. His father, Heinrich Marx (1777–1838), descended from a line of rabbis, converted to Christianity, despite a deistic tendency and admiration of Enlightenment intellectuals such as Voltaire and Rousseau. Heinrich Marx was born Herschel Mordechai, son of Levy Mordechai (1743-1804) and wife Eva Lwow (1753-1823), but when the Christian Prussian authorities disallowed his law practice as a Jew, he converted to Lutheranism, the Prussian State's official Protestant religion, to gain advantage as member of the Lutheran minority in that predominantly Roman Catholic state. His mother was Henriette née Pressburg (1788–1863), also from a well connected family.

Marx's mother converted back to Judaism immediately after the death of her husband in 1835 and Marx clearly suffered some rejection in Prussian society because of his ethnic origins. This is most clearly seen in the fact that Marx's was so secretive in the courting of his future bride, Jenny von Westphalen.