ABSTRACT
Karl Marx was born in the German Rhineland, the son of a moderately wellto-do Jewish lawyer who became a convert to Lutheranism and raised his children in that faith. At 17, Marx entered the University of Bonn to study law but transferred after a year to the more stimulating atmosphere of the University of Berlin, where his interests became philosophy and history. Like many others of his generation, he became profoundly affected by the ideas of the philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831), whose Hegelian ideas led Marx in the direction of the “higher criticism,” which kept him from securing a university post. He turned his attention to journalism and became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne, a moderately liberal paper sponsored by business interests.
