ABSTRACT
KARL Marx was a great and protean figure of the nineteenth century and was the inspiration for the revolutions in his name that exploded in the twentieth century. He was also a private person, in the sense of having his own life. Born in the Rhineland to a Jewish family that converted to Protestantism, he received a typically Prossian-Christian education in Gymnasium, went on to study philosophy at university level, became involved with the radical Young Hegelians, and, as a result, lost the opportunity to enter on a professorial career.
