ABSTRACT
KARL HEINRICH MARX was born on the 5th May 1818 in Trier (TrÈves). Owing to the confusion and destruction caused amongst the official registers in the Rhineland during the troubled times which prevailed at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries little is known with certainty about his antecedents. For instance, even the year in which Heinrich Heine was born is still the subject of dispute.
