Life
Heinrich Marx was born Herschel Mordechai, to Marx Levy Mordechai (1743–1804) and Eva Lwow (1753–1823). Heinrich Marx's father was the rabbi of Trier, a role which his older brother would later assume.
Heinrich Marx qualified as a lawyer in 1814, but upon Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Rhineland came into the conservative control of the Kingdom of Prussia, from its more detached French administration. Prussia was a Christian state which claimed to be based on the divine right of kings, and had Christian churches answerable to its political leadership. An 1812 edict, unenforced by the French, asserted that Jews could not occupy legal positions or state offices, and Prussian enforcement of the law led to trouble for Heinrich Marx.
Marx's colleagues, including the President of the Provincial Supreme court, defended him and sought an exception for him. The Prussian Minister of Justice rejected their appeals. In 1817 or 1818, Marx converted to the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church. His wife and children were baptized in 1825 and 1824, respectively.
Isaiah Berlin writes of Heinrich Marx that he believed
that man is by nature both good and rational, and that all that is needed to ensure triumph of these qualities is the removal of artificial obstacles from his path. They were disappearing already, and disappearing fast, and the time was rapidly approaching when the last citadels of reaction, the Catholic Church and the feudal nobility, would melt away before the irresistible march of reason... Born a Jew, a citizen of inferior legal and social status, he had attained to equality with his more enlightened neighbours, had earned their respect as a human being, and had become assimilated into what appeared to him as their more rational and dignified mode of life.
Heinrich Marx became a passionate Prussian patriot and monarchist who educated his family as liberal Lutherans.
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