Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818, one of nine children of Heinrich and Henrietta Marx. The family lived in the Rhineland region of Prussia in western Germany. Although both parents came from Jewish families with notable rabbinical backgrounds, Marx’s father, who worked as a lawyer, converted to Christianity in order to continue his legal career.

Following an average school performance, Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He wrote extensively on economics, political economy, and society, and during his time in London in the 1840s, he began developing the ideas that would culminate in his most influential work, Das Kapital. Marx soon started publishing pamphlets and books outlining his theories for a system of communism, now known as Marxism.