What was Karl Marx’s family background?

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany, as the oldest surviving boy of nine children. His father, Heinrich, was a successful lawyer and a man of the Enlightenment who participated in agitations for a constitution in Prussia. His mother, Henrietta Pressburg, was from Holland.12

Both of his parents were Jewish and descended from a long line of rabbis. However, about a year before Karl was born, his father was baptized in the Evangelical Established Church, likely to accommodate his professional career. Karl himself was baptized at the age of six. While his Jewish heritage exposed him to prejudice and discrimination, his early intellectual development was primarily influenced by the critical social policies of the Enlightenment rather than religion.12