26. Karl Marx Was a Hell Raiser Youth
Karl Marx, the father of communism, was the son of a successful Prussian Jewish lawyer. His father, a man of the Enlightenment and a passionate advocate for reform had converted to Lutheranism to avoid legal restrictions that barred Jews from high society. Karl received a liberal education in a school whose enlightened leanings made it suspect in the eyes of reactionaries. The authorities raided his school in the 1830s, confiscated writings deemed subversive from its library, and forced changes in the teaching staff.
Marx’s early years of higher education were marked by poor grades, imprisonment for drunkenness, riotous behavior, and general rowdiness, before buckling down to serious study of the law and philosophy. He was strongly influenced by Hegel, and joined a radical student group known as the Young Hegelians, which marked the beginning of his transformation into a radical, and eventually revolutionary, thinker.
