“Karl Marx was born at Trier on 5 May 1818, the child of Jewish parents with a long rabbinical tradition on both sides. His grandfathers were rabbis; his father, a well-to-do lawyer, changed his first name from Herschel to Heinrich and adopted Protestantism, which in Prussia was a necessary condition of professional and cultural emancipation.”

— Leszek Kolakowski

pg. 96
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume I, The Founders

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Leszek Kolakowski 45

Philosopher, historian of ideas 1927–2009

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A - F, Daniel Barenboim