History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

Three years later it was resumed, and this time D’Israeli withdrew from Judaism completely and had his children baptized. The breach was significant for the son, for Britain, and much else. For Jews were not legally admitted to parliament until 1858, and without his baptism Disraeli could never have become Prime Minister. Seven years after Disraeli’s baptism, on 26 August 1824, a similar event took place in the German town of Trier, this time involving the six-year-old Karl Heinrich Marx, as he was now renamed. This family apostasy was more serious. Marx’s grandfather was rabbi in Trier until his death in 1789; his uncle was still the rabbi. His mother came from a long line of famous rabbis and scholars, going back to Meier Katzellenbogen, a sixteenth-century rector of the talmudic college in Padua.3 But Marx’s father, Heinrich, was a child of the enlightenment, a student of Voltaire and Rousseau. He was also an ambitious lawyer. Trier was now in Prussia, where Jews had been emancipated since the edict of 11 March 1812. In theory it was still in force, despite Napoleon’s defeat. In reality it was evaded. Thus, Jews could train in law, but not practise it. So Heinrich Marx became a Christian and, in due course, rose to be dean of the Trier bar. Karl Marx, instead of going to the yeshiva, attended Trier High School, then in charge of a headmaster later sacked for his liberalism. His baptism proved to be even more significant to the world than Disraeli’s.