The father of modern socialism, Karl Marx (1818- 1883) was barely known in the early nineteenth century. His reputation rose later, after 1848, when a wave of revolutions and violent confrontation seemed to confirm his distinctive theory of history and make earlier socialists’ emphasis on peaceful reorganization of industrial society seem naive. As a child, he grew up in Trier, in the western section of Germany, in a region and a family keenly interested in the political debates and movements of the revolutionary era. His family was Jewish, but his father had converted to Protestantism in order to be able to work as a lawyer. Marx studied law briefly at the University of Berlin before turning instead to philosophy and particularly to the ideas of Hegel. With the so-called Young Hegelian, a group of rebellious students who hated the narrow thinking of a deeply conservative Prussian university system, Marx appropriated Hegel’s concepts for his radical politics. His radicalism made it impossible for him to get a post in the university. He became a journalist and, from 1842 to 1843, edited the Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland Gazette). The paper’s criticism of legal privilege and political repression put it on a collision course with the Prussian government, which closed it down and sent Marx into exile – first in Paris, then Brussels, and eventually London.