Birth Certificate of Karl Marx



Written: 1818
Source: Marx Engels Collected Works Vol 1, pg 635.
Publisher: International Publishers (1975)
First Published: Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Hb. 2, 1929
Translated: Clemens Dutt
Transcribed: S. Ryan
HTML Markup: S. Ryan


No. 231 of the Register of Births

In the year eighteen hundred and eighteen, on the seventh day of the month of May, at four o'clock in the afternoon, there appeared before me, registrar of births, marriages and deaths at Trier burgomaster's office in Trier district, Herr Heinrich Marx, domiciled in Trier, aged thirty-seven, by profession barrister of the Higher Court of Appeal, who showed me a male child and stated that the said child had been born in Trier, on the fifth day of the month of May at two o'clock in the morning, to Herr Heinrich Marx, barrister by profession, domiciled in Trier, and his wife Henriette Presborck, and that they wished to give the name Carl to this their child. After the aforesaid showing of the child and the above statement made in the presence of two witnesses, namely: Herr Carl Petrasch, aged thirty-two, by profession government secretary, domiciled in Trier, and Mathias Kropp, aged twenty-one, by profession office employee, domiciled in Trier, had taken place, I drew up in writing in the presence of the exhibitor of the child and the witnesses the present certificate on all this in double original, which after being read aloud were signed by the exhibitor of the child, the witnesses and myself.

Done in Trier on the day, month and year as above.

Carl Petrasch. Kropp. Mane. E. Grach.