Moses Hess (1812-1875), born Moritz Hess, he changed his name to Moses to show his adherence to Judaism, married a prostitute in defiance of the existing moral standards which he held in contempt, was an early apostle of socialism, and a precursor to what would later be called Zionism.

A colleague of Karl Marx, he dissented from Marx in regarding Socialism as prevalently a humanitarian ideal rather than Marx's regard of it as the inevitable result of economic evolution. He considered the history of humanity the holy history of God, and followed partly in accordance with the teachings of Spinoza. Some of the books he wrote were Rome and Jerusalem (1862), Holy Story of Humanity (1837), European Triarchy (1841)