His only son Hans was given a secular upbringing and Herzl notably refused to allow him to be circumcised. After Herzl's early death, Hans successively converted and became a Baptist, then a Catholic, and flirted with other Protestant denominations. He sought a personal salvation for his own religious needs and a universal solution, as had his father, to Jewish suffering caused by antisemitism. Hanz Herzl voluntarily had himself circumcised 29 May 1905; Hans shot himself to death on the day of his sister Paulina's funeral; he was 39 years old.