Bruno Bauer

Born Sept. 6, 1809, in Eisenberg; died Apr. 13, 1882, in Rixdorf. German philosopher. Member of the Young Hegelian group.

Bauer was a privatdocent at the universities of Berlin (1834–39) and Bonn (1839–42). Repudiating the Hegelian absolute idea, Bauer declared self-consciousness to be the absolute and considered the motive force of history to be the intellectual activity of “critical personalities.” In a number of pamphlets he presented Hegel as an atheist and a revolutionary, and he subjected the Gospels to a more radical criticism than did D. Strauss. Bauer’s subjective idealism and nationalism were criticized by Marx and Engels in their works The Holy Family and The German Ideology. After 1848, Bauer evolved toward the right, and by the end of his life he had become an advocate of the German imperial chancellor, Bismarck.