Bruno Bauer

From Philosopedia

Bauer, Bruno (6 September 1809 - 13 April 1882)

Bauer was a German theologian whose work Albert Schweitzer called “the ablest and most complete collection of the difficulties of the life of Jesus which is anywhere to be found.” His criticism of the Bible resulted in his being dismissed by Prussian authorities from a university post in theology at Bonn in 1842.

G. A. Wells in Encyclopedia of Unbelief describes Bauer’s view that the principal letters ascribed to Paul are 2nd century forgeries.

After he was expelled from teaching on the university level, Bauer according to J. M. Robertson “was a freelance, doing some relatively valid work on the Pauline problem, but pouring out his turbid spirit in a variety of political writings, figuring by turns as an anti-Semite (1843), a culture-historian, and a pre-Bismarckian imperialist, despairing of German unity, but looking hopefully to German absorption in a vast empire of Russia.”

At the time of his death, he was convinced that all educated men - at least in Germany - had ceased to believe in miracles and the supernatural, however they might appear as conforming to orthodoxy.

Edgar Bauer

Bruno Bauer’s brother, Edgar Bauer (1820 - 1886), collaborated in some of his works. Edgar’s The Strife of Criticism with Church and State (1843) resulted in his being imprisoned for four years.

Police seized his brochure entitled “Bruno Bauer and His Opponents” (1842), and he was imprisoned for four years for his next publication, The Strife of Criticism with Church and State (1843).

Bauer took part in the revolutionary movement of 1848–1849 and was obliged to quit Germany.

{BDF; EU, G. A. Wells; JMR; JMRH; RAT}