Bruno Bauer (1809–1882)
Born 1809 CE, died 1882 CE.
Bruno Bauer (; German: [baʊɐ]; 6 September 1809 – 13 April 1882) was a German philosopher, theologian, and historian. Initially a student of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he became a radical rationalist critic of the Bible and Christianity, and a prominent member of the Young Hegelians. Bauer was a central figure in the intellectual circles of the Vormärz, the period preceding the Revolutions of 1848, and his philosophical work was a major influence on, and target of critique for, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, with whom he had a close but tumultuous relationship. Starting as a right-wing Hegelian, Bauer shifted to the left by 1839, developing a radical critique of religion and the state. He argued that the Christian gospels were not historical records but literary works of the human self-consciousness. His most significant work of this period, The Trumpet of the Last Judgement over Hegel the Atheist and Antichrist (1841), presented Hegel's philosophy as a revolutionary atheism that called for the overthrow of all existing religious and political institutions.
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