On this date in 1809, Bruno Bauer was born in Eisenberg, Thuringia, Germany. He studied at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, where he was strongly influenced by the rationalist philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. After teaching theology in Berlin, he became a professor at the University of Bonn in 1839 but lost his chair in 1842 because of his rationalist views.
He later edited Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1818-32), a three-volume, critical edition which became one of Bauer’s best-known works. In 1840 he started a series of works arguing that Jesus was a fusion of Jewish, Greek and Roman theology. He concluded that early Christianity owed more to Greek Stoic philosophy than to Judaism. D. 1882.
