 From 1842 to 1849, Bauer was active in political journalism and historical research on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He argued against the emancipation of Prussian Jews in 1842–43, seeing this proposal as a political legitimation of particular religious interests. He was the object of polemical attacks by Marx and Engels in The Holy Family (1844) and The German Ideology (written in 1845–46). With his brother Edgar, Bauer founded the Charlottenburg Democratic Society in 1848, and stood unsuccessfully for election to the Prussian National Assembly on a platform of popular sovereignty.