 Bruno Bauer was born on 6 September, 1809 in the town of Eisenberg in Thuringia, south-eastern Germany. In 1815, Bauer’s family moved to Berlin, where his father was employed in the royal porcelain factory in Charlottenburg. At the University of Berlin (1828–1834),he studied under Hegel, Schleiermacher, and the Hegelians Hotho and Marheineke. On Hegel’s recommendation, Bauer’s 1829 essay on Kant’s aesthetics won the Prussian royal prize in philosophy. From 1834 to 1839, he lectured on theology and biblical texts in Berlin. He was transferred to the theology faculty at Bonn after publishing an attack on his colleague and former teacher Hengstenberg. He taught in Bonn from 1839 till spring 1842, when he was dismissed for the unorthodoxy of his writings on the New Testament. The dismissal followed a consultation by the ministry of education with the theology faculties of the six Prussian universities, but no consensus emerged from the academic inquest. The order for Bauer’s dismissal came directly from the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who had decreed the suspension from state employment of participants in a banquet to honour the South German liberal Karl Welcker, held in Berlin in 1841. On that occasion, Bauer had proposed a toast to Hegel’s conception of the state.