Christian theologian, philosopher, and historian; born Sept. 6,
1809, at Eisenburg, duchy of Saxe-Altenburg; died April 13,
1882, at Rixdorf, near Berlin. While Bauer regarded emancipation
from the thraldom of medievalism as the object of modern
civilization, he had no sympathy whatsoever with the Jews'
struggle for political, social, and religious emancipation. At
the time when the Jews of Germany strove hard to obtain their
long-withheld political freedom and equality, and when many, in
order to assert their full claim to citizenship, went so far as
to urge the rejection of every vestige of Orientalism from their
religious life, Bauer published anarticle in the "Deutsche
Jahrbücher," 1842, on the Jewish question, afterward republished
with additions, as a separate book under the title "Die
Judenfrage," Brunswick, 1843, in which he sides with the
bitterest enemies of the Jews. He finds the continual oppression
of the Jews by the Christian state perfectly justified. He
declares that by their loyalty to their