Bruno Bauer was a German philosopher, theologian, and historian. A student of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and a prominent member of the Young Hegelians, he was a radical rationalist critic of the Bible and Christianity. Bauer became 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.
