Note 135 — Chapter XVIII · GERMAN FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

16. Much more notorious than any other German deist of his time was Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–1792), a kind of raw Teutonic Voltaire, and the most popularly influential German freethinker of his age. In all he is said to have published a hundred and twenty-six books and tracts,135 thus approximating to Voltaire in quantity if not in quality. Theological hatred has so pursued him that it is hard to form a fair opinion as to his character; but the record runs that he led a somewhat Bohemian and disorderly life, though a very industrious one. While a preacher in Leipzig in 1768 he first got into trouble—“persecution” by his own account; “disgrace for licentious conduct,” by that of his enemies. In any case, he was at this period quite orthodox in his beliefs.136 That there was no serious disgrace is suggested by the fact that he was appointed Professor of Biblical Antiquities at Erfurt; and soon afterwards, on the recommendation of Semler and Ernesti, at Giessen (1771). While holding that post he published his “modernized” translation of the New Testament, done from the point of view of belief in revelation, following it up by his New Revelations of God in Letters and Tales (1773), which aroused Protestant hostility. After teaching for a time in a new Swiss “Philanthropin”—an educational institution on Basedow’s lines—he obtained a post as a district ecclesiastical superintendent in the principality of Türkheim on the Hardt; whereafter he was enabled to set up a “Philanthropin” of his own in the castle of Heidesheim, near Worms. The second edition of his translation of the New Testament, however, aroused Catholic hostility in the district; the edition was confiscated, and he found it prudent to make a tour in Holland and England, only to receive, on his return, a missive from the imperial consistory declaring him disabled for any spiritual office in the Holy German Empire. Seeking refuge in Halle, he found Semler grown hostile; but made the acquaintance of Eberhard, with the result of abandoning the remains of his orthodox faith. Henceforth he regarded Jesus, albeit with admiration, as simply a great teacher, “like Moses, Confucius, Sokrates, Semler, Luther, and myself”;137 and to this view he gave effect; in the third edition of his New Testament translation, which was followed in 1782 by his Letters on the Bible in Popular Style (Volkston), and in 1784 by his Completion (Ausführung) of the Plan and Aim of Jesus in Letters (1784), and his System of Moral Religion (1787). More and more fiercely antagonized, he duly retaliated on the clergy in his Church and Heretic Almanack (1781); and after for a time keeping a tavern, he got into fresh trouble by printing anonymous satires on the religious edict of 1788, directed against all kinds of heresy,138 and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress—a term reduced by the king to one year. Thereafter he ended not very happily his troublous life in Halle in 1792.