Note 128 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

As it was, his book on the Synoptics raised a great storm; and when the official request for the views of the university faculties as to the continuance of his licence evoked varying answers, Bauer settled the matter by a violent attack on professional theologians in general, and was duly expelled.128 For the rest of his long life he was a freelance, doing some relatively valid work on the Pauline problem, but pouring out his turbid spirit in a variety of political writings, figuring by turns as an anti-Semite (1843), a culture-historian,129 and a pre-Bismarckian imperialist, despairing of German unity, but looking hopefully to German absorption in a vast empire of Russia.130 Naturally he found political happiness in 1870,131 living on, a spent force, to do fresh books on Christian origins,132 on German culture-history, and on the glories of imperialism.