Note 37 — Lecture VII. Free Thought: In Germany Subsequently To 1835; And In France During The Present Century.

A few facts concerning the life and writings of Strauss may be interesting.

He was born in 1808, and was educated at Tübingen and Berlin. He was Repetiteur at Tübingen in 1835, when he published his Leben Jesu, described in the text of Lect. VII. In 1837 he published his Streit-schriften, or replies to his critics. In 1839 he was elected Professor of theology at Zurich, an appointment which produced such popular indignation that it was cancelled, and a change of government was caused by it. In 1840 he published Die Christliche Glaubenslehre im Kampfe mil der modernen Wissenschaft dargestellt; in which, after an introduction concerning the history of opinions on the relation of the two, he discussed the principles of Christian doctrine, such as the Bible, Canon, Evidences, &c. and next the doctrines themselves; viz. (part i.) on the divine Being and His attributes, as an abstract conception; (part ii.) on the same, as the object of empirical conceptions in its manifestation in creation, &c. See Foreign Quart. Rev. No. 54. 1841; and C. Schwarz's Gesch. der n. Theol. b. ii. ch. i. He published also Monologen in dem Freihafen, translated 1848; Soliloquies on the Christian Religion, its Errors, and Everlasting Truth.

In 1848, the revolutionary year, he was elected to the Wurtemburg Parliament; and took the conservative side, to the surprise of his constituents. He has subsequently lived chiefly at Heilbronn, engaged in literary labours; mostly writing the lives of sceptics, or persons connected with free thought whose fate has been like his own. Among these have been, a sketch of Julian, 1847, intended probably as a satire on the romantic reaction conducted by the late king of Prussia; a Life of Schubart, 1849, a Swabian poet of the last century; one of Maerklin 1851, his own early friend; one of N. Frischlin, 1856, a learned German of the [pg 435] sixteenth century; a life of Ulric von Hütten, 1858; and Gespräche von Hütten, 1861; also Kleine Schriften, 1861; and a work on Reimarus, 1862, concerning which see Note 29. Some of these works are reviewed in the Nat. Rev. Nos. 7 and 12.