Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

TRIER, BONN AND BERLIN (^25)
Although in the years immediately following Hegel's death his school
was united and supreme in the German universities, by the late 1830 s it
had already begun to split into two wings on the subject of religion.
Whereas the conservative wing of the school held to the slogan that
'the real is the rational' and saw nothing irrational in the traditional
representation of religion, the radical wing opposed the conservatives'
complacency with a dissatisfaction that meant it wanted to destroy the
dogmas enshrined in religious representations that were now said to be
outdated. These representations all had to be judged by a progressive
reason, not one which, as Hegel had said, only 'paints grey with grey'
and thus merely recognised what already existed. For the Master had also
said that an age comprehended in thought was already in advance of its
time, and the radicals drew the conclusion that the comprehension of
religion already modified even its content, while its form became a pure
myth. This debate started with the publication of David Strauss's Life of
Jesus in 1835. Having failed to extract a picture of the historical Jesus
from the gospel narratives, Strauss presented these narratives as mere
expressions of the messianic idea present in primitive Christian communi-
ties, myths that were never intended to be taken as real historical narra-
tives. It was quite natural that Young Hegelian discussion should at first
be theological: most members of the Hegelian school were interested in
religion above all; and the attitude of the Prussian Government made
politics an extremely dangerous subject for debate. Yet granted the Estab-
lishment of the Church in Germany and the close connection between
religion and politics, it was inevitable that a movement of religious criti-
cism would swiftly become secularised into one of political opposition. It
was as a member of this rapidly changing movement, which had its centre
in the Berlin Doctors' Club, that Karl Marx first began to work out his
views on philosophy and society.
According to one of the members of the Doctors' Club, 'in this circle
of aspiring young men, most of whom had already finished their studies,
there reigned supreme the idealism, the thirst for knowledge and the
liberal spirit, that still completely inspired the youth of that time. In these
reunions the poems and essays that we had composed were read aloud
and assessed, but the greatest part of our attention was devoted to the
Hegelian philosophy..Of Marx's more intimate friends in the club,
Adolph Rutenberg had recently been dismissed as a teacher of geography
and now earned his living as a journalist; Karl Koppen was a history
teacher who later became an acknowledged expert on the origins of
Buddhism. Koppen published in 1840 Frederick the Great and his Opponents:
dedicated to Marx, the book was a eulogy of Frederick and the principles
of the Enlightenment.^100 The leading light in the club was Bruno Bauer,