David Friedrich Strauss

Independent activity 1808–1874 ○ Natural causes

Theologian whose Life of Jesus read the gospel miracles as myth and split the Hegelian school into Right and Left

Born in 1808 at Ludwigsburg in Württemberg, he studied at the Tübingen Stift and in 1831 heard Hegel in Berlin. As a tutor at the Stift he wrote The Life of Jesus (1835–1836), which caused an uproar by treating the gospel miracles as myths formed by the early Christians, and he lost his post in 1835. In the quarrel the Hegelian school split into a Right of Old Hegelians who opposed him and a Left of Young Hegelians who sympathised; the distinction itself goes back to Strauss, and the attack from the Right was led by Bruno Bauer. His call to Zurich in 1839 was blocked by protest, and after election to the Württemberg diet in 1848 he resigned when his conservatism angered his voters. His late The Old Faith and the New (1872) drew Nietzsche's attack.

Also known as: David Friedrich Strauß