Bahrdt

Bahrdt, KARL FRIEDRICH, a German theologian and freethinker, was born in 1741 at Bischofswerda, in Saxony, and studied at Leipzig, where he became professor of Biblical Philology in 1766. Two years later he had to leave Leipzig for his immoral conduct. At Erfurt he was placed in the chair of Biblical Antiquities. Here he wrote two works whose heterodoxy involved him in controversies. In 1771 he was called to the chair of Theology at Giessen, and here also he preached with approbation for a few years, until he found it necessary to resign. Being inhibited from teaching by the government, he betook himself to Halle in 1779, and here he subsisted for ten years by keeping a public-house. Two political pamphlets brought him a year's imprisonment at Magdeburg, and gave him leisure to write the memoirs of his shift life, published at Berlin in 1790. He died at Halle, April 23, 1792. His numerous theological writings are not of any value. See his Life by Leyser (2d ed. 1870).