 Bauer was the son of a painter in a porcelain factory and his wife at Eisenberg in Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.He studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin from spring 1828 to spring 1832.He became associated with the so-called Right Hegelians under Philip Marheineke, who engaged Bauer years later to edit the second edition of Hegel's "Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion 1818–1832".