Young Hegelians

I have been sifting about through the group of thinkers called the Young Hegelians. A very interesting period of time. Marx, David Strauss, Feuerbach, Bauer and even Stirner and maybe Kierkegaard if you want to stretch the definition a bit ... and more less famous thinkers that made interesting notes here and there. The Right Hegelians were also about.
The paradigm was open and it was a free time to be a thinker, to really be able to change the way philosophy is done.
I happen to think almost everything done by these post Hegelians, as well as by Hegel and Ficthe themselves, was bad for philosophy and thought in general ... but the way in which the thought opened up at that time and the sides went to battle, i really like to read within those time periods.
Also, while we think of the thoughts as, in some sense, free ... the thinkers themselves really gave something up. Bauer lost his teaching job in 1942. Most of the rest were requested to not even submit their thesis ... they had no chance of approval. Stirner gave up his teaching job (at a girl's elementary school) before publishing his book, just to save his superiors the effort of having to fire him after the book release.
These are people who gave something up for their thoughts, and knew they were so doing.