In the late 1980s and 1990s he wrote articles for right-wing conservatism journals Etappe and Criticón [de], as the student assistant at the Institute of History at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Niklas Weber, wrote in an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was criticized by Benjamin Hasselhorn as "one-sided and distorting.
In 2002 after his habilitation, he studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München with the topic English constitution and political thought in the Ancien Régime 1689-1789.
The work was reviewed by Horst Möller, Eckhart Hellmuth and Hans-Michael Körner.
Kraus is also editor of the Neue Deutsche Biographie and co-editor of various historical journals, including the Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte [de], the Jahrbuch Politisches Denken and the Passauer Jahrbuch [de].
In 2006 he was awarded the Historian Prize of the Erich and Erna Kronauer Foundation [de].