Some Hegelians are people who have little in the way of an association with authoritarianism (e.g. Stirner), but it's fair to say that Continental philosophy more broadly has strains of absolutism and autocracy that you don't see in the liberal strains of England and the like. Some Austrians are noteworthy exceptions (Mises and Kuehnelt-Leddinh are good examples of Austrian liberalism) and there are liberal strains in some continental schools of thought.

I'd argue that Hegel is more of a paid courtier coming up with justifications for the political order, which is Popper's theory. Of course, he's also incredibly self-contradictory and Hegel fans will complain that people don't understand Hegel. The crisis of the 1800s as far as politics in Europe goes was something like what to do with the decline of monarchies, so there's a lot of weird stuff going down.