Max Stirner

Max Stirner
Max Stirner, as portrayed by Friedrich Engels
Born	Johann Kaspar Schmidt October 25, 1806 Bayreuth, Bavaria
Died	June 26, 1856(1856-06-26) (aged 49) Berlin, Prussia
Education	Gymnasium illustre zu Bayreuth ()
Alma mater	University of Berlin (no degree) University of Erlangen (no degree)
Era	Nineteenth century
Region	Western philosophy
School	Young Hegelians Egoist anarchism
Main interests	Ethics, politics, ontology, property, value theory
Notable ideas	Egoist anarchism
Influences Bauer, Feuerbach, Hegel
Influenced Julius Evola, Frank Brand, Steven T. Byington, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Saul Newman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benjamin R. Tucker, John Henry Mackay, Ernst Jünger, Rudolf Steiner, Emile Armand, Albert Camus, Carl Schmitt, Renzo Novatore, Adolf Brand, Emma Goldman, Bob Black, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Wolfi Landstreicher, Herbert Read, Robert Anton Wilson, Wilhelm Reich, Gustav Landauer, Max Adler, Otto Gross

Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner, was a German philosopher. He is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism, and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Individual and His Property). This work was first published in 1845 in Leipzig, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.

Stirner was born in Bayreuth, Bavaria. What little is known of his life is mostly due to the Scottish-born German writer John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner (Max Stirner – sein Leben und sein Werk), published in German in 1898 (enlarged 1910, 1914), and translated into English in 2005.

Stirner was the only child of Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt (1769–1807) and Sophia Elenora Reinlein (1778–1839). His father died of tuberculosis on April 19, 1807 at the age of 37. In 1809 his mother remarried to Heinrich Ballerstedt, a pharmacist, and settled in West Prussian Kulm (now Chełmno, Poland).

When Stirner turned 20, he attended the University of Berlin, where he studied philology, philosophy, and theology. He attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who was to become a source of inspiration for his thinking. He attended Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion and the subjective spirit. Stirner then moved to the University of Erlangen, which he attended at the same time as Ludwig Feuerbach.