On October 25, 1806, the German philosopher known as Max Stirner was born — as Johann Kaspar Schmidt. Stirner developed a radical individualism, which under the name of “egoism” became culturally chic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with proponents as different as composer Richard Strauss and journalist Benjamin R. Tucker. In addition to Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, a major work that was famously attacked by Karl Marx at great and hysterical length, he translated Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Jean-Baptiste Say’s Traite d’Economie Politique into German.
Stirner died in 1856. His best-known representation, the caricature above, was sketched by his opponent among the Young Hegelians, Friedrich Engels. His most famous book, usually translated as The Ego and Its Own, became, in the words of art critic Herbert Read, “stuck in the gizzard” of Western culture.
