Max Stirner, pseudonym of Johann Kaspar Schmidt, (1806, Bayreuth, Bavaria [Germany]—died 1856, Berlin, Prussia), German antistatist philosopher in whose writings many anarchists of the late 19th and the 20th centuries found ideological inspiration. His thought is sometimes regarded as a source of 20th-century existentialism.
After teaching in a girls' preparatory school in Berlin, Stirner made a s...