Max Stirner: His Life and His Work

John Henry Mackay

Max Stirner His Life and His Wark

Translated from the Third German Edition by Hubert Kennedy

John Henry Mackay

MAX STIRNER HIS LIFE AND HIS WORK

Translated from the Third German Edition by Hubert Kennedy

© 2005 by Hubert Kennedy. All rights reserved ISBN: 1-5945 7-983-0

Peremptory Publications Concord, California http://home.pacbell.net/hubertkl

11

Contents Foreword to the Third Edition v Foreword to the First Edition viii Foreword to the Second Edition xii Translator's Preface xvii Introduction 3 The Story of My Work, 1889-1914 Chapter One 25 Early Youth, 1806-1826 Chapter Two 35 Student and Teaching Years, 1826-1844 Chapter Three 55 "The Free" at Hippel's, in the Fifth Decade of the Century Chapter Four 83 Max Stimer, 1840-1845 Chapter Five 123 Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, 1845

Chapter Six 179 The Final Decade, 1845-1856 Appendix 214 Stations of His Life's Journey Name and Subject Index 218

111

IV

Foreword to the Third Edition This third edition is published in a private edition-limited to 325 copies-an d is not on the market. It was the only way to make it possible. For the second edition of my biography of Max Stimer shared the fate of the first, was just as difficult and just as slow to sell as the first, so that (as I said at the end of its foreword), I would probably not live to see a third if I wanted to wait to see it sold out. But to arrange a new edition has still been for me in the last years an ever­ recurring wish. It was, as I gladly admit, not a particularly happy thought to add the results of my research in the preceding ten years to the second edition of 1910 in an appendix, instead of integrating them into the text. That this could be done-doubt­ lessly would be done-someday after my death by an editor in a way that endan­ gered the layout and unity of the whole made me uneasy. Thus there arose in me the plan of a new, uniform, and standard private edition alongside the second-since it is of course not feasible to pulp an only dipped into edition. The remaining second edition is to continue to be sold publicly until it too one day gives way to a fourth. My plan was realized under great difficulties. Thanks to the small-oh, so small!-number of those who today stand untiringly for everything that bears the name Stirner. But now to shape this edition as I planned and wanted, and to give it the final definitive form, has been my whole effort. Not only has the integration mentioned been undertaken, but individual sections have found an entirely new form, while I submitted the whole to yet another check. Small changes in only a few places were necessary. That it also had to be outwardly distinguished from the first two editions in form and appearance was obvious. Again I have to thank here those who so willingly helped me this time too. In the first place is Dr. Gustav Mayer in Zehlendorf/Berlin. A man thoroughly knowledgeable in the history of the pre-March era [the period before the revolution of 1848], he is now in a position to look into sources previously closed and suc­ ceeded not only in finding a very early separately published writing of Stirner, his

Gegenwart, but also the convincing confirmation of his factual collaboration on the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung of 1842, a confirmation that surprised me all the more, since not only was I given the exactly opposite confirmation when I personally in­ quired of the Brockhaus company long years ago, but also before the publication of the second edition, the manuscript editor, Dr. H. H. Houben in Leipzig, once again confirmed that report as correct. Dr. Mayer had already partly made use of his very fortunate find in his article in the first issue of volume 6 of the Zeitschriftfilr PaUlik of 1913: "Die Anf