‎STIRNER, M. (PSEUD. OF J.C. SCHMIDT.)‎
‎Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. (Privat-Ausgabe. Veranstaltet von John Henry Mackay). (Leipzig, Offizin von W. Drugulin, 1911). - (Bound with:) STIRNER, M. (PSEUD. OF J.C. SCHMIDT). Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung oder der Humanismus and Realismus.‎

‎(Leipzig, Spamersche Buchdruckerei, 1911). (2), 354, (6) pp.; (2), 25 pp. 4to. Grey and blue-brown marbled paper over boards, raised bands with label and gilt lettering, the compartments with a floral decoration, the original covers preserved, gilt lettered scroll to front cover reading 'Plus est en Moi.' The first work is number 116 of 980 copies printed, the second work is number 61 of 980 copies printed. Both are printed on especially prepared Van Gelder-Zonen paper with the name of John Henry Mackay as watermark. The first work is signed by John Henry Mackay on the annotated leaf bound in at the end. The orginal covers are Japanese 'Pergamentpapier'; the idea to have the books bound was abandoned 'da es unmöglich ist, hier den Geschmack des einzelnen auch nur annähernd zu treffen.' The last 6 pages of the first work contain the 'Inhalt', a leaf with the title and at the bottom the text: Beilage zu Exemplar Nr. 116, followed by the annotated leaf which is dated Charlottenburg bei Berlin, 1. Juli 1911 and signed by John Henry Mackay. In the first work Stirner proceeds from Hegelianism to its almost complete inversion in a doctrine that denied all absolutes and all institutions, and based itself solely on the 'ownness' of the human individual. His is the ideal of the man who realizes himself in conflict with the collectivity and other individuals. Striner holds the individual to be the focal point and center of the world and asserted that the feelings and thinking of the individual determine the whole scale of social values and that there is nothing objective outside the individual, or the ego. Since the individual who creates the world through his imagination and will is the only reality, the world belongs to the individual: the world becomes his possession.The ressemblance between Nietzsche and Stirner is striking and indeed Nietzsche regarded Stirner as one of the unrecognized seminal minds of the nineteenth century. With the growing vogue for Nietzsche at the end of the century Stirner's work witnessed a popular revival. But Stirners greatest influence was exerted upon anarchism, many years after his death. It is still a classic of libertarian thought in which the uniqueness of the individual is stressed.Max Stirner, born as Johann Caspar Schmidt, was born in 1806 in Bayreuth and died in 1856 in Berlin. He was one of the most prominent left-wing Hegelians in Berlin and he contributed, together with Karl Marx and other young bourgeois radicals, to the Rheinische Zeitung, the journal of the advanced wing of the industrial and banking circles in the Rhineland. The present work is his major and most celebrated work which made a strong impression on the German intelligentsia and which was widely read and reviewed. The work was published in 1844 (although the title-page on all first editions reads 1845) and it forced Marx and Engles to write extensive refutations of Stirner's ideas in their Die deutsche Ideologie.John Henry Mackay, the Scots born German poet, was the chief instrument in the revival of Stirnerism. He met Stirner's name very early in his career while reading Lange's History of Materialism, and was moved to read Stirner's book. Mackay was so impressed that he devoted part of his life to the rediscovery and rehabilitation of the lost and forgotten genius. His biography of Stirner appeared in Berlin in 1898 and it is a tribute to his thoroughness that since its publication not one important fact about Stirner has been discovered by anybody. ‎

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