Max Stirner

Kaspar Schmidt (1806-1856) was a German schoolteacher, employed in a Berlin academy for young ladies, when he wrote, The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum). Schmidt was an anarchist associated with the Young Hegelians who clustered around Arnold Ruge and Bruno Bauer, and took the nom-de-plume of Max Stirner because of the loftiness of his brow (Stirn).

Schmidt asks, "And do you not see how the sky grows presciently silent and gloomy?"