Part 13

The marriage ceremony of this strange couple has been described in the newspapers and it is almost the only fact of Stirner's life that stands out boldly as a well-known incident. That these descriptions contain exaggerations and distortions is not improbable, but it cannot be denied that much contained in the reports must be true.

On the morning of October 21, a clergyman of extremely liberal views, Rev. Marot, a member of the Consistory, was called to meet the witnesses of the ceremony at Stirner's room. Bruno Bauer, Buhl, probably also Julius Faucher, Assessor Kochius and a young English woman, a friend of the bride, were present. The bride was in her week-day dress. Mr. Marot asked for a Bible, but none could be found. According to one version the clergyman was obliged to request Herr Buhl to put on his coat and to have the cards removed. When the rings were to be exchanged the groom discovered that he had forgotten to procure them, and according to Wilhelm Jordan's recollection Bauer pulled out his knitted purse and took off the brass rings, offering them as a substitute during the ceremony. After the wedding a dinner with cold punch was served to which Mr. Marot was invited. But he refused, while the guests remained and the wedding carousal proceeded in its jolly course.

In order to understand how this incident was possible we must know that in those pre-revolutionary years the times were out of joint and these heroes of the rebellion wished to show their disrespect and absolute indifference to a ceremony that to them had lost all its sanctity.

Stirner's married life was very uneventful, except that he wrote the main book of his life and dedicated it to his wife after a year's marriage, with the words,

"Meinem Liebchen Marie Dähnhardt."

Obviously this form which ignores the fact that they were married, and uses a word of endearment which in this connection is rather trivial, must be regarded as characteristic of their relation and their life principles. Certain it is that she understood only the negative features of her husband's ideals and had no appreciation of the genius that stirred within him. Lauterbach, the editor of the Reclam edition of Stirner's book, comments ironically on this dedication with the Spanish motto Da Dios almendras al que no tiene muelas, "God gives almonds to those who have no teeth."

Marie Dähnhardt was a graceful blonde woman rather under-sized, with heavy hair which surrounded her head in ringlets according to the fashion of the time. She was very striking and became a favorite of the round table of the Freien who met at Hippel's. She smoked cigars freely and sometimes donned male attire, in order to accompany her husband and his friends on their nightly excursions. It appears that Stirner played the most passive part in these adventures, but true to his principle of individuality we have no knowledge that he ever criticized his wife.

Marie Dähnhardt had lost her father early and was in possession of a small fortune of 10,000 thalers, possibly more. At any rate it was considered quite a sum in the circle of Stirner's friends, but it did not last long. Having written his book, Stirner gave up his position so as to prevent probable discharge and now they looked around for new resources. Though Stirner had studied political economy he was a most unpractical man; but seeing there was a dearth of milk-shops, he and his wife started into business. They made contracts with dairies but did not advertise their shop, and when the milk was delivered to them they had large quantities of milk on hand but no patrons, the result being a lamentable failure with debts.

In the circle of his friends Stirner's business experience offered inexhaustible material for jokes, while at home it led rapidly to the dissolution of his marriage. Frau Schmidt complained in later years that her husband had wasted her property, while no complaints are known from him. One thing is sure that they separated. She went to England where she established herself as a teacher under the protection of Lady Bunsen, the wife of the Prussian ambassador.

Frau Schmidt's later career is quite checkered. She was a well-known character in the colony of German exiles in London. One of her friends there was a Lieutenant Techow. When she was again in great distress she emigrated with other Germans, probably in 1852 or 1853, to Melbourne, Australia. Here she tasted the misery of life to the dregs. She made a living as a washerwoman and is reported to have married a day laborer. Their bitter experiences made her resort to religion for consolation, and in 1870 or 1871 she became a convert to the Catholic Church. At her sister's death she became her heir and so restored her good fortune to some extent. She returned to London where Mr. Mackay to his great joy discovered that she was still alive at the advanced age of eighty. What a valuable resource her reminiscences would be for his inquiries! But she refused to give any information and finally wrote him a letter which literally reads as follows: "Mary Smith solemnly avowes that she will have no more correspondence on the subject, and authorizes Mr. ------- to return all those writings to their owners. She is ill and prepares for death."

The last period of Stirner's life, from the time when his wife left him to his death, is as obscure as his childhood days. He moved from place to place, and since his income was very irregular creditors pressed him hard. His lot was tolerable because of the simple habits of his life, his only luxury consisting in smoking a good cigar. In 1853 we find him at least twice in debtor's prison, first 21 days, from March 5 to 26,1853, and then 36 days, from New Year's eve until February 4 of the next year. In the meantime (September 7) he moved to Philippstrasse 19. It was Stirner's last home. He stayed with the landlady of this place, a kind-hearted woman who treated all her boarders like a mother, until June 25, 1856, when he died rather suddenly as the result of the bite of a poisonous fly. A few of his friends, among them Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Buhl, attended his funeral; a second-class grave was procured for one thaler 10 groats, amounting approximately to one American dollar.

During this period Stirner undertook several literary labors from which he possibly procured some remuneration. He translated the classical authors on political economy from the French and from the English, which appeared under the title Die National-Oekonomen der Franzosen und Engländer (Leipsic, Otto Wigand, 1845-1847).

He also wrote a history of the Reaction which he explained to be a mere counter-revolution. This Geschichte der Reaction was planned as a much more comprehensive work, but the two volumes which appeared were only two parts of the second volume as originally intended.

The work is full of quotations, partly from Auguste Comte, partly from Edmund Burke. None of these works represent anything typically original or of real significance in the history of human thought.

His real contribution to the world's literature remains his work Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, the title of which is rendered in English The Ego and His Own, and this, strange to say, enthrones the individual man, the ego, every personality, as a sovereign power that should not be subject to morality, rules, obligations, or duties of any kind. The appeal is made so directly that it will convince all those unscientific and half-educated minds who after having surrendered their traditional faith find themselves without any authority in either religion or politics. God is to them a fable and the state an abstraction. Ideas and ideals, such as truth, goodness, beauty, are mere phrases. What then remains but the concrete bodily personality of every man of which every one is the ultimate standard of right and wrong?

See also R. Schellwien, Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche; V. Basch, L'individualisme anarchiste, Max Stirner, 1904.

Max Stirner, sein Leben und sein Werk. Berlin, 1898.

The name of the gentleman she mentions is replaced by a dash at his express wish in the facsimile of her letter reproduced in Mr. Mackay's book (p. 255).

EGO-SOVEREIGNTY

Strange that neither of these philosophers of individuality, Nietzsche or Stirner, ever took the trouble to investigate what an individual is! Stirner halts before this most momentous question of his world-conception, and so he overlooks that his ego, his own individuality, this supreme sovereign standing beyond right and wrong, the ultimate authority of everything, is a hazy, fluctuating, uncertain thing which differs from day to day and Anally disappears.

The individuality of any man is the product of communal life. No one of us could exist as a rational personality were he not a member of a social group from which he has imbibed his ideas as well as his language. Every word is a product of his intercourse with his fellow-beings. His entire existence consists in his relations toward others and finds expression in his attitude toward social institutions. We may criticize existent institutions but we can never do without any. A denial of either their existence or their significance proves an utter lack of insight into the nature of personality.

We insert here a few characteristic sentences of Stirner's views, and in order to be fair we follow the condensation of John Henry Mackay (pp. 135-192) than whom certainly we could find no more sympathetic or intelligent student of this individualistic philosophy.

Here are Stirner's arguments:

The ancients arrived at the conclusion that man was spirit. They created a world of spirit, and in this world of spirit Christianity begins. But what is spirit? Spirit has originated from nothing. It is its own creation and man makes it the center of the world. The injunction was given, Thou shalt not live to thyself but to thy spirit, to thy ideas. Spirit is the God, the ego and the spirit are in constant conflict. Spirit dwells beyond the earth. It is in vain to force the divine into service here for I am neither God nor man, neither the highest being nor my being. The spirit is like a ghost whom no one has seen, but of whom there are innumerable creditable witnesses, such as grandmother can give account of. The whole world that surrounds thee is filled with spooks of thy imagination. The holiness of truth which hallows thee is a strange element. It is not thine own and strangeness is a characteristic of holiness. The specter is truly only in thine ownhood..... Right is a spleen conferred by a spook; might, that is myself. I am the mighty one and the owner of might.... Right is the royal will of society. Every right which exists is created right. I am expected to honor it where I find it and subject myself to it. But what to me is the right of society, the right of all? What do I care for equality of right, for the struggle for right, for inalienable rights? Right becomes word in law. The dominant will is the preserver of the states. My own will shall upset them. Every state is a despotism. All right and all power is claimed to belong to the community of the people. I, however, shall not allow myself to be bound by it, for I recognize no duty even though the state may call crime in me what it considers right for itself. My relation to the state is not the relation of one ego to another ego. It is the relation of the sinner to the saint, but the saint is a mere fixed idea from which crimes originate (Mackay, pages 154-5).

It will sometimes be difficult to translate Stirner's declarations in their true meaning; for instance: "I am the owner of mankind, I am mankind and shall do nothing for the benefit of another mankind. The property of mankind is mine. I do not respect the property of mankind. Poverty originates when I can not utilize my own self as I want to. It is the state which hinders men from entering into a direct relation with others. On the mercy of right my private property depends. Only within prescribed limits am I allowed to compete. Only the medium of exchange, the money which the state makes, am I allowed to use. The forms of the state may change, the purpose of the state always remains the same. My property, however, is what I empower myself to. Let violence decide, I expect all from my own.

"You shall not lure me with love, nor catch me with the promise of communion of possessions, but the question of property will be solved only through a war of all against all, and what a slave will do as soon as he has broken his fetters we shall have to see. I know no law of love. As every one of my sentiments is my property, so also is love. I give it, I donate it, I squander it merely because it makes me happy. Earn it if you believe you have a right to it. The measure of my sentiments can not be prescribed to me, nor the aim of my feelings determined. We and the world have only one relation toward each other, that of usefulness. Yea, I use the world and men." (Pp. 156-157.)

As to promises made and confidence solicited Stirner would not allow a limitation of freedom. He says: "In itself an oath is no more sacred than a lie is contemptible." Stirner opposes the idea of communism. "The community of man creates laws for society. Communism is a communion in equality." Says Stirner, "I prefer to depend on the egotism of men rather than on their compassion." He feels himself swelled into a temporary, transient, puny deity. No man expresses him rightly, no concept defines him; he, the ego, is perfect. Stirner concludes his book: "Owner I am of my own power and I am such only when I know myself as the only one. In the only one even the owner returns into his creative nothingness from which he was born. Any higher being above, be it God or man, detracts from the feeling of my uniqueness and it pales before the sun of this consciousness. If I place my trust in myself, the only one, it will stand upon a transient mortal creator of himself, who feeds upon himself, and I can say,

"Ich hab mein Sach' auf nichts gestellt." "My trust in nothingness is placed.'"