 The historical influence of Stirner’s work is perhaps more plausibly located in two different contexts. Concerning its contemporary impact on the intellectual life of Vormärz Germany, The Ego and Its Own had a destructive impact on Stirner’s left-Hegelian contemporaries, and played a related and significant role in the evolution of the thought of Karl Marx. Concerning its longer term historical influence, Stirner’s best-known work has become a founding text in the political tradition of individualist anarchism.