Marie Dähnhardt

Marie Wilhelmine Dähnhardt (1 June 1818 – 1902), the daughter of an apothecary, was a German intellectual, for some time associated with the Berlin debating club Die Freien.

Biography Dähnhardt was born on 1 June 1818 in Gadebusch (now Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany). She was the daughter of the apothecary Helmuth Ludwig Dähnhardt and his wife Maria (née Brünger). Her family was from a bourgeois background and she enjoyed a good education in her youth. Early in her life her father died and she inherited a small fortune of 10,000 thalers.

No later than in 1838 she moved to Berlin against the will of her family, where she associated at Hippel's wine bar with Die Freien which is probably where she met her future husband, the young Hegelian anarchist philosopher, Max Stirner, one of the forerunners of individualist anarchism. During her time in Berlin she used to, in contrast to her bourgeois and well-mannered upbringing, smoke cigars, play billiards, drink the Munich beer and dress in male attire in order to visit brothels. She died in the beginning of 1902 in London.