[1] Maximilian Nagel was born in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, the eldest of the 14 recorded children of the Hebrew scholar and Orientalist Johann Andreas Michael Nagel and of that man's wife, Maria Magdalena Riederer, daughter of the Nuremberg market superintendent.
While Maximilian was still a child he was seen to be exceptionally talented, as a result of which his father paid particular attention to his education.
He thereby acquired a broad schooling that centred on Philosophy, but which also took in Latin, Greek, French, Arabic, Hebrew and Rabbinic languages.
[1] Nagel as a student also practiced oral skills, presenting disputation arguments, sermons and catechisms in public.
Early in 1772 he returned to his father's home at Altdorf, however, and here he died, aged just 24, on 20 January 1772.