Max Thedy was a German painter, designer and engraver. He is sometimes erroneously referred to as Marc Thedy.

He was the youngest of twelve children born to Johann Valentin Thedy, a Verwaltungsaktuar (administrative assistant in the community government) and his wife, Theresia. After his parents' premature deaths, he was taken in by the family of the Hamburg painter, Georg Friedrich Louis Reinhardt (1819–1905) and encouraged to pursue a career in art.

After 1875, he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. In 1882, aged only twenty-four, he was called to be a Professor at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School, Weimar. Among his best known students were Elisabeth Thiermann [de], Christian Rohlfs, Ernest Biedermann [de] and Rudolf Schmidt-Dethloff [de]. In 1919, he became an instructor at the Bauhaus and, in 1921, was named a Professor there.