Friedrich Nietzsche
October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical philologist and philosopher. Nietzsche, who also created poems and musical compositions as a side work, broke with his idiosyncratic style and could hardly be assigned to a classical discipline. He is considered by some to be the founder of a new philosophical school, the philosophy of life. He was initially a Prussian citizen, but when he moved to Basel in Switzerland in 1869, he became stateless at his own request.
At the age of 24, Nietzsche was appointed associate professor of classical philology at the University of Basel following his studies. Just ten years later, in 1879, he resigned from the professorship for health reasons. From then on, he traveled mainly to Italy and Switzerland in search of places whose climate would have a favorable effect on his various ailments. From the age of 45 (1889) he suffered from increasing mental disorders, which made him unable to work and do business. He did not consciously experience his fame, which began at the beginning of the 1890s. He spent the rest of his life in the care of his mother, then his sister, and died in 1900 at the age of 55. The assumption that the long-term effects of syphilis could have played a role in the course of the disease persisted for a good 100 years.
Later, however, doubts about this suspected diagnosis increasingly arose in expert circles.
Recent evaluations of Nietzsche's medical records come to the conclusion that an illness like CADASIL could also have led to his mental confusion at the end of his life. The young Nietzsche was particularly impressed by Schopenhauer's philosophy. Later, he turned away from his pessimism. His work contains sharp critiques of morality, religion, philosophy, science, and forms of art. In his eyes, contemporary culture was weaker than that of ancient Greece. The recurring targets of Nietzsche's attacks are above all Christian morality as well as Christian and Platonist metaphysics. He questioned the value of truth in general and thus became a pioneer of postmodern philosophical approaches. Nietzsche's concepts of the "superman", the "will to power" or the "eternal return" also give rise to interpretations and discussions.
Nietzsche did not create a systematic philosophy. He often chose the aphorism as a form of expression of his thoughts. His prose, his poems and the pathetic-lyrical style of Also sprach Zarathustra also earned him recognition as a writer.
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken, a village near Lützen in the district of Merseburg in the Prussian province of Saxony (now Saxony-Anhalt). His parents were the Lutheran pastor Carl Ludwig Nietzsche and his wife Franziska, daughter of the pastor David Ernst Oehler von Pobles. Since the Reformation in the 16th century, the Nietzsche family in Saxony has been documented as Protestant. In the families of both parents there was a high proportion of Protestant pastors. His father gave him his first name in honor of the Prussian King Frederick William IV, on whose 49th birthday he was born. Nietzsche himself claimed in his later years to be descended from Polish noblemen in his father's line, but this could not be confirmed. His sister Elisabeth was born in 1846. After the death of his father in 1849 and his younger brother Ludwig Joseph (1848–1850), the family moved to Naumburg. Bernhard Dächsel, who later became a judicial councillor, was formally appointed guardian of the siblings Friedrich and Elisabeth.
From 1850 to 1856 Nietzsche lived in the "Naumburg women's household", i.e. together with his mother, sister, grandmother, two unmarried aunts on his father's side and the maid. It was not until the estate of her grandmother, who died in 1856, that the mother was allowed to rent her own apartment for herself and her children. The young Nietzsche first attended the general boys' school, but felt so isolated there that he was sent to a private school, where he made his first childhood friendships with Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder, both from prestigious houses. From 1854 he attended the Domgymnasium Naumburg and already attracted attention there with his special musical and linguistic talent. In 1857, Pastor Gustav Adolf Oßwald, a close friend of his father, prepared him for the entrance exam in Schulpforta in church divorces. On October 5, 1858, Nietzsche was accepted as a scholarship holder at the Pforta State School, where he met Paul Deussen and Carl Freiherr von Gersdorff as lasting friends. His school performance was very good, and in his free time he wrote poetry and composed. In Schulpforta, his own idea of antiquity developed for the first time and, along with it, a distance from the petty-bourgeois Christian world of his family. During this time, Nietzsche met the older, once politically engaged poet Ernst Ortlepp, whose personality impressed the fatherless boy. Teachers particularly appreciated by Nietzsche, with whom he remained in contact after his school days, were Wilhelm Corssen, the later rector Diederich Volkmann, and Max Heinze, who was appointed his guardian in 1897, when Nietzsche was incapacitated. Corssen had also lobbied the college for Nietzsche to receive his Abitur despite a bad grade in mathematics, referring to Nietzsche's special talent in ancient languages and German. Together with his friends Pinder and Krug, Nietzsche met from 1860 on the ruins of Schönburg Castle, where he discussed literature, philosophy, music and language with them. With them, he founded the artistic-literary association "Germania". The founding ceremony took place on July 25, 1860: "... over Naumburg red wine (the bottle of 75 pfennigs) the three sixteen-year-old club members took their federal oath. Poems, compositions, treatises had to be delivered regularly. They then wanted to discuss it together." The meetings were held quarterly. Lectures were held at them. There was a community treasury from which books were procured. Already during this time, Nietzsche developed his passion for the music of Richard Wagner. Nietzsche's early works, which were written against the background of Schönburg's Germania, include the Synod Lectures, Childhood of the Peoples, Fatum and History, and On the Demonic in Music. In 1863, Germania was dissolved after Pinder and Krug lost interest in it.
In the winter semester of 1864/65, Nietzsche began studying classical philology and Protestant theology at the University of Bonn under Wilhelm Ludwig Krafft, among others. Together with Deussen, he became a member of the Bonn fraternity Frankonia. He voluntarily denied a mensur, of which he retained a slap on the bridge of his nose. After a year, he left the fraternity because he disliked fraternity life. In addition to his studies, he immersed himself in the works of the Young Hegelians, including The Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss, The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer's Gospel Criticisms. These encouraged him (to his mother's great disappointment) in his decision to drop out of his theology studies after one semester. Nietzsche now wanted to concentrate entirely on classical philology, but was dissatisfied with his situation in Bonn. Therefore, he took the move of the philology professor Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig (as a result of the Bonn Philologists' Controversy) as an opportunity to move to Leipzig together with his friend Gersdorff. In the following years, Nietzsche was to become Ritschl's philological model pupil, although he was still inclined towards his competitor Otto Jahn in Bonn. Ritschl was a father figure for Nietzsche for a time, before Richard Wagner later took this place.
In October 1865, shortly before Nietzsche began his studies in Leipzig, he spent two weeks in Berlin with the family of his student friend Hermann Mushacke. In the 1840s, his father had belonged to a debating circle around Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. It is obvious that Nietzsche was confronted with Stirner's book The Only One and His Property, published in 1845, during this visit, but cannot be proven. In any case, Nietzsche immediately turned to a philosopher who was conceivably distant from Stirner and Young Hegelianism: Arthur Schopenhauer. Another philosopher he discovered for himself during his time in Leipzig was Friedrich Albert Lange, whose History of Materialism was published in 1866. First and foremost, however, Nietzsche continued his philological studies. During this time, he established a close friendship with his fellow student Erwin Rohde. Together with him, he participated in the founding of the Classical-Philological Society at the University of Leipzig in 1866.
While he had been able to avoid military conscription as a student in the Austro-Prussian War between Prussia and Austria, in which the Kingdom of Saxony was on the Austrian side and Leipzig was occupied by Prussia, Nietzsche had to do his military service with the Prussian army in 1867 and joined the Field Artillery Regiment No. 55 in Naumburg as a one-year volunteer. When he became unfit for duty after a serious riding accident in March 1868, he used the time of his cure for further philological work, which he continued in his last year of study. His first meeting with Richard Wagner in 1868 was of great importance. On the recommendation of his teacher Friedrich Ritschl and at the instigation of Wilhelm Vischer-Bilfinger, Nietzsche was appointed associate professor of classical philology at the small, then financially weak University of Basel in 1869 as a special talent for classical languages, but without a doctorate. His work also included teaching at the traditional Basel Gymnasium on Münsterplatz. His most important insight in the field of philology is considered to be the discovery of the quantitative principle, i.e. the realization that ancient metrics, in contrast to modern metrics, were based exclusively on the length of syllables. At his own request, Nietzsche was released from Prussian citizenship after moving to Basel and remained stateless for the rest of his life. However, he served for a short time as a medic on the German side during the Franco-German War. During this time, he contracted a severe dysentery and diphtheria disease, the convalescence of which was of longer duration. He took note of the founding of the German Empire and the subsequent era of Otto von Bismarck with a portion of skepticism. Due to his poor health, Nietzsche was forced to take a leave of absence for the rest of the winter semester of 1875/1876, which was soon to lead to the termination of his teaching activity. In Basel, his friendship with Franz Overbeck, a professor of theology and later rector of the University of Basel, began in 1870, which lasted until the time of Nietzsche's mental derangement. Nietzsche also appreciated his older colleague Jacob Burckhardt, who remained distant from him.
Nietzsche had already met Richard Wagner and his future wife Cosima in Leipzig in 1868. He deeply admired both of them and, since the beginning of his time in Basel, was a frequent guest at the house of the "master" in Tribschen near Lucerne. Although the latter took him into his circle of friends for a time, he saw him above all as a propagandist for the founding of his Bayreuth Festival Hall.
In 1872, Nietzsche published his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, an investigation into the origin of tragedy, in which he replaced the traditional philological method with philosophical speculation. In it, he developed a kind of art psychology by trying to explain Greek tragedy from the pair of terms Apollonian-Dionysian. The pamphlet was rejected by most of his colleagues – including Friedrich Ritschl – or passed over in silence. Due to Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff's criticism of Nietzsche in his polemic Zukunftsphilologie! improper scientific work, there was a brief public controversy in which his former fellow student Erwin Rohde, now an associate professor in Kiel, and Richard Wagner sided with Nietzsche. Nietzsche became increasingly aware of his special position in philology, which is why he had already tried in 1871, albeit in vain, for Gustav Teichmüller's vacant chair of philosophy in Basel.
In 1873, Nietzsche met and fell in love with Bertha Rohr (1848–1940) in Flims. The four Untimely Reflections (1873–1876), in which he practiced a cultural critique influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner, also did not find the hoped-for resonance. In the meantime, Nietzsche had met Malwida von Meysenbug and Hans von Bülow in Wagner's circle, and his friendship with Paul Rée also began, whose influence led him away from the cultural pessimism of his first writings. Nietzsche took his disappointment at the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876, where he felt repelled by the banality of the drama and the lack of sophistication of the audience, as an opportunity to distance himself from Wagner. His former passion turned into rejection and finally radical opposition.
The same process took place with Schopenhauer. Nietzsche began reading Philipp Mainländer's 200-page critique of Schopenhauer's philosophy on December 6 – a few days later he wrote that he had broken with Schopenhauer. With the publication of Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878), the alienation from Wagner and Schopenhauer's philosophy became apparent. The friendships with Deussen and Rohde had also cooled noticeably in the meantime. During this time, Nietzsche made several futile attempts to find a young and wealthy wife for himself, in which he was supported above all by his maternal patroness Malwida von Meysenbug. In addition, the illnesses that had occurred since childhood (migraine attacks and stomach disorders as well as severe myopia, which ultimately led practically to blindness) increased and forced him to take longer and longer periods off from his teaching activities. In 1879, he finally took early retirement because of this.
Driven by his illnesses in the constant search for optimal climatic conditions for him, he now travelled a lot and lived as a freelance author in various places until 1889. He lived mainly on the pension granted to him; in addition, he sometimes received donations from friends. In summer he spent most of his time in Sils-Maria, in winter mainly in Italy (Genoa, Rapallo, Turin) and in Nice. From time to time he visited the family in Naumburg, where there were several quarrels and reconciliations with his sister. His former pupil Peter Gast (eigtl. Heinrich Köselitz) became a kind of private secretary for a time. Köselitz and Overbeck were Nietzsche's most enduring confidants.
From the Wagner circle, Meysenbug in particular had remained with him as a maternal patron. He also kept in touch with the music critic Carl Fuchs and initially also with Paul Rée. At the beginning of the 1880s, with Dawn and The Cheerful Science, further works appeared in the aphoristic style of Human, All-too-Human.
In 1882, through the mediation of Meysenbug and Rée, he met Lou von Salomé in Rome. Nietzsche quickly made far-reaching plans for the "Trinity" with Rée and Salomé. The rapprochement with the young woman culminated in a stay of several weeks together in Tautenburg, with Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth as chaperone. Nietzsche, for all her esteem, saw Salomé less as an equal partner than as a gifted student. He fell in love with her, asked for her hand in marriage through their mutual friend Rée, but Salomé refused. Nietzsche, who was plagued by suicidal thoughts in view of new bouts of illness and his now almost complete isolation – he had fallen out with his mother and sister over Salomé – fled to Rapallo, where he put the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on paper in just ten days.
He developed his thoughts on the third part during his stay in the mountain village of Èze near Nice. A street and a memorial plaque commemorate Nietzsche's days in Èze.
While only a few friends had remained with him after the break with Wagner and Schopenhauer's philosophy, the completely new style in Zarathustra met with incomprehension even among his closest circle of friends, which was at best covered up by politeness. Nietzsche was well aware of this and almost cultivated his loneliness, even if he often complained about it. He gave up the short-lived plan to go public as a poet. In addition, he was plagued by money worries, because his books were hardly ever bought. In 1885, he published the fourth part of Zarathustra only as a private print with an edition of 40 copies, which were intended as gifts for "those who rendered outstanding services to him" and of which Nietzsche ultimately gave away only seven.
In 1886 he had Jenseits von Gut und Böse printed at his own expense. With this book and the second editions of Geburt, Menschliches, Morgenröte and Fröhlicher Wissenschaft published in 1886/87, he considered his work to be finished for the time being and hoped that a readership would soon develop. In fact, interest in Nietzsche increased, albeit very slowly and hardly noticed by him himself.
New acquaintances of Nietzsche in these years were Meta von Salis and Carl Spitteler, and a meeting with Gottfried Keller had also taken place. In 1886, his sister, now married to the anti-Semite Bernhard Förster, had left for Paraguay to found the "Germanic" colony of Nueva Germania – a project that Nietzsche found ridiculous. The sequence of quarrels and reconciliation continued in correspondence, but the siblings were not to see each other again in person until after Frederick's collapse.
Nietzsche continued to struggle with recurring painful seizures, which made constant work impossible. In 1887 he wrote the polemic On the Genealogy of Morality in a short time. He exchanged letters with Hippolyte Taine, then also with Georg Brandes, who gave the first lectures on Nietzsche's philosophy in Copenhagen at the beginning of 1888.
In the same year, Nietzsche wrote five books, some of them from extensive notes, for the temporarily planned work The Will to Power. His health had temporarily improved, and in the summer he was in real high spirits. His writings and letters from autumn 1888 onwards, however, already suggest his incipient megalomania. The reactions to his writings, especially to the polemic Der Fall Wagner from the spring, were grossly overrated by him. On his 44th birthday, after the completion of the Twilight of the Idols and the initially restrained Antichrist, he decided to write the autobiography Ecce homo. In December, an exchange of letters with August Strindberg began. Nietzsche believed that he was on the verge of an international breakthrough and tried to buy back his old writings from the first publisher. He planned translations into the most important European languages. He also intended to publish the compilation Nietzsche contra Wagner and the poems Dionysus Dithyrambs.
On January 3, 1889, he suffered a mental breakdown in Turin. Small documents, so-called "Wahnzettel" or "Wahnbriefe", which he sent to close friends, but also, for example, to Cosima Wagner or Jacob Burckhardt and even Umberto I of Italy, were marked by a mental illness. Since then, the cause of the collapse has been the subject of repeated controversial discussions. An important question is whether intermittent symptoms were already occurring and stylistically reflected before this collapse, or whether the collapse occurred abruptly and should be considered in isolation from pre-existing conditions such as migraine and asthenopia in severe myopia. In the past, medical-historical research into original findings usually came to the conclusion that Nietzsche's collapse could best be explained by the quaternary stage of nerve syphilis.
Renewed evaluations put this suspected diagnosis into perspective in several ways. On the one hand, the clinical pictures of gonorrhea and syphilis were not yet differentiated from each other at that time and both were referred to as lues. In addition, dementia and Alzheimer's were only medically defined after Nietzsche's death, so this diagnostic option was not available during his lifetime. From today's perspective, the symptoms of the disease also coincide with the diagnosis of the genetic disease CADASIL, while the attribution of syphilis, based on the medical history, cannot be confirmed.
Overbeck, alarmed by the delusions against Burckhardt and himself, first took Nietzsche to the Friedmatt lunatic asylum in Basel, which was run by Ludwig Wille. From there, the now mentally completely deranged was taken by his mother to the psychiatric university clinic in Jena under the direction of Otto Binswanger. An attempt at healing by Julius Langbehn, who had made contact with his mother on his own, failed. In 1890, his mother was finally allowed to take him into her house in Naumburg. At that time he could occasionally have short conversations, bring forth scraps of memory and put greetings dictated by his mother under some letters, but he quickly and suddenly fell into delusions or apathy and did not recognize old friends.
Overbeck and Köselitz initially discussed the further procedure with the works, some of which were still unprinted. The latter began a first complete edition. At the same time, a first wave of Nietzsche's reception began.
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche returned from Paraguay after her husband's suicide in 1893, had the volumes of the Köselitz edition that had already been printed scrapped, founded the Nietzsche Archive and gradually took control of her brother, who was in need of care, as well as his estate and the publication of his works from her elderly mother. She fell out with Overbeck, while she was able to win Köselitz over for further cooperation.
Nietzsche himself, whose decay continued, did not notice any of this. After the death of his mother in 1897, after his sister had sold the house in Naumburg, he lived in the Villa Silberblick in Weimar, where Elisabeth cared for him. She granted selected visitors – such as Rudolf Steiner – the privilege of being admitted to the demented philosopher. The Jenaer Volksblatt reported, citing a Naumburg newspaper: "His way of life passes entirely according to the doctor's prescription, which has regulated his food and service. For the rest, he sits quietly absorbed in himself; only when street noise or children's noise reaches his ear does he utter unintelligible sounds, but calms down again when he is read to him, without understanding what he is reading. His appearance is by no means unhealthy, but it is somewhat difficult to dress and undress him, because of a certain awkwardness of the limbs that has recently become noticeable." Steiner gave another detailed description of the benighted Nietzsche. After several strokes, which are also compatible with the diagnosis of nerve syphilis (see above), Nietzsche was partially paralyzed and could neither stand nor speak. On August 25, 1900, at the age of 55, he died of pneumonia and another stroke in Weimar. He was buried at the Röcken village church in the family grave.