Hand of Fear

There are only a handful of base-grown fears within every man, 

and they will trouble not an open wish-blown hand. 

But clap those fears into clench'ed fists, 

and his throat they will grip, 

and his breath bestem.

Sister As Saviour - notes on Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche

ELISABETH - Nietzsche's Sister as the Saviour of his Philosophy 

Notes and quotes

 LETTERS 

NIETZSCHE To His SISTER. Naumburg, March 30, 1856 [Nietzsche aged 12] DEAR ELIZABETH : .... mother is writing to you to-day I am sending you a short note to put with hers. First of all, let me describe our journey. On the way to Weissenfels there was nothing I objected to more than the piercing wind, and in this respect my two coats served me in good stead.,,... I have not yet played with the soldiers, but will do so soon. I often wish I were at Pobles, too, and thank our grandparents very heartily for the nice stay I had there. Remember me most affectionately to them and also to Uncles Edmund, Theobald, Oscar, and to our aunts. 

Keep well and write frequent letters to your brother, 

FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE 

NIETZSCHE To His MOTHER AND SISTER. Elberfeld, Sept. 27, 1864. [Nietzsche aged 20]

DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE : From the look of my handwriting you are to gather that I am writing to you from a business house. .... first of all, a number of sleepy and snoring travelling companions, then some very talkative, noisy and common ones, followed by factory hands and business men or very exacting old ladies .... we called on the Rohrs and found Johanna and Marie at home both nice girls but not quite my style; they were a little tasteless in their dress. Of course, one must not forget that they are under the care of a very pious old lady, with whom on the following day I became involved in a long discussion about the theatre, 'the work of the Devil' and held my ground very well, but only succeeded in earning her compassion for one who held such views as mine .... The town is commercial in the extreme, and most of the houses are slate roofed. I notice that the women here have a particular predilection for drooping their heads in a pious way. The girls dress very smartly in little coats very tight at the waist, like that Polish girl from Kosen. The men all display a fondness for light brown, their hats, trousers, etc., all being of that colour. ... 

My improvising at the piano had a great success, and my health was most solemnly drunk. ... 

In the evening, at the inn, I played without knowing it in the presence of a famous orchestra conductor, who stood there afterwards gasping with wonder and said all sorts of nice things to me. He also begged me to join his choral society that evening a thing I did not do. Instead I drove back and was invited to dine with the Schnabel family. They are nice, good people....Your FRITZ. 

NIETZSCHE To His MOTHER AND SISTER. Bonn, November 10, 1864. 

DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE : . On Sunday we were en masse in Sieburg, where we marched through the streets cheering, danced, and returned rather late. An hour ago I was at an exceedingly distinguished concert; it was an extraordinary display of wealth. All the ladies were dressed in bright red, and English was spoken all over the hall; 'I don t speak English' [written in English, ed.] Admittance cost three marks, but as I am one of the performers it cost me nothing. But to make up for things I went there dressed as smartly as possible, with a white waistcoat and kid gloves. 

I seem to write an inordinate number of letters, and yet I get none except from you. 

Have Gersdorff and Kuttig been to see you? Remember me to them and also to the dear Naumburg aunts. Ever with devotion and love. Your FRITZ. 

NIETZSCHE To His MOTHER AND SISTER. Bonn, End of February, 1865. 

MY DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE : The lovely time of the holidays draws ever nearer, and I must confess that my longing to see you again grows keener every day. ... 

I imagine the whole of this passage will make you feel a little wistful; but unfortunately I must dissipate this mood for you by referring to the inevitable and irksome question of money. Among other things now I am going to the most desperate efforts to make two ends meet, and, like the Treasury, on drawing up my budget for the year I arrive only at the most hopeless results. Among the financial coups I have in view is the plan of moving out of my present lodgings next term, giving up the hire of a piano in order to put it quite plainly to cut down expenses. One learns a tremendous lot in one term, even in the realm of material things; but it is a pity that one has to pay so dearly for these lessons. But now I will close these pathetic and bathetic details by begging you, dear Mamma, to send me the money for the next two months in a lump sum of not less than 240 marks, to include my railway fare. .... 

And now let us banish all care from our brow and chat pleasantly for a while. The things I have to tell you naturally accumulate more and more every day. . . . 

I pass here among the students, etc., as something of an authority on music, and as a queer customer into the bargain, like all old Pforta boys in the Franconia. I am not disliked at all, although I am apt to scoff a little and am considered as somewhat ironical. This estimate of my character, according to the opinions of other people, will not be without interest to you. For my part I must add that I do not agree to the first particular, that I am frequently unhappy and that I have too many moods and am rather inclined to be a nagging spirit (Qutilgeist) not only to myself, but also to others. And now good-bye ! For Heaven s sake send me the money in good time, and remember me to our dear relatives. With hearty thanks for your nice letters and begging you still to think kindly of me in spite of this one..

NIETZSCHE. LEITER TO HIS SISTER {Bonn, 1865) ... for your principle that truth is always on the side of the more difficult, I admit this in part. However, it is difficult to believe that 2 times 2 is not 4; does that make it true? On the other hand, is it really so difficult simply to accept everything that one has been brought up on and that has gradually struck deep roots-what is considered truth in the circle of one's relatives and of many good men, and what, moreover, really comforts and elevates man? Is that more difficult than to strike new paths, fighting the habitual, experiencing the insecurity of independence and the frequent wavering of one's feelings and even one's conscience, proceeding often without any consolation, but ever with the eternal goal of the true, the beautiful, and the good? Is it decisive after all that we arrive at that view of God, world, and reconciliation which makes us feel most comfortable? Rather, is not the result of his inquiries something wholly indifferent to the true inquirer? Do we after all seek rest, peace, and pleasure in our inquiries? No, only truth-even if it be the most abhorrent and ugly. Still one last question: if we had believed from childhood that all salvation issued from someone other than Jesus-say, from Mohammed-is it not certain that we should have experienced the same blessings? . 

• • Faith does not offer the least support for a proof of objective truth. Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. • • • 

To His MOTHER AND SISTER. Bale, December 12, 1870. 

DEAR MAMMA AND LIZZIE : . . . I am gradually losing all sympathy for Germany's present war of conquest. The future of German culture seems to me now more in danger than it ever was. . . . With heartiest greetings, YOUR FRITZ. 

NIETZSCHE To His SISTER. Bale, January 22, 1875. 

MY DEAR SISTER : It was a good thing that you wrote me a letter close on the heels of the one mother wrote, for I was beside myself and had already written down some bitter words. I now see that I misunderstood her. But how is it that she was able to misunderstand me so, and all this time to conceal from me this incomprehensible hostility to the two Wagners? Am I so difficult to understand and so easy to misunderstand in all my intentions, plans, and friendships? Ah, we lonely ones and free spirits it is borne home to us that in some way or other we constantly appear different from what we think. Whereas we wish for nothing more than truth and straightforwardness, we are surrounded by a net of misunderstanding, and despite our most ardent wishes we cannot help our actions being smothered in a cloud of false opinion, attempted compromises, semi-concessions, charitable silence, and erroneous interpretations. Such things gather a weight of melancholy on our brow; for we hate more than death the thought that pretence should be necessary, and such incessant chafing against these things makes us volcanic and menacing. From time to time we avenge ourselves for all our enforced concealment and compulsory self-restraint. We emerge from our cells with terrible faces, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is not beyond the verge of possibility that we perish through ourselves. Thus dangerously do I live! It is precisely we solitary ones that require love and companions in whose presence we may be open and simple, and the eternal struggle of silence and dissimulation can cease. Yes, I am glad that I can be myself, openly and honestly with you, for you are such a good friend and companion, and the older you grow and the more you free yourself from the Naumburg atmosphere, the more will you certainly adapt yourself to all my views and aspirations. With love and devotion, YOUR BROTHER. 

To ROHDE. Bale, December 8, 1875. Ah, dear friend ... 

During the hours that I rest my eyes, my sister reads aloud to me, almost always Walter Scott, whom I would readily agree with Schopenhauer in calling 'immortal'. What pleases me so much in him is his artistic calm, his Andante. ... 

Your friend, F. N

To VON GERSDORFF. Bale, December 13, 1875. ....when I lie in bed feeling ill, that I long to hear more of this Indian wisdom, provided it is not permeated with Judaeo-Christian phraseology. .... , 

I have discovered that state of my soul which is, as it were, my destiny, that healthy state in which it has retained but one of all its instincts the will to know. A simple home, a perfectly regular daily routine, no enervating hankering after honours or society, my sister's company (which makes everything about me Nietzschean and strangeful restful) .... 

Your devoted friend, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. 

To ROHDE. Rosenlauibad, August 28, 1877. 

DEAR OLD FRIEND : ... In three days I shall return to Bale. 

My sister is already there and busy preparing the place for my arrival. 

The faithful musician P. Gast is going to join our household, and is going to undertake the duties of a friendly amanuensis. ... 

With brotherly affection, Yours F. NIETZSCHE 

To His MOTHER AND SISTER. Bale, April 25, 1879. 

Since my last card things have gone from bad to worse, in Geneva as in Bale, whither I returned last Monday. I had attack after attack both there and here. Until now I have been quite unable to give lectures. Yesterday Schiess informed me that my eyesight had deteriorated considerably since he last examined it. Your letters, full of news and encouragement, reached me while I was still in Geneva. 

My heartiest thanks ! F. 

NIETZSCHE TO PETER GAST. Address, St. Moriz-Dorf, Poste Restante. September 11, 1879. 

DEAR, DEAR FRIEND :... Up to the present my spirit has not been depressed by the unremitting suffering that my ailments have caused me; at times I even feel more cheerful and more benevolent than I ever felt in my life before; to what do I owe this invigorating and ameliorating effect? Certainly not to my fellow men ; for, with but few exceptions, they have all during the last few years shown themselves 'offended' by me; nor have they shrunk from letting me know it. ...

Your friend, N. NIETZSCHE 

TO His SISTER. Recoaro, June 19, 1881. Oh, my darling sister, you imagine that it is all about a book? Do you too still think that I am an author! My hour is at hand! I should like to spare you all this; for surely you cannot bear my burden (it is enough of a fatality to be so closely related to me) . I should like you to be able to say with a clean conscience, to each and everyone, 'I do not know my brothers latest views'. (People will be only too ready to acquaint you with the fact that they are 'immoral' and 'shameless'.) Meanwhile, courage and pluck; to each his appointed task, and the same old love! YOUR F. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Genoa, February 3, 1882. 

Just a few lines, my darling sister, to thank you for your kind words about Wagner and Bayreuth. Certainly the time I spent with him in Triebschen and enjoyed through him at Bayreuth (in 1872, not in 1876) is the happiest I have had in my whole life. But the omnipotent violence of our tasks drove us asunder and now we can never more be united; we have grown too strange to each other. ... 

Has not the nerve-destroying power of his music ruined my health was it not dangerous to life? Has it not taken me almost six years to recover from this pain? 

No, Bayreuth is impossible for me! What I wrote a day or two ago was only a joke. But you at all events must go to Bayreuth. Your going would be of the greatest value to me. YOUR DEVOTED BROTHER. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Sils-Maria, End of August, 1883. 

MY DEAR SISTER : .... Every word in my Zarathustra is simply so much triumphant scorn and more than scorn, flung at the ideals of this period [i.e., his Wagner/Schopenhauer period] , and behind almost every word there stands a personal experience, an act of self-overcoming of the highest order. It is absolutely necessary that I should be misunderstood; nay, I would go even further and say that I must succeed in being understood in the worst possible way and despised. .... that I have no friends, that I 'have been left absolutely in the lurch for ten years!') In so far as the general trend of my nature is concerned, I have no comrades; nobody has any idea when I most need comfort, encouragement, or a shake of the hand. .... 

Cultivate forgetfulness and any thing else new and quite different from these things, in order that I may learn to laugh at the loss of such friends!... 

Your BROTHER. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Genoa, November, 1883. 

MY DEAR LAMA : ... But, my dear sister, just study 'Dawn of Day' and 'Joyful Wisdom' - books whose contents and whose future are the richest on earth ! 

In your last letters there was a good deal about 'egoistic' and 'unegoistic'; that ought no longer to be written by my sister. 

I draw above all a sharp line be tween strong and weak men those who are destined to rulership, and those who are destined to service, obedience, and devotion. 

That which turns my stomach in this age is the untold amount of weakness, unmanliness, impersonality, changeableness, and good-nature, in short weakness in the matter of which would fain masquerade as 'virtue'. 

That which has given me pleasure up to the present has been the sight of men with a long will who can hold their peace for years and who do not simply on that account deck themselves out with pompous moral phraseology, and parade as 'heroes'; or 'noblemen', but who are honest enough to believe in nothing but themselves and their will, in order to stamp it upon mankind for all time. 

Excuse me. That which drew me to Richard Wagner was this; Schopenhauer, too, had the same feeling all his life. . . . 

I know perhaps better than anyone else how to recognize an order of rank even among strong men -, according to their virtue, and on the same principle there are certainly hundreds of sorts of 

very decent and lovable people among the weak in keeping with the virtues peculiar to the weak. 

There are some strong 'selves' whose selfishness one might call divine (for instance Zarathustra's) but any kind of strength is in itself alone a refreshing and blessed spectacle. 

Read Shakespeare! He is full of such strong men, raw, hard, and mighty men of granite. 

Our age is so poor in these men and even in strong men who have enough brains for my thoughts! 

Do not form too low an estimate of the disappointment and loss I have suffered this year. You cannot think how lonely and 'out of it' I always feel when I am in the midst of all the kindly Tartufferie of those people whom you call 'good', and how intensely I yearn at times for a man who is honest and who can talk even if he were a monster, but of course I should prefer discourse with demi-gods. 

But once again, forgive me! I am writing you all this out of the heartiest depths of my heart, and know very well how very good your intentions are where I am concerned. 

Oh, this infernal solitude! F. N. 

P. S. Stein is still too young for me. I should spoil him. I almost spoilt Gast I have to be most awfully careful of my Ps and Qs with him. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER AND BROTHER-IN-LAW. Nice, After Christmas, 1885. 

MY DEAR BROTHER AND SISTER : .... At midday I received your kind Christmas presents .... Then your famous animal* drank three quite large glasses of a sweet local wine, and was just the slightest bit top-heavy; at least ....Ever your loving, F. 

[*Note by Frau F.N.: 'When my brother came to stay with us at Naumburg in the Autumn of 1885, it occurred to us to nickname him our famous animal']

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Nice, February, 1886. 

MY DEAR OLD LAMA : ... I would ... beseech you to convert me into a South American landowner ...I must, however, stipulate most emphatically that the plot of land be called not Frederickland or Frederickwood (for, to begin with, I do not wish to die yet and be buried there) but, in memory of the name I have given you Lamaland. Joking apart, I would send you everything I possess if it would help to get you back here soon. Generally speaking, everybody who knows you and loves you is of opinion that it would have been a thousand times better for you to have been spared this experi ment. Even if that country were found to be ever so well suited to German colonization, no one would admit that precisely you two ought to be the colonizers.... 

After all, I cannot help thinking that your nature would prove itself more useful in a truly German cause, here in Europe ... 

The things most urgently needed in Germany at present are precisely independent Educational Institutions, which would actively compete with the slave-drilling education of the State. ... 

But right out there, among peasants, in close proximity to Germans, who have become impossible, and are probably embittered and poisoned at heart enough, what a wide field this provides for worry and anxiety ! The big stupid ocean between us! and whenever, here, we get news of a hurricane, your brother grows angry and agitated, and cudgels his brains to discover how on earth it ever occurred to the Lama to embark upon such an adventure. 

I do the best I can to bear up, but every day, and more particularly at night, I am overcome by incomparable sadness always, simply owing to the fact that the Lama has run away and has completely broken with her brother's tradition..... 

Onward, my dear old Lama ! And may you face what you have resolved to face, with courage! 

YOUR F. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Sils-Maria, July 8, 1886. 

MY DARLING LAMA :... The humiliating experiences of the autumn of 1882, which I had almost forgotten, came back to my mind, and I recollected with shame the type of humanity I had already treated as my equal! 

Wherever I turned I was confronted by opinions utterly opposed to my own to my great astonishment, however, not about Wagner. Even Kohde has refused to have anything to do with Parsifal. Where are those old friends with whom in years gone by I felt so closely united? Now it seems as if we belonged to different worlds, and no longer spoke the same language! 

Like a stranger and an outcast, I move among them not one of their words or looks reaches me any longer. I am dumb, for no one understands my speech ah, but they never did understand me ! or does the same fate bear the same burden on its soul? 

It is terrible to be condemned to silence when one has so much to say [...] 

Was I made for solitude or for a life in which there was no one to whom I could speak? 

The inability to communicate one's thoughts is in very truth the most terrible of all kinds of loneliness. Difference is a mask which is more ironbound than any iron mask and perfect friendship is possible only inter pares! Inter pares! an intoxicating word; it contains so much comfort, hope, savour, and blessedness for him who is necessarily always alone ; for him who is 'different'; who has never met anyone who precisely belonged to him, although he has sought well on all sorts of roads; who in his relationship to his fellows always had to practise a sort of considerate and cheerful dissimulation in the hope of assimilating himself to them, often with success, who from all too long experience knows how to show that bright face to adversity which is called sociability and some times, too, to give vent to those dangerous, heart rending outbursts of all his concealed misery, of all the longings he has not yet stifled, of all his surging and tumultuous streams of love the sudden madness of those moments when the lonely man embraces one that seems to his taste and treats him as a friend, as a Heaven-sent blessing and precious gift, only to thrust him from him with loathing an hour later, and with loathing too for himself, as if he had been contaminated and abased, as if he had grown strange even to himself, as if he had fallen from his own company. 

A deep man needs friends. All else failing, he has at least his god. 

But I have neither god nor friends ! 

Ah, my dear sister, those you call by that name were certainly friends once but now? For instance [...]. . . . Now I ought once more to give myself a little rest, for the spiritual and intellectual tension of the last few years has been too severe, and my temper has grown sharper and more gloomy. 

My health is really quite normal but my poor soul is so sensitive to injury and so full of longing for good friends, for people 'who are my life'.; Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me and I shall be cured! 

Your FRITZ. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Nice, Wednesday, March 23, 1887. 

MY DEAR LAMA : It is now difficult to help me. When one has been at great pains for half one's life to secure independence for one's self, as I found it necessary to do, one has to accept the disadvantages of the situation as well. One cannot have the one without the other. 

Among these disadvantages is the fact that no one can tell from appearances what are the things I lack. I should like to have a little more money in order, for instance, that in the interests of my declining health, alone, and with the view of avoiding innumerable mistakes in dieting that I am exposed to in restaurants and hotels, I might have my own kitchen. It is also a question of pride; I should like to lead a life that really is suitable to me, and does not look so conventional as that of 'a scholar on his travels'. But even the five conditions that might make life endurable, and are really not pretentious, seem to me impracticable. I require: 

(1) Some one to superintend my digestion, 

(2) Somebody who can laugh with me and who has cheerful spirits, 

(3) Someone who is proud of my company and who constrains others to treat me with becoming respect, 

(4) Someone who can read aloud to me without making a book sound idiotic. 

There is yet a fifth condition; but I will say nothing about it. 

To marry now would perhaps be simply an act of folly, which would immediately deprive me of the independence that I have won with such bloody strife. 

And then I should also have to choose some European State, to belong to and become a citizen of it. I should have to consider my wife, my child, my wife's family, the place I lived in, and the people we associated with, but to forbid myself the free expression of my ideas would kill me. 

I should prefer to be miserable, ill, and feared, and live in some out of the way corner, than to be 'settled' and given my place in modern mediocrity! 

I lack neither courage nor good spirits. Both have remained with me because I have no acts of cowardice or false compromise on my conscience. Incidentally I may say that I have not yet found a woman who would be suited to associate with me, and whose presence would not bore me and make me nervous. (The Lama was a good housemate for whom I can find no substitute, but it wanted to vent its energy and to sacrifice itself. For whom? For a miserable foreign race of men, who will not even thank her and not for me. And I would be such a grateful animal, and always ready for merry laughter. Are you still able to laugh at all? I am afraid that you will quite forget how to do it among these embittered people. )

Moreover I know the women folk of half Europe, and wherever I have observed the influence of women on men, I have noticed a sort of gradual decline as the result; for instance in the case of poor [...]. 

Not very encouraging is it? 

I shall leave Nice at the beginning of next month in order to seek peaceful retirement on Lake Maggiore, where there are woods and shaded groves, and not this blindingly white incessant sunshine of Nice in the spring ! ... 

With love, Your F. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Cannobio, Lago Maggiore, Villa Badia, April 20, 1887. 

MY DEAR LAMA : ... And now about yourself, my dear Lama! I was very much impressed by the purchase of this huge piece of land, 'larger than many a German principality'. But I must confess that I am absolutely at sea about the whole affair. If I understand anything at all, it is that the real owner of that vast complex of territory is that rich Paraguayan who is so friendly with Forster. This would not prevent him from wishing to serve his own interests by means of this 'German colony'. He is certainly bent on turning it to his own profit. Now the principal thing to me seems to be, not that the colony should be inhabited, but that it should do some business, sell wood, etc. For without that I absolutely cannot see how such a great outlay of capital can get its proper return. Forster promised to invest a portion of your money securely either in Germany or in Paraguay; but, if I know my sister well, this last portion will certainly find its way before long into the pockets of those numerous paupers. 

I confess that they are my one bugbear; remember that if anything goes wrong they constitute a most unpleasant element with which to deal. Then they always believe that one has unjustly led them into trouble; whereas success and failure often depend on accidents. 

To tell you the truth, my dear Lama, your letters do not comfort me in the least. If we were situated as you are we should all write such contented and hopeful letters home particularly to relatives. I have not written to you about it yet; but I am not edified by the whole affair. 

In my mind's eye, I can see these paupers, dependent upon your pity, pressing themselves covetously upon you in order to exploit your all too ready liberality. 

No colony can prosper with such elements ; do not deceive yourself on that point. If they were peasants it would be quite a different thing. Also please allow me to question whether you are so well fitted for colonizing as my brother-in-law so often affirms. 

Not long ago I was talking to one of your former friends and he declared that we did not even know what colonizing meant. It was an incessant struggle with the elements . . . and you were as well fitted for it as 'lily and rose-branches would be for sweeping a chimney'. A fine simile! but very sad for the Lama. 

Forgive this sad letter, but mother's anxiety on your account has infected me also. I believe she is feeling ill as the result of bad German weather; but the Lama in the atmosphere and the sun of the South holds her head up. 

With love and solicitude, YOUR BROTHER. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Nice, January 25. 1888. 

MY DEAR OLD LAMA : It was with great pleasure that I read my brotherin-law's paean on his 'incomparable wife'.; I am proud of having brought you up - only very few women would have overcome those extraordinary difficulties with such bravery and unassuming cheerfulness. But please let us have a little less modesty ! 

Do not forget that the herd insists on having picturesque people that is to say, people who draw pictures of their gifts, aspirations, and successes in such bold and obtrusive strokes that they can be grasped even by the dullest eyes. 

The herd honours everything in the nature of a pose, any solemn attitude, things from which we two are averse. Only subtle spirits understand the shame of the noble mind, that conceals its highest and its best beneath a plain surface. I feel certain that among all those people over there, only a few have any idea with what little regard for yourself and with what passionate resolution you try to realize your ideals. The only question I ask myself is are these ideals worthy of so much self-sacrifice? I very much fear you will yet have to overcome many bitter disappointments in your life. 

Ultimately you will become a sceptical old woman without having lost your bravery; and you will be well suited to your sceptical brother. How we shall laugh then over the idealism of our youth possibly with tears. 

Now let me tell you a little experience I have had. As I was taking my usual walk yesterday, I suddenly heard some one talking and laughing heartily along a side path (it sounded almost as if it might have been you) ; and when this some one appeared before me, it turned out to be a charming brown-eyed girl, whose soft gaze, as she surveyed me, reminded me of a roe. Then, lonely philosopher though I am, my heart grew quite warm I thought of your marriage schemes, and for the whole of the rest of the walk I could not help thinking of the charming young girl. Certainly it would do me good to have something so graceful about me but would it do her good? Would my views not make her unhappy, and would it not break my heart (provided that I loved her) to make such a delightful creature suffer? No, let us not speak of marrying ! But what you were thinking of was rather a good comrade [...]. 

Do you really think that an emancipated woman of this sort, with all her femininity vanished, could be a good comrade, or could be tolerable as a wife at all? You forget that, in spite of my bad eyesight, I have a very highly developed sense of beauty ; and this, quite apart from the fact that such embittered women are repugnant to me and spoil my spirits and my whole atmosphere. Much intellect in a woman amounts to very little as far as I am concerned, for this so-called intellect, by which only the most superficial men are deceived, is nothing more than the most absurd pretentiousness. There is nothing more tiring than such an intellectual goose, who does not even know how tedious she is. Think of Frau O. ! But in this respect I must admit that Fraulein X. is incomparably more pleasant but, nevertheless! You think that love would change her; but I do not believe in any such change through 'love'. Besides, you have not seen her for many years it is obvious that she must have changed in the direction of ugliness and loss of womanliness. Believe me, if you were to see her now at her very appearance the thought of love and marriage would strike you, as it does me, as absurd. You can take my word for it, that for men like me, a marriage after the type of Goethe s would be the best of all that is to say, a marriage with a good housekeeper! But even this idea is repellent to me. 

A young and cheerful daughter to whom I would be an object of reverence would be much more to the point. 

The best of all, however, would be to have my good old Lama again. For a philosopher, a sister is an excellent philanthropic institution, particularly when she is bright, brave, and loving (no old vinegar flask like G. Keller's sister), but as a rule one only recognizes such truths when it is too late. 

Well, this has been a nice chat on marriage with the Lama. 

With many hearty wishes and greetings to you and your Bernhard, your devored F 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Torino (Italia) via Carlo Alberto. 6. III. End of October, 1888. 

MY DEAR LAMA : . . . As you see I am again in my good city of Turin, the city of which Gobineau also was so fond may be it is like us both. I, too, very much enjoy the distinguished and somewhat haughty manner of these old Turinians. There is no greater contrast than that between good-natured but thoroughly vulgar Leipzig and this city of Turin. Moreover, we have a curious similarity of taste in all important matters I mean the Turinians and myself not only does it extend to the style of the houses, and the arrangement of the streets, but also to the cooking. Everything here tastes good, and everything suits me admirably; so much so that my strength has increased here to an astonishing degree. It is really hard luck that I did not discover this place ten years ago. 

All too late I desperately bewail the fact that I did not spend that summer of most terrible memory here instead of at that most appalling of all places the Engadine! It is a good thing that I managed to steal away from there in time: now it would be scarcely possible to get to Italy from that direction, for the heavy floods in Italy, Switzerland and France still continue. Compared with the summer elsewhere it has of course been cool here in Turin; but that would be no objection against it, because a cool summer in Turin amounts, as far as I am concerned, to a very agreeable moderate temperature. As a matter of fact everybody here is well satisfied with the year: and I have not heard this said anywhere else in Europe. At the time when we were having dreadful weather in the Engadine here they were celebrating the great festivals in con nection with Prince Amadeo s wedding with Laetitia, the daughter of Jerome Napoleon. This time, as I am no longer a stranger here, things have very much improved for me, so that there is now a real contrast between my wretched and deplorable existence in Nice and my life in Turin. Everywhere people treat me with the utmost deference. 

You ought to see how pleased they all look when I come, and how everybody in every rank of life does his best, exercises his tact to the utmost, and displays his most courteous and most amiable manners. But this is not only the case here; year in, year out, it is the same wherever I am. I except Germany there alone, have I had the most hateful experiences [. . . ]. 

When, hereafter, my history is written, people will read therein : 'He was treated badly only by Germans !'; Heavens, what extraordinary people these Germans are! and how tedious! Not a single intelligent word ever comes to me from that direction. In this golden autumn the first I have ever had my whole life long I am writing a sort of retrospect of my life, [prob. EH ed.] for myself alone. 

No one shall read it, save a certain good Lama, when she comes across the ocean to visit her brother. It is not the stuff for the German cattle whose culture is making such astonishing strides in the beloved Fatherland. I shall bury and conceal the manuscript ; it may mould away, and when we have all turned to ashes it will celebrate its resurrection. 

Perhaps at that time the Germans will be more worthy of the great gift I think of giving them. 

With my heartiest embrace, YOUR BROTHER ANIMAL, Who is now quite a great beast. 

NIETZSCHE TO His SISTER. Turin, December, 1888. 

MY SISTER: I received your letter1 and, after having read it several times, see myself seriously compelled to wish you good-bye. At the present moment when my fate has decided itself, I feel every one of your words with tenfold sharpness ; you do not seem to be even remotely conscious of the fact that you are next-of-kin to the man and his destiny, in which the question of millenniums has been decided speaking quite literally, I hold the Future of mankind in my hand. 

I know human nature and am unspeakably far from condemning in any individual case, what, after all, is nothing more than the fatality of mankind in general ; nay more I understand how you, precisely, finding it utterly impossible to see the things among which I live, were almost forced to take refuge in their opposite. 

The only thing that consoles me, is the thought that in your way, you have done well, that you have someone you love and who loves you, that you have yet a great mission to fulfil, to which you have consecrated your means as well as your strength and, finally, I will not conceal the fact that this very mission has led you so far away from me that you do not even feel the coming shocks that are perhaps about to shake me. 

In any case, I trust this is so, for your sake, but above all I implore you urgently never to allow yourself to be misled by any friendly, and in this case dangerous inquisitiveness, into reading the books that I am about to publish now. They would only wound you most terribly and wound me into the bargain by the thought of you. That is why I regret having sent you the essay on Wagner, which, in the midst of the appalling tension in which I live was a genuine relief to me, as an honest duel between a psychologist and a pious seducer whom it was difficult for anyone to recognize as such. 

To set your mind at rest, let me say at least that I am feeling wonderfully well, and more resolute and patient than I have ever felt before in my whole life. The most difficult task comes easily to me, and every thing I touch succeeds. The task that lies upon me is after all my own nature and thus only now have I some idea what the happiness was that was awaiting me all this time. I play with a burden that would crush every other mortal. For that which I have to accomplish is terrible, in every sense of the word. I do not only challenge individuals I challenge the world of mankind with a terrific indictment. However the judgment may fall, for or against me, my name is in any case linked up with a fatality the magnitude of which is unutterable. 

While begging you to read, not hardness, but its reverse, in this letter - genuine humanity which is trying to avoid superfluous mischief. 

I beseech you to retain your love for me, despite the necessity circumstances have forced upon me. YOUR BROTHER. 

Nietzsche s sister has added to the correspondence of her brother with Brandes, which ends here, the following note: 'In answer to this his last letter Brandes only re ceived the few lines above on a slip of the ruled paper which my beloved brother used for writing his manu scripts. It reached Copenhagen after the stroke which paralysed his brain had fallen on him. . . . 

When one considers the enormous mental effort of the last six or seven months, the strain on his eyesight, in addition to violent attacks of illness, it is not difficult to understand how his strength must have been overtaxed and his marvellous intellect devoured. . . . 

With the gallantry of a hero he did not shirk the tension of fighting against adverse circumstances, but it was only by the aid of narcotics that he could combat nights of sleeplessness and depression; not morphia and opium, but chloral and a drug unknown to me were these aids which always had a most strange effect on my brother. ... 

This may account for certain inaccuracies in the letter to Brandes dated November 20th. "attack on Christianity", for example, is in "Anti-Christ", and not in "Ecce Homo", though it is possible that he was then still doubtful as to whether or not he should transfer a few pages out of "AntiChrist" to "Ecce Homo". Most decidedly, however, the whole of the "Transvaluation of all Values" only lay before him complete in conception, and was not actually finished. On the other hand, "Ecce Homo" was completed as early as the beginning of November before the painful attacks of illness had set in. It may have been altered afterwards under the influence of changed circumstances, so that much that is puzzling has crept in, but nowhere is there any personal animus. The touching allusion to Brandes referred to in the last letter to him remained unchanged.'

Ironically, the rivalry between Lou Andreas-Salomé and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche produced, respectively, the first psychological interpretation of Nietzsche’s works, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (1894), and his first biography, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches (1895–1904).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Förster-Nietzsche, Elisabeth. Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches. 3 vols. Leipzig: Naumann, I, 1895; IIi, 1897; IIii, 1904. ———. 

Das Nietzsche-Archiv, seine Freunde und seine Feinde. Berlin: Marquardt, 1907. ———. 

Der junge Nietzsche. Leipzig: Kröner, 1912. ———. 

Der einsame Nietzsche. Leipzig: Kröner, 1914. ———. 

Wagner und Nietzsche zur Zeit ihrer Freundschaft. Munich: G. Müller, 1915. ———. 

Friedrich Nietzsche und die Frauen seiner Zeit. Munich: Beck, 1935. 

Chronology 

• 1844 Friedrich Nietzsche born in Röcken, Saxony, 15 October. 
• 1846 Birth of sister, Elisabeth, on 10 July. 
• 1849 Death of father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, on 27 July. 
• 1858–1864 Attends Schulpforta near Naumburg. 
• 1864–1865 Attends Bonn University. 
• 1865–1868 Attends Leipzig University. 
• 1869–1879 Professor of philology at Basel University. 
• 1870 Fights in Franco-Prussian War (wounded after two months). 
• 1872 Publication of The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. 
• 1873–1875 Publication of Untimely Meditations. 
• 1878 Publication of Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. 
• 1879 Publication of Assorted Maxims and Opinions (subsequently volume 2, part 1, of Human, All Too Human). 
• 1880 Publication of The Wanderer and His Shadow (subsequently volume 2, part 2, of Human, All Too Human). 
• 1881 Publication of Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. 
• 1882 Publication of The Gay Science (subtitle added 1877: “la gay scienza”). 
• 1883 Publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All or None, parts 1 and 2. 
• 1884 Publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 3. 
• 1885 Publication of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 4. 
• 1886 Publication of Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. 
• 1887 Publication of On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. 
• 1888 Publication of The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem. Completion of Dithyrambs of Dionysus (published in 1891), The AntiChrist (published in 1894), Nietzsche contra Wagner: A Psychologist’s Brief (published in 1895), and Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (published posthumously in 1908). 
• 1889 Publication of Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer. 
• Nietzsche’s mental collapse in Turin, 3 January. 
• Nursed by mother (Franziska Nietzsche) and sister (Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche). 
• 1897 Death of mother on 20 April. 
• 1900 Death of Nietzsche, 25 August. 
• 1935 Death of sister on 8 November. 

After Nietzsche’s collapse, his family decided not to publish any further books by him. The Twilight of the Idols did appear, as scheduled, in January 1889, but the three books written after that were held up. In 1891 the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra was printed, together with the Dionysus Dithyrambs—and published in 1892 [but Nietz published TSZ4 at his own expense in 1885]. By 1895 there was sufficient interest in Nietzsche to include both The Antichrist and Nietzsche contra Wagner in volume VIII of a new edition of Nietzsche’s works. But Ecce Homo was held back..... [from Kaufmann Basic Writings, my note] 

With thee have I striven for everything forbidden, the worst and remotest. 

And if anything in me is virtue, it is that I had no fear in the presence of any prohibition. 

TSZ IV The Shadow 

FÖRSTER-NIETZSCHE, ELISABETH (1846–1935). Nietzsche’s sister. Two years younger than her brother, Elisabeth was perhaps too emotionally close to Nietzsche for the good of them both. Nietzsche did his best to offer Elisabeth the paternal protection she lacked as a single, fatherless woman in Wilhelmine Germany; in fact, as soon as he entered the charmed circle surrounding Richard and Cosima Wagner, he made sure that Elisabeth was also introduced into it. She became friendly with the much older Cosima and through Cosima’s friend Malwida von Meysenbug met other luminaries, though there would come a point, from the late 1890s on, when people came to her, as founder of the Nietzsche-Archiv (see the photo spread), rather than her sick brother. 

Although Elisabeth constantly asserted that she was on the lookout for a wife for Nietzsche, she was delighted to keep house for him in Basel, and her clandestine meddling was a prime reason why Nietzsche’s quarrel with Lou Andreas-Salomé in 1882 remained irreconcilable. Nietzsche never really forgave Elisabeth for this, while Elisabeth conducted a lifelong vendetta against Andreas-Salomé. Perhaps to spite Nietzsche, perhaps also because she was running out of time, Elisabeth acquired a husband, the ... Wagner acolyte Bernhard Förster, through a mixture of flattery, bribery, and sheer persistence and married him on 22 May 1885 (Richard Wagner’s birthday). Seven weeks later (10 July), Elisabeth turned 39. Nietzsche disliked ... his brother-in-law [and didn't attend] the wedding, though he was prevailed on to meet Förster once before the newlyweds left Germany on 15 February 1886 to found a ... colony in Paraguay. The precarious finances of this venture led Förster (very probably) to commit suicide in 1889; shortly before this, Elisabeth had received news of Nietzsche’s mental collapse. She therefore returned to Germany to help her mother look after Nietzsche in Naumburg; after Franziska Nietzsche’s death in 1897, Elisabeth moved Nietzsche to Weimar, where she established the Nietzsche-Archiv in the Humboldtstraße, and this is where Nietzsche died in 1900. 

During Nietzsche’s last years of life, Elisabeth had been busily supervising the publication of his chaotic posthumous notebooks; the Will to Power appeared in 1901. It did not set the world alight in quite the way one might imagine in retrospect; Elisabeth therefore set about the production of an enlarged edition, edited by Peter Gast, that appeared in 1906. In order to further what was rapidly becoming a Nietzsche industry, Elisabeth wrote voluminously on her brother, mostly in a biographical vein .... many Nietzscheans .... genuinely admired her energy. 

Whatever their view, they came to the Nietzsche-Archiv in a continuous stream to use the library and attend learned talks. By this means, Elisabeth was on close terms with some of Germany’s most celebrated writers and philosophers— Thomas Mann and Martin Heidegger, to name just two— .... Acolytes twice put her name forward for the Nobel Prize for Literature (1911 and 1923) ... 

In 1921, Jena University awarded Elisabeth an honorary doctorate (h.c., or honoris causae) ...." "Elisabeth now became, for a variety of reasons, not all of them expediency, a collaborator with leading members of National Socialism. Without any prompting, she had become a fervent supporter of Benito Mussolini. Her support for the Third Reich endorsed National Socilaist ideas .... Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche met Adolf Hitler on a number of occasions. The first was unplanned: in 1932, she had managed to persuade the Weimar National Theater to put on Mussolini’s play about Napoleon, Campo di Maggio (The Hundred Days); Hitler came to her box unannounced. 

The second occasion was on 2 November 1933, when she presented Hitler with Nietzsche’s walking stick and an anti-Semitic pamphlet her husband had written and sent to Otto von Bismarck. 

Hitler again visited Elisabeth at the Nietzsche-Archiv on 20 July 1934, returning on 2 October that same year with his architect, Albert Speer, to set in motion the building of a Nietzsche Memorial; on this occasion, Hitler was photographed in profile, staring at Max Klinger’s herm of Nietzsche (see the photo spread). 

In 1935, Elisabeth sent Hitler a copy of her new book, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Frauen seiner Zeit, published the previous year. In this book, she even declared that Nietzsche would have approved of “the laws of the new Reich” and that his views on the role of German women tallied with those propounded in the new state. 

Hitler’s letter of thanks is dated 26 July 1935. 

Elisabeth died suddenly a few months later, on 8 November 1935. 

There was a memorial service at the Nietzsche-Archiv on 11 November at which Hitler and Baldur von Schirach were present. 

The program for the funeral prints the speeches in full: 

Funeral Service in Memory of Frau Dr. h.c. Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche Nietzsche-Archiv, 11 November, 1935 

1. String Quartet. 

2. Address by the President of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv, Former Head of Thuringian Government Dr. h.c. Leutheußer. 

3. Address by Dr. Adalbert Oehler. 

4. String Quartet. 

5. Address by the Rector of the University of Thuringia at Jena, Professor Dr. Meyer-Erlach. 

6. Address by the Gauleiter and Governor of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel. 

7. String Quartet. Hitler being in the room, each address began with “Heil Hitler!” 

Elisabeth, having had the foresight to move Nietzsche’s (centrally placed) grave at Röcken to the left, now took the central place in the row of graves that comprised her parents and Nietzsche. Hitler was also present at the ceremony in Röcken and laid a wreath. 

DAS NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV. Nietzsche’s home in Weimar from 1897 to 1900. The Nietzsche-Archiv is the audacious name given to the detached house in Weimar (no. 36, Humboldtstraße) by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. In 1897, Meta von Salis-Marschlins purchased the house that had until then been known as the “Villa Silberblick” to create a home for Nietzsche, his sister, and the archive material. She had intended to stay at the house herself occasionally but ... allowed Elisabeth to buy her out. Elisabeth took on a costly loan and was never really free of financial worries—often self-inflicted—thereafter. For example, in 1902–1903, she employed Henry van de Velde to refurbish the main rooms in grand fashion. The name Nietzsche-Archiv should not be confused with the archive housing Nietzsche’s manuscripts, the Goethe-Schiller Archiv, also in Weimar and administered by the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik. By 1893, after her final visit to Paraguay, Elisabeth had established the beginnings of an archive in her mother’s house in Naumburg, where early Nietzscheans such as Rudolf Steiner and the writer Gabriele Reuter had come from Weimar to pay their respects. As the archive material grew, Elisabeth moved into another house in Naumburg, before her final move to Weimar after the death of her mother. Nietzsche was now in Elisabeth’s sole care, and she had a free hand to run what would soon become “the Nietzsche industry.” Elisabeth made propaganda for Nietzsche’s works in her own way by publishing biographical accounts and by inviting others to publish their memoirs of her brother. She also tirelessly saw to the publication of Nietzsche’s complete works ... ... In 1908, with the generous financial backing of the Swedish financier Ernst Thiel, a Jew, the Nietzsche-Archiv was given the status of research center by the state of Sachsen-Weimar and now held the institutional title of Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv. The latter was properly constituted with a committee, but even so, Elisabeth managed to have overall control. Anybody who wanted to consult material on Nietzsche at the Nietzsche-Archiv had to be on good terms with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. In spite of the continued generosity of Thiel, who ensured that the Nietzsche-Archive carried on until the end of World War I, Elisabeth would soon find her resources wiped out by the financial collapse of 1923 as a result of the inflationary crisis produced by the introduction of the new Rentenmark. 

From then on, the Nietzsche-Archiv was constantly short of funds; the small grant awarded to Elisabeth by General Paul von Hindenburg in 1926 was not sufficient to meet her needs, and Thiel could no longer help. Elisabeth’s enthusiastic rapprochement with National Socialism was now fueled by both admiration and expediency. Elisabeth first approached Wilhelm Frick, finance minister of Sachsen-Weimar and an early adherent of National Socialism, for financial support; eventually, Adolf Hitler himself promised (and delivered) adequate funding, some of it from his private purse. 

The death of Elisabeth in 1935 did not interrupt the activities of the Nietzsche-Archiv; work continued on the Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe until the collapse of the Third Reich. Thus, the cultivation of a Nietzsche cult .... continued as before under the auspices of Elisabeth’s cousins, Richard and Max Oehler, as witnessed by the quasi-religious ceremony to mark Nietzsche’s birthday in 1942. This took place at the Nietzsche-Archiv on 18 October, that being the nearest Sunday to Nietzsche’s actual birthday (15 October). In 1944, Nietzsche’s centenary year, there were high hopes that the stately hall or NietzscheGedenkhalle (the Nazi-funded Nietzsche Memorial) would be ready in time for the birthday celebrations, but in the event, they were held in the National Theatre in Weimar. The Nietzsche-Archiv today is the premises of the Nietzsche-Kolleg, founded in October 1999 as an institution to run regular Nietzsche seminars, with a budget to further Nietzsche research. The house is also a museum, visited by Nietzsche scholars and by Van de Velde enthusiasts alike. Refer to David Marc Hoffmann, ed., Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs. Chronik, Studien und Dokumente (On the History of the NietzscheArchiv: Chronicle, Studies and Documents, 1991). 

SALIS-MARSCHLINS, META VON (1855–1925). Swiss feminist. From the Swiss aristocracy, Meta von Salis first met Nietzsche in Sils Maria when she was studying at Zurich University, though she had already met Franziska Nietzsche and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in Naumburg and was a friend and admirer of Malwida von Meysenbug. Meta von Salis helped Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to purchase Villa Silberblick in 1896 so that a home could be provided for the sick Nietzsche and the growing archive of his works ... ... In her short monograph Philosoph und Edelmensch. Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik Friedrich Nietzsches (Philosopher and Gentleman: A Contribution on the Characteristics of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1897), Meta von Salis raised controversial feminist issues by endorsing Nietzsche’s comments on the stupidity of many society women, although she herself was an active campaigner for women’s rights until the turn of the century. However, the chief burden of her monograph on Nietzsche is wholehearted support for his notion of aristocratic values. 

THE WILL TO POWER (DER WILLE ZUR MACHT). Title of the compilation from Nietzsche’s unpublished notebooks prepared for print by Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and her team at the Nietzsche-Archiv (Heinrich Köselitz alias Peter Gast, Ernst and August Horneffer). The work was first published posthumously in 1901 as volume 15 of the Grossoktavausgabe and was divided into 483 sections. Elisabeth and Gast brought out an expanded version in 1906 with 1,067 sections, in volumes 9 and 10 of the pocket edition, and the latter is the source for the Kaufmann/Hollingdale translation cited in this Dictionary. Many of the expansions were achieved by dividing up longer sections from the 1901 version, while some of the material from the 1901 version was axed. Some of the source material from the notebooks found its way into Elisabeth’s two volume biography of her brother, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches (1895–1904), without annotation.

 Although Nietzsche announced his intentions at the end of On the Genealogy of Morality—“I refer you to a work I am writing, The Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values” (OGM, III: 27)—he never actually wrote the work, though he continued to fill many notebooks with jottings on random themes (among shopping lists and the like); frequently, whole pages were crossed out. 

Technically, it is possible to say that Nietzsche did write the material for The Will to Power, as long as it is understood that the neat compilation by that name is a manufactured text. Many scholars dislike quoting from it for these reasons. Subsequently, there were editions by Alfred Baeumler (1930), Friedrich Würzbach (1940), and Karl Schlechta (1956). Nietzsche had made 25 outlines for his new venture; Elizabeth selected one of these, dated 17 March 1887, which divided the Will to Power into four main sections with the following headings: 

Book I: European Nihilism 

Book II: Critique of the Highest Values Hitherto 

Book III: Principles of a New Evaluation 

Book IV: Discipline and Breeding [Zucht] 

The first publication in 1901 carried the subtitle Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werte (Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values). Elisabeth then muddied the waters by claiming, in Das Nietzsche-Archiv. Seine Freund und Feinde (The Nietzsche-Archiv: Its Friends and Foes, 1907), that Nietzsche meant by “Umwerthung aller Werte” a quite separate, vast work of which The Anti-Christ was to be the first of four parts. To be fair to Elisabeth, Nietzsche, having used up much of the available material in preparing The Anti-Christ, had given a similar impression to Paul Deussen in a letter dated 26 November 1888. It is assumed that Nietzsche abandoned his plans for a book called The Will to Power in the autumn of 1888. 

Because of the nature of the raw material, The Will to Power can manifest only an apparent coherence; however, Martin Heidegger was convinced that Nietzsche’s best work lay in the Nachlaß; it influenced his seminal work on metaphysics, Being and Time (1927). In his seminal Nietzsche (1961), Heidegger made frequent reference to the source material we now know as The Will to Power. Heidegger influenced the poststructuralist “New Nietzsche” readings by such writers as Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, who in turn influenced a distinct trend in postmodern American Nietzsche criticism. 

The current trend is to mine the Will to Power for Nietzsche’s references to the natural sciences. Nietzsche had introduced the concept of will to power in Thus Spoke Zarathustra within the context of the emergence of the Übermensch. The latter receives scant attention in The Will to Power, while eternal recurrence is treated in only 16 of the sections, with half a dozen more perfunctory mentions. Apart from the passages that concern the concept of the will to power, The Will to Power has major sections on nihilism, pessimism, décadence, Christianity and the death of God, truth, appearance and reality, good and evil, and master, slave, and herd morality as well as other topics that can be aligned with the published versions of Nietzsche’s works. Its aphoristic status, together with familiar subject matter in reasonably chosen compartments and the seemingly obligatory insults directed at women—”weak, typically sick, changeable, inconstant” (WP, IV: 864)—all create the impression that The Will to Power must have been a manuscript ready for publication when Nietzsche went insane, whereas the contrary is true. Refer to “Bibliographical Note on The Will to Power” at the end of section 1 (“Nietzsche’s Works”) in the bibliography. 

OEHLER, ADALBERT (1860–1943). Cousin of the brothers Richard and Max Oehler and of Nietzsche and Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche. After Nietzsche’s mental collapse, Adalbert Oehler was his legal guardian (with Franziska Nietzsche and Franz Overbeck). In the disputes between Franziska and Elisabeth over the future of Nietzsche’s works, Adalbert Oehler took the part of his aunt rather than his cousin Elisabeth, publishing a sympathetic portrayal of Franziska in Nietzsches Mutter (1940). A lawyer by profession and one-time Oberbürgermeister (mayor in chief) of Weimar, Adalbert Oehler became head of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv when this was set up in 1908 to further Nietzsche research. He published comparatively little of importance for Nietzsche scholars, apart from the slim brochure Nietzsches Werke und das Nietzsche-Archiv (1910), in which he spells out his intention to promote Nietzsche research through the newly founded Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv. His manuscript Das Nietzsche-Archiv in Weimar (1910) remains unpublished. After Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s death, he wrote the likewise unpublished, typewritten account “Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs” (“On the History of the Nietzsche-Archiv,” 1936). 

OEHLER, MAX (1875–1946). Cousin of Adalbert Oehler, Nietzsche, and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and brother of Richard Oehler. A career soldier, Major Oehler first helped in the Nietzsche-Archiv in 1908 while on leave from the army (April–December). His major work, Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ritterordens (A History of the Teutonic Order), was published in two volumes in 1912. He served in World War I and became archivist at the Nietzsche-Archiv in 1919, having been demobilized. He coedited the 23-volume Gesamtausgabe of Nietzsche’s works (1920–1929) with Friedrich Würzbach and his brother Richard. Max Oehler worked tirelessly beside his cousin Elisabeth until her death in 1935, publishing a variety of works on Nietzsche, such as his slim volume Nietzsches Philosophisches Werden (Nietzsche’s Emergence as Philosopher, 1926). He presented this adulation of Nietzsche to Elisabeth to mark her 80th birthday. After her death, Max Oehler became director of the Nietzsche-Archiv. He held that position until condemned to deportation by the postwar Soviet command. He appears to have perished at Buchenwald and is presumably buried there in Speziallager no. 2 and not (as alleged by H. F. Peters in Zarathustra’s Sister, 1977) in the cellar of a house close to the Nietzsche-Archiv. Max Oehler’s daughter, Ursula Sigismund, who died in 2006, was a successful writer. Her novel Zarathustras Sippschaft (Zarathustra’s Clan, 1992) includes her childhood memories, which centered on Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and the work of the Nietzsche-Archiv. 

OEHLER, RICHARD (1878–1948). Cousin of Adalbert Oehler, Nietzsche, and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and brother of Max Oehler. Richard Oehler occupied himself with Nietzscheanism from an early age, writing his Ph.D. dissertation on “Nietzsches Verhältnis zur vorsokratischen Philosophie” (“Nietzsche’s Relationship to Pre-Socratic Philosophy”) for the University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1903 (this was later published as a book, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Vorsokratiker, 1904). Oehler became a librarian, working mainly in Frankfurt from 1903 to 1945 (in the position of director, 1927–1945). Always concerned for the fortunes of the Nietzsche-Archiv, he approached Ernst Thiel for financial assistance in 1907; his brother Max Oehler traveled to Sweden to negotiate (successfully) with Thiel. An ally of his cousin Elisabeth in her quarrel with Carl Albrecht Bernoulli over the unpublished Nietzsche-Franz Overbeck correspondence, which led to Elisabeth’s successful court action, Richard Oehler published his contribution to the polemic, “Zum Kampf gegen das Nietzsche-Archiv” (“The Attack on the NietzscheArchiv”) in the Jenaische Zeitung, 30 April 1908. During the 1920s, Richard Oehler was coeditor of the 23-volume Gesamtausgabe of Nietzsche’s works (1920–1929); he was also a very early Nationalist Socialist sympathizer. In 1935, he wrote Friedrich Nietzsche und die deutsche Zukunft (Friedrich Nietzsche and the German Future), which consists of excerpts from Nietzsche’s writings ... to demonstrate how Nietzsche’s thought anticipated Nationalist Socialist doctrine. The book has a photograph of Adolf Hitler as its frontispiece. With a list of contents including such topics as “Air Purification,” “Healthy Values,” “Leaders and Led,” “Natural Order of Rank,” and “The Masters of the World,” the book was promoted in the National Socialist publication Geistige Arbeit (Intellectual Pursuit) ... as being “partly philosophical, partly political.” Oehler argues that Nietzsche’s master morality found its apotheosis in the Germans as the master race. In 1938, Richard Oehler gave a talk at the NietzscheArchiv that combined an overview of the main slogans of “NietzscheZarathustra” with a description of the plan for the Nietzsche Memorial at that time under construction. The talk was published later in 1938 as “Die Zukunft der Nietzsche-Bewegung” (“The Future of the Nietzsche Movement”). 

DIE STIFTUNG NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV (NIETZSCHE-ARCHIV FOUNDATION). The Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv was founded on 6 May 1908 in order to regularize the description of the NietzscheArchiv as a center for Nietzsche research. The chair of the committee was Adalbert Oehler. In theory, this organization should have taken over responsibility for publishing Nietzsche’s works from Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche; in practice, Elisabeth remained in full control. By 1909, the other members of the committee were Harry Graf Kessler, Raoul Richter, Hans Vaihinger, Max Oehler, Hermann Gocht, and Max Heinze. The various appointments on this committee are something of a political barometer for the Nietzsche-Archiv. In 1923, conflict arose between Adalbert Oehler and Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche over the dispute with the Kröner Verlag, with Oehler resigning the chair of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv, which Elisabeth transferred to her old friend Arnold Paulssen; he, however, handed the position on to Richard Leutheusser in the same year. In 1923, Oswald Spengler was invited onto the committee. He gave a talk at the Nietzsche-Archiv in February 1923 on the theme “Blut und Geld” (“Blood and Money”), a theme chosen by Elisabeth with some prescience, since the inflation during that year was halted by the introduction of the Rentenmark on 15 November, overnight bankrupting the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv. Spengler resigned his position in 1935. Although Elisabeth died in 1935, the links she had cultivated with leading National Socialists, not least Adolf Hitler, guaranteed that the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv would be smiled on during the Third Reich. The painstakingly slow work on the Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, begun in 1931, continued, with Martin Heidegger a key collaborator. After the election putting Hitler in power (January 1933), the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv was openly pro–National Socialist and remained so after the death of Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche. In 1942, Günther Lütz, minister for education and Volksbildung, joined the committee of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv in 1942 at the suggestion of Richard Oehler. All activity of the organization ceased at the end of the war. 

DIE NIETZSCHE-GESELLSCHAFT. First Nietzsche Society. Founded in Munich in 1919 by Friedrich Würzbach, who was then chair, the committee comprised Ernst Bertram, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Lev Shestov, Thomas Mann, Richard Oehler, and Heinrich Wölfflin. Würzbach was also a coeditor (with Richard and Max Oehler) of the 23-volume Gesammelte Werke published in Munich (1920–1929). As Würzbach was responsible for volumes 18 to 19 (both published in 1926), he asked Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche for sight of the original manuscripts, only to be told that the relevant volumes (15 to 16) of the Grossoktavausgabe, edited by Otto Weiss in 1911, were definitive .... This was the first clash of many between the Nietzsche-Gesellschaft and the Nietzsche-Archiv. The latter had the backing of the Gesellschaft der Freunde des Nietzsche-Archivs. On 15–16 October 1927, the three separate entities were still on sufficiently cordial terms to celebrate what would have been Nietzsche’s 83rd birthday by holding a combined conference in Weimar. Papers were read by Oswald Spengler, Max Scheler, Hans Prinzhorn, and Friedrich Würzbach. ... The Nietzsche-Gesellschaft was forced to cease its activities by the Gestapo in 1943, but after the war, Würzbach managed to revive it. He died in 1961; the society was dissolved in 1964 and removed from the register in 1965, only to spring back into life in 1966 (led by Michael Schweiger); it was reregistered in 1969 as the NietzscheKreis and is now known as the Nietzsche-Forum, Munich... 

NIETZSCHE MEMORIAL. In 1911, a subcommittee of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv made plans to erect a monumental Nietzsche Memorial. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche at first agreed that this could be built in the grounds of the Nietzsche-Archiv, but she did not want a costly edifice. Harry Graf Kessler, chair of the committee that boasted as honorary members André Gide, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gustav Mahler, Emile Verhaeren, Walther Rathenau, and Eberhard von Bodenhausen, ignored Elisabeth’s wishes and planned a grand temple to be designed by Henry van de Velde and set in a stadium where, among other things, sporting activities could take place. Plans for this temple were dashed by the outbreak of World War I, and, of course, Elisabeth’s lack of enthusiasm was a decisive factor. In October 1934, Adolf Hitler visited Weimar in the company of Albert Speer with the specific purpose of setting in motion further plans for a memorial building, a Nietzsche-Gedenkhalle, to be constructed beside the Nietzsche-Archiv. In the summer of 1935, Hitler again inspected the site with Speer, a few months before Elisabeth’s death. In May 1936, Paul Schultze-Naumburg presented new plans, but these received Hitler’s approval only in April 1937. Work then began, with an inaugural dedication of the building on 3 August 1938; Hitler sent a message of goodwill. Richard Oehler referred to the building as being then under construction when he gave the annual speech to commemorate Nietzsche’s birthday at the NietzscheArchiv in 1938. In 1944, there were hopes that the centenary of Nietzsche’s birthday (15 October) would be held in the new Nietzsche-Gedenkhalle, but it was not quite finished, though a (damaged) statue of Dionysus, donated by Benito Mussolini for the proposed 1944 “Dionysus celebration,” had actually been imported from Italy at the end of January 1944. Risking his life while the British carried out a bombing raid on Weimar, Max Oehler collected this statue from the railway station and transported it to the site of the Nietzsche-Gedenkhalle. The statue did not fit in its allocated place, and the memorial hall was still not complete, so that the centenary of Nietzsche’s birth was finally celebrated in the Weimar National Theater, followed by a ceremony at Nietzsche’s grave in Röcken. The building intended as the “Nietzsche-Temple,” or Gedenkhalle, was, until recently, used as a radio station, and the statue in question is now housed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Refer to Jürgen Krause, “Martyr” und “Prophet.” Studien zum Nietzsche-Kult in der bildenden Kunst der Jahrhundertwende (“Martyr” or “Prophet”: Studies on the Nietzsche-Cult in the Arts at the Turn of the Century, 1984). GAST .... After Nietzsche’s mental collapse in 1889, Gast came to Naumburg in 1891 to collaborate with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche by transcribing Nietzsche’s manuscripts, illegible to all but himself. In 1893, Elisabeth—then still resident in Naumberg—absented herself to make a final trip to Paraguay, leaving Gast at work on the Gesamtausgabe (the first edition of the collected works); he had completed the first five volumes when she returned, but this did not prevent her from dismissing him in favor of Fritz Koegel. Because Gast was the only person able to read Nietzsche’s handwriting, he was reinstated at the Nietzsche-Archiv in 1900. Elisabeth was discontented with the first edition of Der Wille zur Macht (1901; volume 15 of the collected works) edited by Fritz Koegel and Ernst Horneffer and brought out an enlarged second edition in 1906 in conjunction with Gast, expediently praising him in her polemic The Nietzsche-Archiv: Seine Freunde und Feinde (The Nietzsche-Archiv: its Friends and Foes, 1907), though she actually had a low opinion of Gast (which he reciprocated). The following year, Gast was compromised by letters he had written to Franz Overbeck in which he was frank about Elisabeth’s shortcomings. These letters were part of the Overbeck– Nietzsche correspondence that Carl Albrecht Bernoulli was prevented from publishing by Elisabeth’s lawsuit in 1908. Although Gast’s remarks about Elisabeth were not put into the public domain, he quit his post in 1909, maintaining a studied silence thereafter on all matters relating to the Nietzsche-Archiv. This account of the peccadilloes in the early days of the Nietzsche-Archiv leaves a bitter taste because it reveals the petty-mindedness that dominated the administration of Nietzsche’s literary estate. Refer to Frederick R. Love, Nietzsche’s Saint Peter: Genesis and Cultivation of an Illusion (1981). .... Perhaps Nietzsche felt that his book [HATH], with its attack on what passed for morality in society, might make the Wagners revert to their former broad-mindedness. He did not realize how much both Wagners would take offense. In the event, he was completely ostracized, and the friendship was not resumed. Cosima refused to read Human, All Too Human, while Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was likewise scandalized, not least because of some hostile comments on women to be found in the section “Woman and Child.”... Since Nietzsche had alienated himself from many of his friends in the period before his collapse in Turin, he was to all intents and purposes alone in the city when he collapsed in January 1989 and had to be fetched back to Germany by Overbeck. He was treated in a Jena asylum until it was realized that no improvement was in sight. From 1893 on, Franziska, aided by her daughter, looked after Nietzsche at her home in Naumburg. After Franziska Nietzsche’s death in 1897, Elisabeth moved with her brother to Weimar, where she would go on to found a veritable “Nietzsche industry” in the Nietzsche-Archiv. Sometimes Nietzsche was virtually “put on show” to special guests who visited the house. Until Elisabeth’s death in 1935, this commodious house was virtually a place of pilgrimage for Nietzsche enthusiasts of every stamp, although Nietzsche himself had died on 25 August 1900. [HDON Dieth] Nietzsche’s ideas would have taken root even without his sister’s efforts. Georg Brandes has traditionally been seen as the initiator of Nietzscheanism in Germany with the publication of his article Radikaler Aristokratismus in 1890, but there were even earlier reactions to Nietzsche’s works: 10 reviews of Beyond Good and Evil appeared between September 1886 and December 1887, more than for any of Nietzsche’s other works at that time. Hermann Conradi encountered Nietzsche’s ideas as a student in Leipzig; his novel Phrasen, in which the protagonist speaks of “we Nietzscheans,” appeared in 1887. In 1888, Carl Spitteler made an early attempt to provide a brief (two-page) overview of all Nietzsche’s work published to date in a piece for the first issue of Der Bund. By 1888, Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann were early if unappreciative readers of Nietzsche. Ola Hansson and Leo Berg, both fervent Nietzscheans who regarded themselves as pioneers (which they were), wrote appreciations of Twilight of the Idols when it appeared in January 1889, just after Nietzsche’s collapse in Turin. Thus, when Brandes’s famous review appeared in 1890, there were already a host of Nietzschean enthusiasts in Germany: Detlev von Liliencron, Rudolf Steiner, Arno Holz (though not his cofounder of the Naturalist Movement, Johannes Schlaf, who disapproved of Nietzsche), Julius Langbehn, and Max Halbe. Within four years, the ranks had swelled to include Frank Wedekind, Max Dauthendey, Gabriele Reuter, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Kurt Eisner, Bruno Wille, Stanislaus Przybyszewski, Maximilian Harden, Emil Gött, and Ricarda Huch, though Huch subsequently denied that Nietzsche’s influence on her had been strong. Nietzsche was a central topic in the cluster round the sensuous poet Richard Dehmel, and he was also discussed in the circle around the composer Conrad Ansorge in Weimar 1894–1897. Later, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche did her best to make her Saturday salon the intellectual center for Nietzsche debate in Weimar. Nietzsche had plenty of detractors, too, including Paul Ernst, Hermann Sudermann, Eduard von Hartmann, Wilhelm Bölsche, Franz Mehring, and Hermann Bahr. From 1890 on, Nietzsche entered into mainstream German culture, in spite of the vicious attack on Nietzsche’s thought in Max Nordau’s Entartung, 1893 (Degeneration, 1895). This work severely hampered Nietzscheanism, though only temporarily, since there soon appeared a wealth of reviews of Nietzsche’s works, his sister having begun to publish the first volumes of a collected edition from 1892 under the editorship of Peter Gast. In 1894, Gast was sacked in favor of Fritz Koegel, who took over the editorship of what would become known as the Grossoktavausgabe in 1894. In the same year appeared Lou AndreasSalomé’s quirkily psychological reading of Nietzsche “in his works,” Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (1894). The reviewers now started to take the secondary works into account: Bölsche welcomed Salomé’s interpretation, whereas Fritz Koegel found it a “dangerous book” that sought to sensationalize biographical details in order to invalidate Nietzsche’s philosophy through “neurotic female psychology.” Heinrich Romundt then sprang to Salomé’s defense. From the first, Nietzsche’s enemies showed a high degree of Schadenfreude by dismissing his writings as the work of a madman: in 1891, Hermann Türck in Friedrich Nietzsche und seine pathologischen Irrwege (Friedrich Nietzsche and His Pathologically Wrong Paths) wrote about Nietzsche’s warped moral strictures as a reflection of his perverted instinct. During the mid-1890s, Nietzschean themes became commonplace in German literature, as in the novel In purpurner Finsterniß (In Purple Darkness, 1895) by Michael Georg Conrad and the play Sozialaristokraten (1896) by Arno Holz; one should also mention Leo Berg’s critical work Der Übermensch in der modernen Literatur (1897), which draws on works from European literature such as August Strindberg’s I Havsbandet, 1890 (By the Open Sea, 1984) as well as from the German Naturalist Movement. Nietzsche also influenced the worlds of art and music: Gustav Mahler was so enthralled by Nietzsche’s ideas that he almost called his Third Symphony (1896) “The Gay Science” (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft), while that same year Richard Strauss conducted the first performance of his composition Also sprach Zarathustra. Julius Langbehn, author of the hugely successful nationalistic Rembrandt als Erzieher (Rembrandt as Educator, 1890), which was written before his encounter with Nietzsche’s thought, was so struck by Nietzsche’s predicament that in 1889 he actually made an ill-judged and unsuccessful bid to “adopt” Nietzsche, to try to cure him. It should be said that in artistic communities such as Worpswede near Bremen, Langbehn exerted as strong an influence as that of Nietzsche; indeed, Nietzsche’s influence was seldom unadulterated, especially after the turn of the century, when the ideas of Sigmund Freud became current. Likewise, the Hart brothers in Berlin used Nietzschean concepts selectively when it suited their notion of a new mysticism as propounded in Der neue Gott (1899) by Julius Hart. Hart’s liberal circle in Berlin at the turn of the century attracted a variety of left-wing intellectuals such as Gustav Landauer, who took issue with Hart over his criticism of Nietzsche in Der neue Gott, rightly pointing out the debt Hart owed to Nietzsche. Nothing better illustrates the divided nature of Nietzsche reception than two works published in 1899. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s Tschandala Nietzsche (1899) was a brief appreciation of Nietzsche’s thought, with special reference to the poetic tone of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Here, Nietzsche is hailed as the first to see the direction of European culture with “visionary clarity.” Otto Henne am Rhyn’s scathing polemic Anti-Zarathustra appeared in the same year. This examined Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, and Twilight of the Idols. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is damned as full of “trivialities, blasphemies, vulgarities and ambiguities as well as untruths, false assertions, displacements (Entstellungen) of historical facts and meaningless utterances.” Critics of Nietzsche at this time were particularly inclined to dismiss eternal return." [ib.] Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche .... must be given due credit for her single-minded energy and determination in establishing the Nietzsche-Archiv in Weimar ... her pioneering work in writing Nietzsche’s biography (Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsches, I: 1895, IIi: 1897, IIii: 1904), which drew attention to Nietzsche, should be recognized. Largely because of the success of this biography, early Nietzscheanism in Germany in the mid-1890s was characterized by an interest in Nietzsche the man as well as the philosopher; by the turn of the century, when Thus Spoke Zarathustra had become a pathbreaking book for the avant-garde, it was common for the names of Nietzsche and Zarathustra to be regarded as interchangeable. By this time, Nietzsche’s impact on early modernism was immense. While a sick Nietzsche languished in Naumburg, a steady stream of admirers found their way to the town, Rudolf Steiner and the novelist Gabriele Reuter among them. Harry Graf Kessler, who became a staunch supporter of the Nietzsche-Archiv, visited Elisabeth in Naumburg in 1895, and the visits became almost a stampede when Elisabeth moved to Weimar in 1897. Henri Lichtenberger was just one of the crowd who visited Elisabeth in Weimar in 1898. Thus, the first few years of the new century were Elisabeth’s belle epoque, in spite of (or possibly because of) the death of Nietzsche in 1900. The following year, Henry van de Velde came to Weimar and was enlisted by Elisabeth to refurbish the Nietzsche-Archiv. Other visitors included André Gide in 1903 and Ernst Thiel in 1905. Thiel would become a vital financial backer. Without his help, Elisabeth would not have gained permission from the Grand Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar for the foundation of the Stiftung Nietzsche-Archiv in May 1908. Nietzsche’s works sold well in the years before the war as well as during and immediately after the war, but it is not true that every soldier was issued with a copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his rucksack, though it is true that cheap copies were available. From the first ... writers like Julius Langbehn and Paul Lagarde had linked Nietzsche’s name with nationalism .... During and after World War I, his name was energetically co-opted into the nationalist cause by Elisabeth, but she was by no means alone; Oswald Spengler, who visited the Nietzsche-Archiv in Weimar for the first time in July 1920, praised Nietzsche’s spirit as typically German, something that would help Germany (at that time bruisingly defeated) to win through in the end. His comments in Der Untergang des Abendlandes (I: 1918, II: 1923) (The Decline of the West, 1934) marked the acceleration of the coupling of Nietzsche’s name with that of the German Volk ......" "... Although she admired Benito Mussolini more than Adolf Hitler, Elisabeth gratefully accepted the logistic help offered by the National Socialists; Hitler even helped her from his private purse. The symbiotic relationship ensured that Elisabeth felt important and flattered, and the National Socialists made propaganda by claiming Nietzsche as a protofascist. It was also good publicity for Hitler to be photographed beside an endearing little old lady who, though she was childless, seemed to represent German motherhood, casting Hitler as dutiful son. When she died in 1935, the whole administration of the Nietzsche-Archiv, headed by Max Oehler, was firmly in support of the Third Reich. Hitler and a host of party dignitaries attended Elisabeth’s funeral. The chief National Socialist Nietzschean was Alfred Baeumler, whose principal work on Nietzsche was Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker (1931) ..." "... The principal interpreter of Nietzsche at that time was the right-wing philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose existentialist critique inspired important rejoinders from Karl Jaspers and Karl Löwith..." [ib.] Although by September 1888 Nietzsche had abandoned the project of turning his notes into The Will to Power, his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who published a truncated and inaccurate version of Nietzsche’s chaotic late notebooks posthumously in 1901, insisted from then on that The Will to Power was an entirely separate work from The Revaluation of Values, “part 1” of which had already been published as The Anti-Christ. One of Nietzsce’s original plans for the four parts of The Revaluation of Values was as follows: Book I: The Anti-Christ; Attempt at a Critique of Christianity Book II: The Free Spirit; Critique of Philosophy as a Nihilistic Movement Book III: The Immoralist; Critique of the Most Disastrous Kind of Ignorance, Morality Book IV: Dionysos; Philosophy of the Eternal Future This plan, dated 17 March 1887, reveals an overlap with much of the material subsequently published by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche as The Will to Power, especially in view of Nietzsche’s projections for books 2 and 3 of both works. Elisabeth periodically lamented the (entirely spurious) “lost Dionysus” manuscript for several decades. Yet, however questionable an editor Nietzsche’s sister was, we have to thank her for overseeing the publication of The Anti-Christ in 1895 and for dissuading her mother, Franziska Nietzsche, from destroying the manuscript on religious grounds..." [ib.] Elisabeth ..., made sure that not just the Anti-Christ but the entire Nachlaß was preserved for posterity ... In 1897, Elisabeth successfully [gained] the guardianship of Nietzsche (as well as the rights to his work) ... into her own hands. Before he went insane, Nietzsche had often written to Overbeck and his wife in disparaging terms with regard to his sister, and this occasioned Overbeck’s public letter in 1904 in response to the publication of Elisabeth’s biography of Nietzsche, Das Leben Friedrich Nietzsche’s (IIii), in which she gave a false picture of her close relationship with her brother in the later years. This open letter in turn alerted Elisabeth to the existence of the Overbeck–Nietzsche correspondence. Overbeck left this correspondence to Basel University when he died the following year. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was convinced that this was by rights the property of the NietzscheArchiv, and in 1908 she began a lawsuit against Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, then executor of Overbeck’s will. Elisabeth pursued the lawsuit as the bitterest vendetta and won a pyrrhic victory when Bernoulli was forbidden from printing the specific passages to which she had objected. Refer to Andreas Urs Sommer, Der Geist der Historie und das Ende des Christentums: Zur “Waffengenossenschaft” von Friedrich Nietzsche und Franz Overbeck (The Spirit of History and the End of Christianity: On the “Comradeship in Arms” of Friedrich Nietzsche and Franz Overbeck, 1997). 

STEINER, RUDOLF (1861–1925). Austrian thinker. Steiner lived in Weimar from 1890. A passionate Goethe scholar, he was also a very early Nietzschean, writing an article titled “Nietzscheanismus” in 1892: many more would follow, as would the monograph Friedrich Nietzsche. Ein Kämpfer gegen seine Zeit, 1895 (Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom, 1960). His Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom) appeared in 1894. Steiner and other early Nietzscheans such as Gabriele Reuter began to visit Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche while Nietzsche and his sister were still in Naumburg. The attraction was not so much the possibility of seeing the sick Nietzsche as of seeing some of the manuscripts as yet unpublished, most notably The Anti-Christ. .... ...By December 1896, Elisabeth’s intrigue had caused a crisis between herself and her editor Fritz Koegel, whom she had hoped to replace with Steiner, but although Steiner became a frequent visitor at the Nietzsche-Archiv after Elisabeth and Nietzsche had moved to Weimar in 1897, he realized that his beliefs did not tally with Nietzsche’s elitist philosophy. Steiner believed that we gain new insight into spiritual matters through intellectual training and that anybody can do this, if taught. 

KESSLER, HARRY GRAF (1868–1937). German scholar. Kessler, who was born and died in France, was a Nietzschean from his student days. In his memoirs (written in 1935), he described the climate of Nietzscheanism at Leipzig University in 1889–1890 as “messianic,” with Nietzsche striking him and fellow students (among them Raoul Richter) “like a meteor.” He first approached Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche in 1895, when she still lived in Naumburg, in the hope of acquiring work by Nietzsche to publish in the periodical Pan. In 1897, Kessler and Meta von Salis-Marschlins helped Elisabeth purchase the house in Weimar destined to become the NietzscheArchiv, with Kessler in the position of adviser. In this capacity, he and Elisabeth agreed with other patrons on such matters as the provision of a monthly grant for the poet Detlev von Liliencron. In 1900, Kessler met Henry van de Velde in Berlin and arranged for him to meet Elisabeth, at which point the three of them planned a cultural collaboration for a “new Weimar.” The result was Van de Velde’s move to Weimar and his work refurbishing the NietzscheArchiv. In 1902, Kessler was appointed honorary director of the Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Weimar. Kessler and Van de Velde were entrusted with plans for a Nietzsche-Memorial in 1911, but these were shelved when Elisabeth objected to the scheme (which included a sports stadium) as too ambitious. Van de Velde left Germany in 1917, but Kessler continued his close collaboration with Elisabeth, though the center of power shifted in a different direction when Max Oehler became archivist in 1919. Gradually during the 1920s, Kessler became disillusioned with the direction in which the Nietzsche-Archiv was heading ... and moved to ...Paris. 

KEY, ELLEN (1849–1926). Swedish-born feminist. Key represented the right-wing “faction” in European feminism in the first decades of the 20th century. In her major work, Kvinnorörelsen, 1909 (The Woman Movement, 1912), Key argues that maternity provides a conscious desire in woman to uplift the race as well as her own life. A convinced Nietzschean, she writes, The finest young girls of today are penetrated by the Nietzschean idea that marriage is the combined will of two people to create a new being greater than themselves. . . . Nietzsche has the most profound conception of parenthood and education as the means whereby humanity will cross over the bridge of the men of today to the superman. (Ellen Key, The Woman Movement, 1912) Like Nietzsche, Key disliked and mistrusted socialism, but Nietzsche’s pronouncements on woman’s role went further, recommending the cloistered treatment of women, as in ancient Greece. During the first years of the 19th century, Key was in friendly contact with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who, though she had remained childless, agreed with Key’s “moderate” (actually, conservative) feminist stance. Elisabeth invited Key to speak at the NietzscheArchiv, though in the event the talk was canceled, as Key was indisposed on the day. It is a paradox that the (male) sexologists of the day, whom one might have assumed to be liberally minded toward women’s emancipation, in fact insisted that a woman’s role was maternal and that a career woman was a sexual freak. The leading sexologist Havelock Ellis was a keen admirer of Key’s work and translated The Woman Movement. 

STÖCKER, HELENE (1869–1943). German writer and feminist. ... From 1896 to 1899, she was research assistant to Wilhelm Dilthey and by this time a convinced Nietzschean ... Paradoxically, when she was at the height of her feminist activity, Stöcker was on good terms with both Lou Andreas-Salomé and Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, neither of whom had any time for feminism (or for each other). Stöcker was almost fanatical in the quantity of lectures on Nietzsche that she gave all over Germany. Her friendship with Elisabeth began in 1895 and lasted until 1911, by which time Elisabeth had realized just how radical a feminist Stöcker was. A typical “radical bourgeois” in her stance, Stöcker glossed over the misogynist comments Nietzsche had made on women because she believed that his remarks on individual freedom far outweighed his apparent misogyny. A popular phrase she and her friends used (Andreas-Salomé included) was sich ausleben, to live one’s life to the full; Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche found the concept deeply shocking. Stöcker was a leading light in the Neue Ethik movement. In 1905, after sending out fliers to potential supporters, Stöcker (with Max Marcuse) took over the leadership of the Bund für Mutterschutz (“League for the Protection of Mothers”), founded the previous year, and became editor of the league’s journal, Die neue Generation. Scandalizing the “moderate feminists,” she advocated free love and every woman’s right to sexual enjoyment, whatever her marital status might be. Stöcker became an internationally known pacifist during and after World War I. Apart from a great deal of journalistic work, she also wrote creatively. Her novel Die Liebe (Love, 1922), deals imaginatively with her affair with Alexander Tille in 1900, based as it was on “their common passionate Nietzscheanism” (Steven Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1992). Like everything else she wrote, the novel contains references to Nietzsche and a liberal amount of Nietzschean philosophy à la Stöcker. 

ZIMMERN, HELEN (1846–1934). Writer and translator. Zimmern was the author of a work on Schopenhauer (Arthur Schopenhauer: His Life and His Philosophy, 1876) that Richard Wagner held in high esteem and the translator of several other prominent authors (including Gotthold Ephraim Lessing). Nietzsche had first met Zimmern in Bayreuth in 1876. They became better acquainted when Zimmern spent her summer holidays of 1884 and 1886 with their mutual friends Emily and Mrs. Fynn in Sils Maria. ... Nietzsche kept in touch with Zimmern and was keen for her to translate his last work, Ecce Homo, into English, as his letter to her of 8 December 1888 demonstrates. In the end, nothing came of this, as the work was not published until 1908.... Zimmern was an obvious choice when Oscar Levy sought a translator for Beyond Good and Evil. She translated the work in 1906, but publication was delayed because Levy had difficulty negotiating the rights with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. The work was finally published at Levy’s financial risk by “The Good European Society” (actually, a one-man operation in the person of Thomas Common) and appeared in 1907 in Edinburgh (T. N. Foulis and Darien Press). The work would later be incorporated into the fifth volume of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Levy in 18 volumes, which appeared in London from 1909 to 1913. 

KLAGES, LUDWIG (1872–1956). ... At the turn of the century, he was also a leading member of the Kosmiker, an eccentric group around Stefan George in Munich ... in 1904 .... Klages broke with George, though all remained convinced Nietzscheans. ... His book Prinzipien der Charakterologie (Principles of Characterology) appeared in 1910. Klages became a cult philosopher during the years of the Weimar Republic as well as a renowned graphologist; his book Handschrift und Charakter (Handwriting and Character, 1921) had gone into 13 editions by 1929. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche was a member of the Graphologische Gesellschaft in Weimar. For Klages, Nietzsche was “the great herald of the cosmic soul” (Steven Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1992). His seminal work on Nietzsche was Die psychologischen Errungenschaften Nietzsches (Nietzsche’s Psychological Achievements, 1926). In this work, Klages rejects the strident and masterful Nietzsche of the will to power, thus distancing himself from many contemporary Nietzsche enthusiasts, in order to portray a mythological character with mystique in his blood and cosmic significance—all themes that Klages had in common with Schuler. Although Georg Lukács tried to label this work a forerunner of National Socialism, its occult mysticism is actually more in tune with the matriarchal arguments that Johann Jakob Bachofen had put forward in Das Mutterrecht (Mother Right, 1861). Klages believed that the concept of Geist sets man apart from the animals and underlies the human capacity to think and to will. It also causes man’s estrangement and his desire for immortality. In Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele (The Mind as Opponent of the Soul, 1926), his most famous work, Klages “made the distinction between life-affi rming Seele (soul) and life-destroying Geist (mind)” (Aschheim). For Klages, Geist was Socrates and will to power, Christianity was dry intellect, while Seele was the vastly superior Dionysian Rausch. He continued this theme in Geist und Leben (Mind and Life, 1935) and Die Sprache als Quell der Seelenkunde (Language as the Source of Knowledge of the Soul, 1948). Klages also wrote Rhythmen und Runen (Rhythms and Runes) in 1944. KOEGEL, FRITZ (1860–1904). German editor who helped Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche to establish an archive for Nietzsche’s works. Elisabeth’s self-imposed task of bringing out a collection of Nietzsche’s works would have been easier if she had not regularly sacked her editors. In August 1892, she gave Peter Gast the task of working on a collected edition while she absented herself to Paraguay, but on her return in September 1893, she decided to fire Gast. When, in April 1894, Elisabeth placed Fritz Koegel in charge of the editorship of Nietzsche’s posthumous estate, the archive consisted of a couple of rooms in Franziska Nietsche’s house in Naumburg. In 1895, Koegel brought out eight volumes (part 1) of Nietzsches Werke, which he had prepared in collaboration with Eduard von der Hellen, and four volumes (part 2) that were the result of his own work: the Nachlaß. Volumes 9 and 10 appeared in 1896, and volumes 11 and 12 appeared in 1897. After this monumental achievement, Koegel was in turn dismissed in July 1897, ostensibly for not producing The Will to Power but really, as Elisabeth admitted in a letter to Rudolf Steiner dated 8–23 September 1898, because she did not like his fiancée, Emily Gelzer. In a letter to Joseph Hofmiller (28 October 1897), Koegel commented on Elisabeth’s three volume biography of her brother (1895–1904) shortly after the appearance of the second volume that year: I want to put straight the main traits of Nietzsche’s personality which Frau Förster, in her Biography, makes up, flattens out, twists and falsifies: out of prudery, ignorance and vanity. Elisabeth had earmarked Steiner for Koegel’s post, but Steiner declined to be recruited, having realized that it would be impossible to work with her. It was not until October 1898 that the new editor, Arthur Seidl, began work. Seidl handed in his notice after a year, to be replaced by Ernst Horneffer, who took over the task of completing the three remaining volumes of the first edition; by 1901, Gast, having been reinstated to continue editing the Nachlaß, The Will to Power entered the public domain as volume 15 of the collected works. Elisabeth continued to make bitter—and unjust—comments on Koegel’s editorship long after his death in 1904. In 1908, Oscar Levy visited Weimar to negotiate the rights for the English translations with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, a process he found extremely difficult. However, his 18-volume edition of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche appeared in London from 1909 to 1913, the result of two decades of lonely pioneering work. 

LICHTENBERGER, HENRI (1864–1941). French academic and man of letters. Lichtenberger was an early admirer of Nietzsche’s work, which he read in the original. His La philosophie de Nietzsche (1898), based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Nancy, was influential in making Nietzsche known to French readers at the turn of the century. The book appeared in German in 1899 with an introduction by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and it has been mistakenly assumed that she translated the work, whereas the translator was actually Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski. Lichtenberger maintained close links with Elisabeth over the next three decades. Lichtenberger was a Germanist whose interest was by no means confined to Nietzsche; he published many works on German literature, such as Richard Wagner poète et penseur (1898) and Heinrich Heine penseur (1905). He also wrote works on the links between French and German literature, such as L’allemagne d’aujourd’hui dans ses relations avec la France (Germany Today in Her Relationship with France, 1922). 

MUSSOLINI, BENITO (1883–1945). .. Mussolini published La fi losofi a della forza (The Philosophy of Force, 1908) and several essays on Nietzsche, including the biographical essay “La vita di Federico Nietzsche” in Avanti (1912). In Itinerario nietzschiano in Italia (Nietzsche’s Itinerary in Italy, 1939), Mussolini [refers to] Nietzsche’s frequent sojourns in Italy, the only country to give his philosophy “free rein.” .... In 1919 he formed the Fasci di Combattimento, a violently nationalistic anticapitalist fascist group waging a campaign of terror against the socialists. Many landowners and industrialists gave the group their backing, as did the army and police, with the result that in 1922, after his “March on Rome,” which directly inspired Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch the following year, Mussolini was invited to become prime minister by the king of Italy. He declared himself dictator in 1925, and all opposition parties were suppressed in 1926. Hitler was fired with admiration for the powerful Mussolini and copied many of the demagogic trappings that the latter had developed, though they did not actually meet in person until June 1934 in Venice. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche had nurtured a penchant for Mussolini since his early rise to fame. In 1931, she was enraptured to receive a telegram from Mussolini congratulating her on her 75th birthday. She duly sent Mussolini a telegram in 1933 to congratulate him on his 50th birthday. 

As a convinced Nietzschean, Mussolini was pleased to demonstrate support for the work of the Nietzsche-Archiv, which during the Third Reich had become something of a fascist enclave. He maintained his connection with the Nietzsche-Archiv even after Elisabeth’s death in 1935. When the two dictators met for the 13th time in 1943, Hitler gave Mussolini a specially bound copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. ... In January 1944. ... Mussolini, a man deposed by his people and with no real power, still had sufficient influence to expedite a statue of Dionysus to the Nietzsche-Archiv to honor the centenary of Nietzsche’s birth: it was intended to have pride of place in the Nietzsche-Memorial then under construction beside the Nietzsche-Archiv, but the collapse of Italy and Germany halted all plans. The incident bears witness to Mussolini’s reverence for Nietzsche ... 

TOBARI, CHIKUFŪ (1873–1955). Japanese academic. A native of Hiroshima, Chikufū studied German at Tokyo University ...Chikufū later became embroiled in the aesthetic life debate within academic circles, which from 1901 to 1903 centered on a misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s ideas. Chikufū stood on the side of his friend Takayama Chogyū, who was accused of immorality, and lost his own post as a consequence. His interest in Nietzsche continued, and he published partial translations of Nietzsche’s works: Human, All Too Human in 1906 and Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 1907 (the latter in full in 1921). In 1924, during his visit to Germany and Italy, Chikufū visited Elisabeth FörsterNietzsche at the Nietzsche-Archiv. He is well regarded as the editor of a German–Japanese dictionary.

New Germania It was Nietzsche's beloved sister Elisabeth, who with her husband Bernard Forster, set up a colony in South America called 'New Germany', which was to be built on Saxon farming families. Forster was quite fore-sighted in seeing that the Jewish influence in Germany would lead to disaster, however his solution was far too ambitious, and fell into financial difficulties. Forster committed suicide, and Elisabeth eventually returned to old Germany to nurse her sick brother and set up the Nietzsche Archive [my note] "Despite a possible reinterpretation of his first experience with Nietzsche's text, due to his old age at the time of recalling his memories, linking Zarathustra with Nietzsche's innermost reality remains a steady element in Jung's understanding of the text. Indeed, such a psychological reading of the work, despite a light evolution during the development of Jung's theories, can be considered as consistent in his thinking. Jung's first extended discussion on Zarathustra was in his medical dissertation, where he recognised in chapter “Of Great Events” an example of cryptomnesia – a case of unconscious plagiarism – from Blätter aus Prevorst by Justinus Kerner (1831-1835). CW 1, §§ 140-142 and 180-184. In order to prove his hypothesis, Jung had a short correspondence with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the philosopher's sister, who confirmed that both herself and her brother had engaged with readings from Kerner during their childhood. See P. Bishop, “The Jung/Förster-Nietzsche Correspondence”, in: German life and letters 46 (1993), pp. 319-330." [Jung and Nietzsche, G Domenici] 

NACHLASS Besides his published works, Nietzsche left a vast number of notes, sketches, and literary fragments, known as the Nachgelassene Fragmente, or the Nachlass. These have been passed on to posterity .... thanks to .... Nietzsche's sister, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche ... This edition was published as The Will to Power ... [Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche ed. Magnus/Higgins] 

II. THE ROLE OF ELISABETH FORSTER-NIETZSCHE After Nietzsche's mental breakdown the most important figure in his life was his sister, Elisabeth, who was the chief instrument in the creation of the legend. ... Two years younger than her brother, Elisabeth survived him by thirty-five years, or by forty-six if we add the eleven years of his incapacitation. While he was still quite unknown to the world at large she founded the "Nietzsche Archive" in the family home at Naumburg and then transferred it to a villa in Weimar, the cultural capital of Germany. Her role model seems to have been Wagner's widow, Cosima Wagner, who after Wagner's death preserved his "heritage" at Bayreuth something in the style of the priestess of a mystery cult. Elisabeth aimed to do the same for Nietzsche. ... Until his suicide in 1889, Elisabeth had been married to Bernhard Forster ... and they had together founded a colony, New Germania, in Paraguay. After her husband's death and the colony's apparent failure - it has in fact survived to the present day in a rudimentary form - she returned to Germany and adopted Nietzsche as a substitute "life-task." .... Assisted by an acute commercial sense and the new copyright laws, Elisabeth gained control of everything Nietzsche had written to prevent anyone else from acquiring it was one of the functions of the Archive - and as "Nietzsche's sister" laid claim to a unique ability to understand and interpret him. The legend we have been discussing was an outcome of her efforts. ^ Others ... contributed to the propagation of this legend, and in select cases (e.g. Stefan George) to its greater refinement and intellectualization; but the heart of it remained unaffected and it has come down to us intact ...

THE NIETZSCHE LEGEND The Nietzsche legend is the modern legend of the isolate and embattled individual: the hero as outsider. He thinks more, knows more, and suffers more than other men do, and is as a consequence elevated above them. Whatever he has of value he has created out of himself, for apart from himself there is only "the compact majority," which is always wrong. When he speaks he is usually misunderstood, but he can in any case be understood only by isolated and embattled individuals such as himself. In the end he removes himself to a distance at which he and the compact majority become mutually invisible, but his image is preserved in his icon: the man who goes alone. As in the case of Schopenhauer, the legend possesses an obvious attractiveness. It has certainly enthralled very many who would not have found enthralling, or even comprehensible, the philosophy of which it is supposed to be the vehicle, but from which it has broken free to enjoy an independent existence. It is certainly not going too far to say that thousands who claim to have been enlightened by Nietzsche, and believe what they claim, have in reality been seduced by the legend of the man who went alone, the high plains drifter of philosophy. ... " [ib.] 

EARLY VIEWS OF NIETZSCHE AND THE COMPILATION OF THE WILL TO POWER At the beginning of this process we notice two Nietzsche images that are certainly not the first in chronological terms, but stand out because of their comprehensive character and by anticipating in their opposition a basic tension in Nietzsche interpretation throughout the twentieth century. These are the books Friedrich Nietzsche: The Man in His Works by Lou Salome of 1894 and The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche by his sister Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, which appeared in two volumes in 1895 and 1897. Both writers had a profound knowledge of Nietzsche as a person and author. Lou Salome had earlier published sections of her book in magazines, and Nietzsche, knowing of her intention to write about him, provided her with information concerning his life and thought that she used throughout her book. Erwin Rohde, one of Nietzsche's closest friends, said that "nothing better or more deeply experienced and perceived has ever been written about Nietzsche."3 Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche had of course known her brother throughout her life, but she also became the inheritor of his literary estate and, as the organizer of the Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, had access to the vast materials of his unpublished philosophical fragments, including his correspondence. These two women had perhaps a better knowledge of Nietzsche than anyone else at that time, and their accounts are without a doubt of special significance for the emergence of the early images of Nietzsche. ....." 

Lou Salome's book on Nietzsche is neither a biography nor a psychological study, but is nevertheless closely related to the personality and individuality of Nietzsche. She wants to show how Nietzsche's peculiarity mirrors itself in his writings, in the way a poet shapes his own unique world through words, metaphors, and correspondences. Mihi ipse scripsi, "I have written for myself," is a motto she finds recurrently in Nietzsche's letters ..." 

" In a remarkable display of familiarity with all of Nietzsche's writings, including his poetry, Lou Salome substantiates most of her claims with quotes from Nietzsche and cites in this instance: "Gradually, it has become clear to me that every great philosophy up to the present has been the personal confession of its author and a form of involuntary and unperceived memoir" (BGE, 6). Masking, veiling, and dissimulating constitute the first feature noticed by Lou Salome in Nietzsche's writings, one closely related " ..... 

Lou Salome included several photographs of Nietzsche in her book dating from the time following his mental collapse and showing him in the state of madness. She thought that it was "during this time that his physiognomy, his entire exterior, appeared to be most characteristically formed" (LS, 9). Quite predictably, this book met with the sharpest enmity among the representatives of the Nietzsche-Archives, especially Peter Gast, who had begun the first critical edition of Nietzsche's writings including some unpublished fragments. Lou Salome's bitterest enemy, however, was Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, who one year after the appearance of this book, published the first volume of her Nietzsche biography in which she refuted virtually everything that Lou Salome had maintained. In this counter-image Nietzsche appears as healthy, a hero of thought, a conqueror of freedom, an advocate of life, and the pronouncer of new and daring doctrines. One point that particularly intrigued Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche was Lou Salome's assumption of a deeply rooted decadence that formed an integral part of Nietzsche's personality. Not only in her book, but especially in the influential periodical Die Zukunft, she launched a broad attack on these views and declared Nietzsche's illness as a completely exterior matter unrelated to his personality and caused by poor diet, wrong medication, overextension, and a sudden stroke within an otherwise robust state of health. 

The most important facet of Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche's image making, however, concerns Nietzsche's text, the compilation of The Will to Power. From 1895 on, six years after the beginning of her brother's intellectual incapacity, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche owned all the rights to Nietzsche's immense unpublished notes, his entire literary estate. Upon her insistence, several editors, who also participated in the first edition of Nietzsche's works (the Naumann edition, 1895-1901), compiled an allegedly central work from the fragments of the late years by using Nietzsche's own earlier content outlines for its compilation. Nietzsche's proposed outlines for the selected notes were never consistent, however, and the ensemble of notes selected had to be reduced considerably to make them into a somewhat coherent work. In effect, Nietzsche's editors created a "book" by picking and choosing a small fraction of notes, revising many of them, and then arranging them from a planned outline Nietzsche had himself abandoned. This is the origin of The Will to Power, which in its first edition of 1901 contained 483 aphorisms and in its second of 1906, 1,067 aphorisms. 

A great deal of Nietzsche research during the first half of the twentieth century rests on this text made widely available through a popular inexpensive edition by Alfred Baumler. One of Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche's major motivations for the compilation of The Will to Power was the desire to produce a philosophical masterwork or centerpiece for a writer whose other publications had been received as too self-contradictory and aphoristic, too "literary" and poetic for such a demand. The guiding assumption certainly was that a great philosopher would naturally leave behind a masterpiece presenting his philosophy systematically. This text distinguishes itself from Nietzsche's previous writings in that it undertook a profound revaluation of everything on the basis of one dominant principle - will to power, eternal return, or both. Nietzsche's previous writings lacked such a central philosophical principle. Instead of a linear and systematically coherent way of thinking, Nietzsche had tried out a multiplicity of "perspectives" and developed his ideas by constantly shifting from position to counterposition without arriving or aiming at a final result, a firm solution. The Will to Power served to rescue Nietzsche from the reproach of a "poet-philosopher" and suggested that he had hidden his "true philosophy" in his published writings, that his real arguments were to be found in the texts of The Will to Power. As a result, The Will to Power came to dominate the whole of Nietzsche's oeuvre and depreciate the writings he himself had published or designated for publication." [ib.] 

DIE GESELLSCHAFT DER FREUNDE DES NIETZSCHEARCHIVS. The Society of Friends of the Nietzsche-Archiv was founded on 28 September 1926 to protect the interests of the Nietzsche-Archiv in “troubled times.” Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Ernst Thiel, and Adalbert Oehler were made honorary members as were the international luminaries Karl Joel and Romain Rolland as well as Anton Kippenberg and Walter Klemm from the Kröner Press. The president was Arnold Paulssen, and members included Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, and Heinrich Wölfflin. Naturally, the Society came to an end with everything else connected with the activities of the Nietzsche-Archiv in 1945. 

HITLER, ADOLF (1889–1945). ... became Reichskanzler in 1933 and Führer on the death of Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934. ... he was no doubt attracted by ... Nietzsche’s works ... as well as by the general aura of right-wing Nietzscheanism emanating from the Nietzsche-Archiv, where Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche presided over her brother’s literary estate. Hitler visited Elisabeth at the Nietzsche-Archiv on a number of occasions, each time receiving an ecstatic welcome ....

ELISABETH AND BERNARD FORSTER-NIETZSCHE 

1871 One of the Scarcest of All Nietzsche First Editions   Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. Registerheft zu Band I - XXIV der neuen Folge (1842-1869). Herausgegeben von F.G. Welcker, F. Ritschl, A. Klette. Johann David Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main, 1871. TP + 1 Leaf = Uebersicht + [1]175 + [176] = Berichtigungen, Octavo. First Edition (Schaberg 21). $ 1,500 This is one of the rarest of Nietzsche items to come on the market. Whatever copies of this Index do survive, almost all reside on library shelves besides the collected copies of the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, making it one of the hardest books to acquire for those seeking a ‘complete’ collection of Nietzsche’s works. Despite a title page date of 1871, this Index was likely published in 1872 – as noted below: Close behind the publication of The Birth of Tragedy came another Nietzsche "book." 

Five years earlier, Ritschl had asked Nietzsche to prepare an Index for the `Rheinisches Museum'— a tedious and time consuming task. Nietzsche shifted much of the work to his sister Elisabeth, although she admits that her brother did make some contributions regarding the later volumes. Elisabeth claims that the dedication to her in Homer as her brother's "helpmate in the stubble-field of philology" is a direct reference to this project. Elisabeth places most of the work in 1869 or 1870 but offers no information concerning the actual date of publication. The title page of the book is dated 1871, but there is circumstantial evidence to suggest that it actually appeared in early 1872. On 30 January 1872, Nietzsche wrote to Ritschl hoping to elicit an opinion regarding The Birth of Tragedy about which his old teacher had been uncharacteristically silent. In the same letter, Nietzsche mentioned the recently arrived copy of the Index and questioned whether a copy had also been sent to his sister. In fact, Elisabeth had just sent him a letter two days earlier which made no mention of the book, indicating that the publication of the Index was a recent event. This inference would place the publication date in January 1872—probably sometime past mid-month. Nietzsche's name appears nowhere in the Index except in the text where it would normally occur referencing the contributions that he had made to the journal. Investigation has turned up no clue as to the length of the press run, but the number of copies printed must have been substantial since this was the basic reference for any collection of back issues of the Rheinisches Museum. (Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon, pp. 28-29) ---------------------------------------- Therese Elisabeth Alexandra, who became in after years her brother's housekeeper, guardian angel and biographer [Mencken, Philos of Niet]