PART I

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL YEARS

1. 1 Ancestors and Family. Röcken (1844-50)

For much of his life Friedrich Nietzsche was pleased to regard himself as descended on his father’s side from Polish aristocrats. At boarding-school in the 1860’s he took an interest in Slavic music and composed ‘Polish dances’ which he dedicated to his supposed forebears. In a letter to a school friend in 1862 he signed himself ‘Nietzky’. In 1882 he wrote in a notebook: ‘I have been taught to trace my descent and name to Polish aristocrats called Niëtzky who gave up their homeland and titles more than a hundred years ago, escaping from unbearable religious oppression, for they were Protestants. As a boy I was proud of my Polish descent. Whatever German blood is in me comes solely from my mother, from the Oehler family, and from the family of my father’s mother, the Krauses, but it seems that in all essentials I have nevertheless remained a Pole.’[1] In his 1888 autobiography Ecce Homo Nietzsche claims without qualification that ‘my ancestors were Polish noblemen’.[2] His sister Elisabeth tells of a ‘family tradition’ passed down by their aunts that in the early eighteenth century a Polish nobleman named Niëtzky fled Poland with his wife and newborn child after being sentenced to death for conspiring against King Stanislaus Leszcynski in favour of Saxony and the Protestants, and that their great grandfather Gotthilf Engelbert Nietzsche (1714-1804) was the child of this fleeing couple.[3] However Elisabeth calls this story ‘mythical’.[4] Towards the end of her life Franziska Nietzsche, mother of Friedrich and Elisabeth, said that she had heard nothing about Polish ancestors from her husband or mother-in-law.[5] And in reminiscences published in 1906 Nietzsche’s close friend Franz Overbeck wrote: ‘In reality Nietzsche was German through and through. He was a Slav only in his fantasy.’[6]

A century of genealogical research has failed to uncover convincing evidence for Nietzsche’s Polish ancestry.[7] His paternal grandfather Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche, Church Superintendent in Eilenburg when Nietzsche’s father Carl Ludwig was born, was himself born in the Saxon town of Bibra in 1756, the seventh child of the tax inspector Gotthilf Engelbert Nietzsche. Gotthilf Engelbert’s own father, Christoph Andreas Nitzsche, was likewise a tax inspector in Bibra, and his father, also named Christoph, was a butcher in Burkau in Oberlausitz (eastern Saxony) where he was baptised in 1662. The missing link in birth records is Christoph Andreas Nitzsche, recorded as marrying a Johanna Büttner in Eckartsberga near Bibra in 1707 and as dying in Bibra in 1739. That this Christoph Andreas was the son of the Burkau couple Christoph and Anna Nitzsche is very likely because the official register for his marriage gives his father as ‘Christoph Nitzsche, citizen and butcher in Burkau’, and records from Burkau show two other children of this couple baptised in 1686 and 1692. While no birth record for Christoph Andreas has been found it appears he was born not in Burkau but around 1682 in the Saxon village of Weitzschen south of Meißen (about sixty kilometres west of Burkau) and attended, like his son Gotthilf Engelbert and grandson Friedrich August Ludwig, the University of Leipzig. There is no evidence to suggest that either parent of Christoph Andreas was Polish. Nietzsche and cognate forms like Nitzsche, Nitsche and Nitzke are not uncommon names for Germans, although all may have a Slavic origin.[8] It would have been somewhat unusual for the son of a butcher to undertake the legal studies for the career of tax-inspector, but the University of Leipzig had a reputation for catering to students from the lower classes; this step up in the world by Christoph Andreas was in any case an important link for the line of descent to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

The mother of his paternal grandfather Friedrich August Ludwig, Nietzsche claimed in a letter of 1882, was ‘also’ a Pole.[9] In fact she was German, being the daughter Johanna Amalia of Pastor Johann Herold of Reinsdorf in Saxony; the Herolds had been pastors for five generations. The Polish ancestry story is a mystery. Its attraction for Nietzsche grew as he became more averse to Germany and Germans. Whether he believed the story completely, or half-believed it, or just wanted to believe it, can only be guessed, and perhaps he wavered between these attitudes. It remains true that Nietzsche’s facial features suggest some possible admixture of Slavic stock. Many who met him thought he did not look German. Whether Nietzsche’s father, from the few portraits of him we possess, looks noticeably Slavic, is hard to say.

Irrespective of whether Nietzsche possessed some traces of Polish blood his lineage was overwhelmingly Saxon, and the scenes of his early life, and of the lives of nearly all his ancestors for more than a century, took place within the relatively small radius of greater Saxony. Not only were many of Nietzsche’s relatives Protestant pastors but his roots were in the heartland of German Protestantism. As for his national identity, the village of his birth, Röcken, became part of the Prussian province of Saxony after the Napoleonic Wars. The same is true of the town of Naumburg where he spent his later childhood and where his mother lived until her death. Leipzig, on the other hand, the nearest major city to Naumburg and Röcken and the only large German city where Nietzsche came to feel comparatively at home, remained after 1815 part of the nominally independent but truncated Kingdom of Saxony. Thus Nietzsche was born a citizen of Prussia, and although he relinquished his citizenship in 1869 upon moving to Switzerland, the following year he joined the Prussian army as a volunteer in the war against France. For the rest of his life he was officially stateless, emotionally homeless, and philosophically, as he liked to say, ‘a good European’. As he recognized, however, his Saxon and Protestant roots never ceased exerting a strong influence on his mind and character.

The philosopher’s paternal grandfather Friedrich August Ludwig Nietzsche, grandson of the original tax-inspector, was the only author among his ancestors and also the first to pursue a career in the church. In 1776 he began a degree in theology at the University of Leipzig. Evidently a man of considerable energy and intellectual ability, he published at least nine theological and religious books between 1785 and his death in 1826; his robust literary style is tantalizingly suggestive of his grandson.[10] He belonged to the rationalist wing of German Protestant theology, rooted in the German Enlightenment and especially the thought of Christian Wolff (1679-1754). At the age of sixty-one he received an honorary doctorate of theology from the University of Königsberg but he was never a university teacher. For twenty years he was Pastor in  Wohlmirstedt near his home town of Bibra. In 1803 he moved to Eilenburg near Leipzig to become Head Pastor of the Church of St. Nicholai and Church Superintendent, posts he held until his death. Friedrich August was married twice. His first wife Johanna Richter, whom he married in Bibra before moving to Wohlmirstedt, bore him nine children, two dying in infancy, the others reaching at least middle age. A few years after transferring to Eilenberg with his family Johanna died. When he remarried in 1809 the new Frau Superintendent was the widow Erdmuthe Krüger (née Krause) of the Weimar court lawyer Carl Krüger, who had died in 1806.

At the time of his second marriage Friedrich August was fifty-three years of age, his wife thirty-one with no surviving children. Born in the Saxon city of Reichenbach in 1778, Erdmuthe’s parents were Archdeacon Christoph Krause and his wife Johanna Stauss. One brother was Johann Krause, Head Pastor at Naumburg Cathedral since 1801, who in 1810 became professor of theology in Königsberg, then in 1819-20 served briefly (before his death) as General Superintendent in Weimar, a post once held by the philosopher J. G. Herder. After her first husband’s death Erdmuthe lived in Naumburg with her brother Pastor Krause, through whom she met Superintendent Nietzsche.[11] Their wedding took place in Naumburg Cathedral, where seven years earlier Erdmuthe had married her first husband. Three children resulted: Rosalie (1811), Carl Ludwig (1813), and Auguste (1815). On the sixteenth of March 1826, when Carl Ludwig was twelve, Erdmuthe was again widowed, this time at the age of forty-seven. Nietzsche never knew his father’s father, who died eighteen years before he was born. But his father’s mother Erdmuthe did not die until 1856 when Nietzsche was eleven. Since Erdmuthe lived with her grandson (her only grandson in fact) from his birth until her own death she was an important person in the life of the boy.

Nietzsche’s father Carl Ludwig Nietzsche was born in Eilenburg near Leipzig on the tenth of October 1813, a few days before the great Battle of Leipzig. Since his own father was a senior churchman it was natural that Carl Ludwig should follow the same profession. At elementary school in Eilenburg he distinguished himself in literary and musical exercises.[12] At thirteen, soon after the death of his father, he composed a trial sermon which showed a literary ability and religious consciousness unusual for his age. From 1828 to 1833 he attended the prestigious Rossleben School in northern Thuringia. This was followed by four years of theological studies at the University of Halle. After graduation his first position was as a house-tutor in Altenburg, seat of the Court of the Duchy of Saxe-Altenburg. Carl Ludwig also took up preaching in Altenburg, with such success that he caught the attention of Duke Joseph, who offered him the post of tutor to his three daughters, the princesses Theresa, Elisabeth and Alexandra. This was the decisive stroke of fortune in Carl Ludwig’s life. Between 1838 and 1841 he lived in the palace at Altenburg enjoying daily contact with the Duke and Duchess. As his period of employment drew to an end, the Duke, who wished to do something for his tutor’s future, wrote to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV requesting that a living be found for him. This led to a visit by Carl Ludwig to Berlin and a short personal meeting with His Majesty. Carl Ludwig could not obtain what he wanted most, which was a living in his home town of Eilenburg, but was offered what was in any case satisfactory, a quiet rural pastorate in the village of Röcken some twenty kilometres south-west of Leipzig, with duties extending to surrounding villages and hamlets. At this point he was twenty-eight years of age.

On his mother’s side Nietzsche’s grandparents were David Ernst Oehler (1787-1859), pastor in the village of Pobles not far from Röcken, and his wife Johanna Wilhelmine Hahn (1794-1876). David Oehler, son of the master weaver Christian Oehler and his wife Johanne Martin of Zeitz in the south of Saxony-Anhalt, was an individual of impressive character and intellect.[13] Like Nietzsche’s paternal grandfather he studied theology at the University of Leipzig. His grandson Adalbert Oehler reported a story that in 1813 (probably in Eilenburg) Russian troops broke into a house where he was employed as a tutor and were threatening the mistress when he interposed himself in his robes, shaming them into withdrawing and apologizing.[14] In 1815 he became pastor in rural Pobles where he remained until his death. While there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of David Oehler’s Christian convictions he possessed a practical humanistic mentality which looked for reconciliation between reason and faith. He was a Freemason, not unusual in German Protestantism, and took a keen interest in the intellectual currents of the day. Adalbert Oehler remembered that ‘despite all bonhomie he was a keen-sighted observer of human beings and human relationships […] His study was particularly impressive. Books he had been reading and which he wanted to use again lay open, sheets on which he had been making notes had to be left where they were.’[15] This study, with its library, was one of Nietzsche’s favourite places as a child.

The social station of David Oehler’s wife was well above his own. Wilhelmine, as she was called, was born in Zeitz to the landowner and finance commissioner Johann Hahn and his wife Dorothea Pfeiffer, daughter of a lawyer. Upon her marriage in 1816 Wilhelmine brought a dowry including a carriage, horses, a coachman, a cook and a maid, exceptional for a rural German parsonage.[16] After the Napoleonic Wars Wilhelmine’s father lost much of his fortune but remained affluent; Franziska Nietzsche, who was just five when he died, remembered visiting his stately house in Wählitz.[17] Wilhelmine Oehler was a  tough woman who had to bear with the physical handicaps of blindness in one eye (from smallpox) and one leg shorter than the other. She was not especially indulgent towards her children but tried to instil in them her own hard-headedness. She was ‘temperamental’: her son Oscar stated that ‘she could be like a powder-keg which easily explodes, but after the explosion felt relieved and everything was calm again.’[18] As their own brood grew in Pobles the Oehlers found that the modest emoluments of a village parson had to be supplemented by farming, at which all members of the family were expected to help. Wilhelmine managed the finances, while her husband saw to the early education of the children. Between 1817 and 1839 there were five girls and six boys, all of whom survived into adulthood. The sixth child, Nietzsche’s mother Franziska, was born on the second of February 1826 and lived to the age of seventy-one. Both maternal grandparents played an important role in the young Friedrich Nietzsche’s life, Pastor Oehler dying when Nietzsche was fifteen, the Frau Pastor when he was thirty-one.

In January 1842 Carl Ludwig Nietzsche moved into the parsonage at Röcken with his widowed mother Erdmuthe and his younger sister Auguste; his older sister Rosalie followed in 1843 (neither of the sisters ever married). On the lookout for a wife, Carl Ludwig soon became a regular visitor at the Oehlers’ in Pobles, about an hour’s journey from Röcken. Here he made a favourable impression by his unusually elegant attire, intelligence, education, personal charm, courtly manners, and facility at the piano. Pastor Oehler, it turned out, already knew Carl Ludwig’s mother Erdmuthe, then Frau Superintendent Nietzsche, from the time he had been a house-tutor in Eilenburg. In 1842 the Oehlers had three daughters of realistic marriageable age, all elder sisters of the sixteen year old Franziska. But it was Franziska (‘Fränzchen’ as she was called inside the family) who attracted the attentions of Pastor Nietzsche. Once on a visit to Pobles Carl Ludwig remarked to Frau Oehler that Franziska reminded him of one of his former royal pupils, Princess Elisabeth of Altenburg; this was a compliment that Franziska never forgot. Owing to Franziska’s youth, Pastor Nietzsche hesitated for nearly a year before proposing. At last he submitted to his inclinations and obtained his mother’s blessing. Carl Ludwig’s letter of proposal, addressed to Pastor Oehler, was duly read out to Franziska by her sober-minded father (the females in the family, especially Frau Oehler and Franziska, were in tears) and she had no hesitatation in accepting.[19] This was in July 1843. The marriage took place on Carl Ludwig’s thirtieth birthday, the tenth of October 1843.

When the newly married Franziska Nietzsche moved to Röcken she was not yet eighteen years old. She entered a household presided over by her sixty-five year old mother-in-law Erdmuthe and her two sisters-in-law Rosalie (thirty-one) and Auguste (twenty-eight). Franziska was somewhat of a tomboy, having spent more time as a child with her younger brothers than her older sisters, and had thought herself too young to marry. The outgoing personality of Franziska was very different to that of the hypersensitive and introverted Carl Ludwig; another difference was that she possessed the robust physical constitution typical of the Oehlers. In Röcken, Franziska was expected to adapt to the established hierarchy and order of business in the pastor’s house: mother-in-law Erdmuthe, who had the most spacious and desirable quarters, was the effective head of the household, while Auguste and Rosalie, with the help of a maid, looked after domestic affairs. Auguste, whose sweet temperament made her everybody’s favourite (unfortunately there is no extant portrait of her) was in charge of the kitchen; the more severe theologically-minded Rosalie kept abreast of church affairs and general politics (Elisabeth remembers her reading newspapers), and was active in charitable societies. The difference between the Oehler and Nietzsche temperaments, exacerbated by Franziska’s youth, often resulted in arguments, particularly between Franziska and her new female relatives. Although the titular mistress of the house, in practice Franziska was subordinate to her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law, and until her first child was born there was little to occupy her in Röcken, a stark change from the bustling life at Pobles. The elderly Erdmuthe wanted quiet, Auguste was seriously ailing, and Rosalie suffered frightfully from ‘nerves’.[20] It was natural for Franziska to seek refuge from this cold and restrictive environment by frequent visits to her family at Pobles, but this habit too became a source of tension in Röcken. Pastor Nietzsche, like his mother and sisters, wanted peace above all else. Elisabeth writes: ‘He was an extraordinarily sensitive man, or, as was said of him at the time, he took everything so much to heart. Any sign of discord either in the parish or in his own family was so painful to him that he would withdraw to his study and refuse to eat or drink, or speak with anybody. If any trifling dispute chanced to occur in his presence between the sister-in-law in question and our fiery young mother, he would lean back in his chair, close his eyes, and become absorbed in very different thoughts, so that he might hear and see nothing of the quarrel.’[21]

The first child of the Nietzsche couple, a boy, was born about ten o’clock in the morning on the fifteenth of October 1844. Carl Ludwig Nietzsche felt it particularly auspicious that this was also the birthday of his royal benefactor Friedrich Wilhelm IV, so it was fitting that the child should be named after the Prussian king. An additional benefit of the name, as Carl Ludwig wrote to his friend Emil Julius Schenk two weeks after the birth, was that the only child of his mother’s first marriage, a boy who had died at the age of two, ‘was also called Fritz’.[22] Until Friedrich Wilhelm IV died in 1861 the church-bells rang on the birthday of young ‘Fritz’, as he was always called by family and friends. A second child, born on the tenth of July 1846, was named Elisabeth Therese Alexandra after all three of Carl Ludwig’s princesses. Another boy, Joseph, born on the twenty-seventh of February 1848, was named after the Duke of Altenburg.

Pastor Nietzsche had been at Röcken for eight years and seven months when on the thirtieth of July 1849, at the age of thirty-five, he died. One account of events is given by Elisabeth: ‘At the end of August 1848 a terrible misfortune overtook us. Our father was accompanying a friend home one evening, and on his return to the parsonage our little dog, which he did not see owing to his shortsightedness, ran between his legs just as he reached the door. He stumbled and fell backwards down a flight of seven stone steps on to the paving stones of the courtyard, and as a result of his fall was laid up with concussion of the brain. At first it was taken for granted that after a week’s rest in bed no evil consequences would remain. After a few weeks, however, he began to get ill. The trouble started with a loss of appetite and severe headaches, which he had never had in his life before. Neither his sisters nor his parents had ever suffered in this way, for the delicate organ in the Nietzsche family was the stomach. When in spite of the doctors and the homoeopathic treatment in which the Nietzsche family firmly believed, the headaches continued, the famous physician Professor Oppolzer, of Leipzig, was summoned. He realized at once that the trouble was cerebral and not gastric, as the family maintained. At first Professor Oppolzer gave us good ground for hope, as neither the patient’s intellect nor his consciousness were affected, and the doctor believed that the injured spot in the brain would heal, “and leave a cicatrice there”, as he told us. And as a matter of fact there were periods of improvement, days on which my father suffered no pain and was able to write his sermons and take confirmation classes. In the spring of 1849 he began to give Fritz a few lessons, for the boy showed exceptional interest in books, reading and writing. In June, 1849, however, my father’s trouble became steadily worse, and, in his heart of hearts, he was convinced that his end was at hand. He certainly did not fear death, but the thought of leaving behind him without protection the young wife he loved so dearly, and her three children, filled him with anguish. He made his will, appointed a relative, named Dächsel, who was afterwards a counsellor of justice, the guardian of his children, and begged his mother, our beloved grandmother Nietzsche, in the most touching terms, to take his dear Fränzchen and his children under her care. His last words were, “Mother, remember Fränzchen”. He died on the 30th July, 1849, eleven months after his terrible fall, and was deeply mourned, not only by his family and his nearest friends, but, above all, by his parishioners, who during his illness had not been able to do enough to show the love and reverence they felt for him.’[23]

This account contains elements of truth but on the most essential issue, the cause of Pastor Nietzsche’s illness, it is a deliberate falsification, one of many which Elisabeth allowed herself in her copious writings on her brother. Owing to the vexed questions around Friedrich Nietzsche’s own illness and eventual collapse into insanity it would be of great interest if the cause of his father’s death could be known with confidence. Although on available evidence certainty on this matter cannot be obtained, there is at any rate sufficient information to conclude that Pastor Nietzsche did not die of the after-effects of any fall. The young Friedrich Nietzsche, in several autobiographical sketches between 1858 and 1863, wrote of his father’s illness with no mention of a fall. The 1995 Colli-Montinari edition of the 1858 piece gives Nietzsche saying that ‘in September my dear father suddenly became ill’, flagging a textual gap between ‘father’ and ‘ill’ which the editors fill by the words ‘suddenly became’.[24] By noteworthy contrast, when Elisabeth incorporated her brother’s early autobiographical fragments in the first volume of her own Life of Friedrich Nietzsche (1895), she gave this passage as ‘my dear father as a result of a fall became very ill’.[25] According to the Colli-Montinari editor Hans Gerald Hödl, the gap in the manuscript is from a burn, and is not large enough to accommodate the words ‘as a result of a fall’.[26] Earlier editors had speculated that the missing partial word was ‘gemüths’, so that Nietzsche was saying ‘my father suddenly became gemüthskrank [mentally ill]’.[27] In fragments from 1861 Nietzsche writes that his father suffered from ‘inflammation of the brain’ or ‘softening of the brain’.[28] Similarly in a fragment from 1863, ‘softening of the brain’ alone is given as the cause of his father’s illness.[29]  After her brother became insane at the beginning of 1889, Elisabeth, who was living in Paraguay at the time, decided that it was imperative to counter any suggestion of an inherited condition: ‘Please do not say such odd things about dear Papa’, she wrote to her mother in April; ‘if he hadn’t fallen down the stone steps he would probably be alive today.’[30] For the rest of her life she never deviated from the story of the fall.

It may be that Carl Ludwig did suffer a fall but if it had any connection with his illness it was as effect, not cause. Contrary to Elisabeth’s declarations her father was by no means robust but of a decidedly sickly and delicate constitution. The extant correspondence between Carl Ludwig and his mother from his schooldays in Rossleben testifies to constant ill health. There were instances of stumbling and falling while at school, but this was put down to a deformation in his spine and for a time he wore a corset in an effort to rectify the problem. He did not take part in sport and physical games like other boys. In addition he suffered from recurring severe headaches usually accompanied by pressure around the ears, rheumatic pains, sensations of numbness, and cramps in his arms and legs which sometimes led to falls. Although he excelled at his schoolwork he was not a self-confident boy but was always longing for his mother. He was given to bouts of depression and nervous anxiety.[31] This pattern of complaints continued through his years in Halle and Altenburg. He was twice declared unfit for military service on grounds of poor health. Perhaps it testifies to a depressive condition associated with his illness that Carl Ludwig does not seem to have developed a love of literature or of any branch of learning other than theology, so that music remained his only interest outside his profession. Having made his mark at school, university, and the Altenburg Court, his friends and family hoped for a distinguished future for him. He was probably aware himself that this was not to be.

In November 1841, just before he took up his post in Röcken, Carl Ludwig confessed to his friend Emil Schenk that he was highly nervous about the responsibilities he was about to assume.[32] In the first part of 1842, letters from Rosalie Nietzsche in Plauen to her mother Erdmuthe in Röcken frequently revert to the health of Carl Ludwig, and on one occasion she reports a rumour in Plauen that Carl Ludwig had died.[33] Pastor Nietzsche, evidently, could carry out his duties in Röcken only at the cost of exhaustion. At the end of November 1845 he wrote to Schenk that ‘overall I feel so poorly that I am glad to be just a country pastor. I have long given up high-flown thoughts of going to a big city.’[34] In early 1846 he broke into tears during a service and had to hurry from the church, although he returned a short time later.[35] In May of the same year he reported to Schenk that he had been spending much time in the open air for the sake of his health, and that ‘every Sunday is a sick-day for me’.[36] Around this time he began on occasion to sink into a chair and stare speechlessly into space, apparently unaware of his surroundings and later being unable to recall the episode.[37] Then in August 1848 his condition deteriorated dramatically. In November (his final sermon and letter date from September) he spent two weeks in Naumburg consulting a specialist, but nothing could stop the further worsening of his health. His headaches, which were accompanied by vomiting, became more severe. He lost his appetite, could not sleep, the slightest noise would be unendurable to him, and he was unable to finish sentences. Ultimately he became blind and completely lost the power of speech. When he died on the thirtieth of July his wife was twenty-three, his eldest son Fritz was two and a half months short of his fifth birthday, his daughter Elisabeth had recently turned three, and his infant son Joseph was just five months old.

Carl Ludwig’s doctors at the time put his death down to ‘softening of the brain’, without any more precise explanation. His half-sister Friederike Dächsel, with whom he had stayed while undergoing medical treatment in Naumburg, wrote to her stepson Bernhard that ‘his head was opened up and it was confirmed that he had died of softening of the brain, which already had taken up a quarter of his head’.[38] It may be that Nietzsche’s father died of a brain tumour, although cerebral tuberculosis and cerebral syphilis are among other possibilities that have been suggested. It cannot be ruled out that Nietzsche inherited from his father at least a predisposition to some serious illness of the brain and nervous system. From time to time he was worried about a brain tumour, but most medical experts who have examined the available evidence do not favour this diagnosis. Unlike his father more than fifty years earlier, after Friedrich Nietzsche’s death in 1900 he was not subjected to an autopsy, a decision made by Elisabeth and for which she had ulterior motives.

In Ecce Homo, written late in 1888 just prior to his mental collapse, Nietzsche describes his father as ‘tender, loveable and morbid, like a being fated merely to pass by – more a gracious memory of life than life itself.’ He continues: ‘I regard it as a great privilege to have had such a father: indeed it seems to me that this explains whatever else I have of privilege, not including life, the great Yes to life. Above all, that it requires no intention on my part, but simply biding my time, for me to enter quite involuntarily into a world of high and delicate things.’[39] For his whole life Nietzsche held on to an idealized bond with his father. ‘I can well remember’, wrote the thirteen year old, ‘how one day I was travelling with my father from Lützen to Röcken when the bells rang out in the sublime tones of the Easter Festival. This sound often resonates in me and in melancholy carries me back to the dear and distant house of my father’.[40] He remembered travelling with Carl Ludwig as he went about his pastoral duties in the district; he recalled too his father’s book-lined study, the old church with its ‘superhuman image of Saint George’ in the sacristy, the garden, the ponds, and the meadow behind the house.[41] Another image in his memory was of the rowdy flag-waving supporters of the March 1848 uprising in Berlin passing by in wagons on the road between Leipzig and Weißenfels. Carl Ludwig was deeply upset by the disturbances in Berlin which for a short period threatened to topple his beloved Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Duke Joseph of Altenburg was forced to abdicate in 1848). By this time, however, he was about to enter the final stage of his illness and for Fritz normal interaction with his father became impossible. In another autobiographical fragment from 1861 Nietzsche wrote: ‘His image still stands before my soul in all liveliness: a frail noble form with fine features and a benevolent friendliness. He was loved and greeted with pleasure everywhere, as much for his intelligent conversation as for his kindness.’ For many years Nietzsche kept a portrait of his father on his desk.

After Carl Ludwig died the Nietzsche family stayed in Röcken for another eight months until the new pastor arrived. On the ninth of January 1850, however, catastrophe struck again: the death of Joseph Nietzsche, aged twenty-two months, of ‘teething convulsions’. The thirteen year old autobiographer ‘remembered’: ‘I dreamt that I heard the sound of the church organ playing a requiem. When I looked to see what the cause of it was, a grave suddenly opened and my father in his shroud arose out of it. He hurried into the church and in a moment or two reappeared with a small child in his arms. The grave opened, he stepped into it and the gravestone fell once more over the opening. The sound of the organ immediately ceased and I awoke. In the morning I related the dream to my dear mother; very shortly afterwards little Joseph became unwell, fell into convulsions, and died a few hours later. Our sorrow was beyond description. My dream had been completely fulfilled.’[42] Finally in early April the family moved. The thirteen year-old wrote: ‘I can still remember the last day and the last night in Röcken. In the evening I played with some of the children, with the thought that it was for the last time. The evening bell resounded over the fields with a melancholy tone, a thick darkness spread over the earth, in the heavens there shone the moon and the twinkling stars. I could not sleep for long; already at half past twelve I returned to the courtyard. Several wagons were standing there, loaded up, while the dim light of the lanterns gave a gloomy illumination to the yard. I thought it would be completely impossible to feel at home anywhere else. To leave a village where one has experienced joy and suffering, where the precious graves of my father and little brother are located, where the people always showed me love and kindness, how painful it was!’[43]

Carl Ludwig’s widow could have returned to her parents in Pobles, but she accepted her mother-in-law’s offer to come with her children to nearby Naumburg and live in the same extended family as in Röcken. Erdmuthe Nietzsche, who possessed some money of her own, was still well-connected in the town where four decades earlier she had lived for several years and married both her husbands. Franziska’s own income consisted of a widow’s pension of forty-six thalers annually, plus the interest on some money left to her late husband by his half-brother Ferdinand (1791-1838) the capital of which lay in trust for Fritz and Elisabeth. In later years Franziska received contributions from the Altenburg princesses. The habit of thrift, inherited from her parents, was a life-long virtue of Franziska, which with mixed success she attempted to impart to her children. In the early Naumburg years, however, she was not so much needy as dependent. Erdmuthe’s resources protected Franziska from serious want and secured for her a social position which would otherwise have been out of her reach.

If Friedrich Nietzsche inherited his sensitive soul from his father, it was from his mother that he inherited his strength and will-to-life. Her many preserved letters, often long, rambling, and almost devoid of punctuation, reveal her makeshift education (provided mostly by her father) but also a spiritual energy and ardent desire to communicate. As the daughter of well-educated parents and the wife of Carl Ludwig she had respect for intellectual accomplishments, but she never understood the minds of her son or daughter. She remained a pious Christian until the end of her life, but her faith was non-demonstrative. Her prominent traits included forgiveness, loyalty and pragmatism, while the touch of vanity in her was limited to her husband’s connections with royalty and her son’s academic achievements. So young at the time of her marriage, she came to maturity when both her children were well past childhood. It says a lot about her that, widowed at the age of twenty-three, this socially well-placed and attractive woman never remarried. Her nephew Adalbert Oehler reports that until late in life she spoke of her long-departed husband in a calm natural way that suggested a mystical unity beyond the grave. As Oehler puts it, Carl Ludwig lived on for the widow Franziska ‘not only because she was a pious Christian but because in her vital nature loyalty became a creative force: she, who was created to be a mother, saw her destiny in her children.’[44] For years Franziska made diary entries in which she addressed her deceased husband directly.[45] She longed for reunion with her Carl Ludwig but felt she could only hope for this if she lived by the laws of God, especially in regard to the children. Although it is not easy to vividly apprehend Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, the fact that he could command this posthumous loyalty from a wife so different to him, so much younger than him, and after such a short period of marriage, is of obvious relevance to an assessment of his character. This loyalty could not fail to make an impression on the son. When many years later, in the midst of a quarrel about an ‘immoral woman’, Frau Nietzsche told her son he was ‘a disgrace to your father’s grave’, Nietzsche walked out of her house and for months was unable to forget this outrage ‘for a single hour’.[46]

There are more than three hundred surviving letters from Nietzsche to his mother, along with more than two hundred and fifty addressed jointly to her and his sister. Hundreds of letters in the other direction have also been preserved. While a university student in Bonn and Leipzig, and then as professor in Basel, Nietzsche visited his mother in Naumburg as often as he could. After retiring from his professorship at Basel he planned to live in Naumburg near to his mother for part of every year. This did not eventuate, and over the next ten years, due to his intensified sense of mission in relation to which he felt a profound aversion to ‘Naumburg virtue’, his relationship with both Frau Nietzsche and Elisabeth became clouded. There was also a souring of relations arising from the hostility of his mother and sister towards Lou Salomé in 1882. Nevertheless, Franziska Nietzsche remained solicitous for her son’s welfare in every particular (climate, accommodation, clothing, diet) until his mental collapse in the first days of 1889, thereafter taking him back into her care at the same house in Naumburg where he had lived as a schoolboy. The young Nietzsche had a strong attachment to family life, a feeling which never left him. But to say that Nietzsche and his mother were ‘close’ would be beside the point, and even not true. Nietzsche and his sister Elisabeth were known during his Basel period as ‘the inseparable ones’. She would come to Basel every year for an extended visit, while in 1875-76 and 1877-78 the two would live together full-time. They would often go on holiday together. Apart from a few years of tension in the 1880’s Elisabeth idolized her brother for her whole life, and it is largely due to her that so much is preserved from Nietzsche’s notebooks and correspondence. Beginning in 1894, for over forty years she presided over the Nietzsche Archive, and after Franziska’s death in 1897 she took over the care of her sick brother.

A father who died before he had a real chance to know him, otherwise a family of women, all devout Protestants, a young mother prematurely married and widowed, a brother who died in infancy, a three year old sister, his lately departed father a pastor, both grandfathers pastors, his paternal grandmother’s father and brother pastors, his father’s sole surviving half-brother a pastor, on his mother’s side three out of six uncles who would become pastors and three out of four aunts who would marry pastors, he himself expected to become a pastor: these were the structural elements in Nietzsche’s life when at five and a half years of age he left the village of his birth.[47] As for Röcken, although it was left behind at this early date, Franziska was ultimately buried in the village churchyard next to her husband and the infant Joseph; in 1900 the son was placed alongside them, and in 1935 the daughter was lowered into her plot, having lived to the age of eighty-nine.

1. 2 Naumburg (1850-58)

At the time the Nietzsche family moved there in 1850 the population of Naumburg, situated on the Saale River sixty kilometres southwest of Leipzig, was about 15,000. With its magnificent Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul (built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries) and late Gothic St. Wenceslas Church, Naumburg had long been important in clerical affairs, but since its incorporation into Prussian Saxony in 1815 the town had also become a judicial centre. It was from these two communities, the clergy and the lawyers, that the new friends of Franziska and her children would come. Two half-sisters of Carl Ludwig, Friederike Dächsel and the unmarried Lina Nietzsche, lived in the town. The Naumburg lawyer Bernhard Dächsel, step-son of Friederike, was young Fritz’s guardian.

In April 1850 Erdmuthe Nietzsche and her two daughters, together with Franziska Nietzsche, the children Fritz and Elisabeth, and the family maid Wilhelmine Arnold (‘Mine’), moved into a house on the Neugasse. The grandmother took the comfortable front rooms, leaving Franziska and the children with the cramped and gloomy back quarters. These were bleak times for the young widow. After preparing Fritz and later Elisabeth for school Franziska would sit at her sewing until the children returned, or would read aloud for her mother-in-law, or would write in her diary, sometimes conversing therein with her deceased husband. In a letter to her son from March 1877, Franziska provides a glimpse of herself and her family in the early 1850’s: ‘My education was very deficient and my mind was directed, as was natural enough with eleven children, modest means, and a willing spirit, to practical and useful work. After I married at seventeen-and-three-quarter years I learned everything from my so very talented dear husband, then came my Fritz and Lisbeth and Joseph, who took up all my energy and time. Then came the shattering eleven-month sickness of my beloved husband, followed a half-year later by the loss of my precious infant, and my bodily strength was broken by these storms, so that, for example, when I climbed the stairs I had to rest on the top level for a long while before I could continue, and my dearest thought at that time, as a twenty-three year old, was to be soon united with my beloved. But God’s will was otherwise. He gave me strength again, to dedicate to the education of my children, so that my main goal was to have you learn what I had missed out on.’

In Friedrich Nietzsche and the Women of his Time (1935) Elisabeth expressly claims that grandmother Erdmuthe was the strongest female influence on young Fritz; also in the first volume of her biography, which appeared in 1895 when Franziska was still alive to read it, she gives priority to the grandmother.[48] Franziska had a greater role in the daily care of the children, but Erdmuthe was – and had been when Carl Ludwig was alive – the authority figure in the household. The grandmother was also a source of fascinating tales from her youth, particularly about events during the Napoleonic Wars, tales which made a lasting impression on her grandson. She had twice been caught up in the tides of war. In 1806 she was living in Weimar with her seriously ill first husband Carl Krüger when French troops occupied the town after the Battle of Jena. Unruly soldiers camped in their house, forced Krüger out of his bed in search of valuables, and damaged precious household items, before the couple were helped by a kindly French officer to flee to a nearby castle and then Naumburg. In October 1813 Erdmuthe was in Eilenburg with her second husband Superintendent Nietzsche when German and Allied troops passed through the town in preparation for the great Battle of Leipzig. Barely a week before the main battle began she gave birth to her only son Carl Ludwig.

As a Saxon, and having been young when Saxony was allied to France, Erdmuthe remained to the end of her days an admirer of Napoleon, which was unpatriotic in contemporary Prussian Naumburg. Elisabeth writes: ‘Unwittingly our admiration for Napoleon’s greatness was instilled into us from our earliest childhood, a fact which fills me with surprise to this day, for at that time the children in school were always taught to regard him as the Beast of the Apocalypse.’[49] Nietzsche himself says in a letter from 1887 that as a boy he had often heard Erdmuthe declare that Napoleon ‘was not only a great spirit, but a most kindly man’, while in Ecce Homo he records that Erdmuthe was ‘a great admirer of Napoleon’.[50] In fact Napoleon is one of the few historical figures whom Nietzsche consistently acknowledged as ‘great’. Nietzsche’s paternal grandmother’s influence seems to have extended to the sphere of religion. Sharing the rationalistic view of Christianity of her late husband she softened the impact on Fritz of the Neo-Pietism which at this time was strong in Naumburg. Elisabeth remembers that on one occasion her grandmother returned from a social event, saying with exasperation: ‘I don’t know what people want these days. Earlier we took pleasure in our own and others’ virtues, but now we take pleasure in our own and others’ sins; the more sinful, the better.’[51] More than thirty years later, a few months before his mental collapse, Erdmuthe’s grandson would write: ‘It has completely escaped me in what way I am supposed to be “sinful”.’[52] Aunt Rosalie, and probably Auguste, followed the same tendency in religion as Erdmuthe, and it stands to reason that these older women would have had an impact on Fritz. It was Erdmuthe and not Franziska who knew the important people in Naumburg and who brought Fritz into the Pinder-Krug circle which would be so important for his intellectual development. A few references to Erdmuthe in Nietzsche’s letters and writings from the 1880’s testify to a definite pride in his grandmother, partly because at one time she lived in Weimar and had loose contact with Goethe’s circle. Nietzsche’s onetime claim, however, that Erdmuthe’s mother is the ‘Muthgen’ mentioned as a friend in the young Goethe’s diary, has no foundation.[53]

Before the family moved from Röcken Fritz had received some basic instruction in reading and writing at the village school. In Naumburg, at the age of five, he was sent to a municipal elementary school where, according to Elisabeth, his serious nature set him apart from the other children: ‘Despite proper morals, a loud and coarse tone prevailed, he felt completely isolated. The earnest, reflective child, with the dignified courtly manners, was so strange to the other boys that friendly relations could not develop […] The pupils called him “the little pastor”, and in truth his way of speaking remained somewhat pastoral throughout his childhood.’ Elisabeth is also the source of an anecdote: ‘One day, just as school had finished, there was a heavy shower of rain, and we looked out along the Priestergasse for our Fritz. All the boys were running like mad towards their homes. At last little Fritz also appeared, walking slowly along with his cap covering his slate and his handkerchief spread over the whole. Mamma waved and called out to him when he was some way off: “Run, child, run!” The sheets of rain prevented us from catching his reply. When our mother remonstrated with him for coming home soaked to the skin, he replied earnestly: “Mamma, the rules of the school say that on leaving school, boys are forbidden to jump and run about in the street, but must walk quietly and decorously to their homes”.’[54] Young Fritz was not like other boys of his age. This sometimes worried his mother, but she received welcome reassurance from her own father. Elisabeth records: ‘A conversation not meant for my ears has remained stamped on my memory. Our mother was complaining to her father that Fritz was so different from other boys and had difficulty in making friends. Otherwise, she said, he was good and obedient; but in everything he had his own opinions, which did not always coincide with those of other people. My elders had forgotten that I was in a far corner of the room playing with my dolls, and my grandfather replied rather hotly: “My dear child, you don’t know what you possess in this boy of yours! He is the most extraordinary and the most talented child I have ever seen in my life. Leave him to his own devices!”’[55]

Fritz remained in the municipal school for three years. After Easter 1853, now aged eight and a half, he moved to the ‘Institute’ (private school) of a candidate clergyman named Weber. In this establishment, as well as receiving instruction in religion he began the study of Latin and Greek in preparation for the Cathedral Gymasium. It was a cosier atmosphere, shared by boys from wealthier homes, and Fritz felt altogether more comfortable. But his sensation of difference remained. ‘In my young life’, wrote the thirteen year old, ‘I had already experienced much grief and sadness, and so I was not so cheerful and wild as children typically are. My fellow pupils used to tease me on account of my seriousness; this happened not just in the elementary school, but also in the Institute and even at the gymnasium. Ever since childhood I sought out solitude and felt happiest when left undisturbed to myself. I usually found the greatest joy in the free temple of nature. Storms always made the finest impression upon me; the cracking thunder and flashes of lightning only increased my reverence for God.’[56] Much later, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche would say that ‘at an absurdly early age, at seven, I already knew that no human word would ever reach me’.[57] At Weber’s Institute, nevertheless, he formed long-lasting friendships with two fellow-pupils he already knew outside of school.

Wilhelm Pinder was three months older, and his cousin Gustav Krug one month younger, than Nietzsche. Wilhelm’s father Eduard Pinder, a lawyer at the Naumburg Court of Appeals, was the son of the still-living Caroline Pinder, a close friend of Erdmuthe during her few years in Naumburg nearly five decades earlier. Privy Counsellor Gustav Adolf Krug, father of young Gustav, was married to Eduard Pinder’s sister Clementine. The Pinder and Krug families lived together with Caroline in one of the great houses of the town located in the main square. When Erdmuthe returned to Naumburg she resumed contact with her old friend, which led to Franziska and the children gaining admission to leading circles of the town. Over the next ten years, until Nietzsche began university studies in Bonn, his friendship with the Krug and Pinder boys remained one of the most important elements in his life.

It was through Wilhelm’s father that Nietzsche made his first acquaintance with classical German literature, especially Goethe. Erdmuthe thought that Goethe was not strictly suitable for young children, but Eduard Pinder had a different attitude, and would give readings, from Goethe and other German writers, that were attended by Fritz and Elisabeth. While reading Herr Pinder would provide a commentary on the work. At the same time Eduard Pinder was an active lay churchman, which confirmed to the boy (he already had the example of grandfather David Oehler) that Christianity and interest in higher culture could go hand in hand. Gustav Krug the elder was a leading figure in the musical life of the city. An accomplished musician with prize-winning compositions to his name and the possessor of a magnificent grand piano, his house had long been frequented by eminent musicians, including Felix Mendelssohn (now dead, he had been a godfather to young Gustav), Robert and Clara Schumann, and the Müller Brothers (whom Fritz himself had the pleasure of hearing in 1855). Gustav Junior played the violin, and as Fritz developed his own facility at the piano the boys spent much time together in musical pleasures. The Pinder-Krug house was worlds away from the experience and knowledge of the pastor’s widow Franziska, who at first felt nervous moving in such exalted company. But with Erdmuthe easing the way Franziska came to enjoy her newfound status and knew it meant social advancement for her children.

Already in Röcken young Fritz had displayed a keen responsiveness to music. He would always listen attentively when his father was at the piano, to such an extent that Franziska, to obtain relief from the rowdiness of her son, would ask her husband to play.[58] This must have been when Fritz was three or younger, since by the time he was four his sick father was no longer capable of playing. Piano lessons began in Naumburg in 1852-53, Franziska buying a piano and engaging the services of an old choirmaster; she also took lessons herself to assist her son. The Krug-Pinder house was a major source of musical stimulation. Others were Naumburg Cathedral, which Fritz would regularly visit to hear the choir’s rehearsals, and the St. Wenceslas Church. Handel’s Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus, Mozart’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation, and Mendelssohn’s Summer Dream, are among the memorable musical experiences recorded by the thirteen-year-old autobiographer, to which he adds some reflections on the nature of music and his relationship to it: ‘God has given us music, so that first through it we can be led upwards. Music unifies all qualities within itself: it can elevate, it can dally with us, it can cheer us, and it is capable, through its soft melancholy tones, of breaking the roughest spirit. But the main thing is that it lifts our thoughts to a higher level, that it elevates, even stirs us. This is especially the aim of church music […] But everything God gives to us can be a blessing only if it is used wisely and correctly. If music is used for entertainment or to show off in front of others then it is sinful and damaging. Yet this happens very often, indeed the whole of modern music shows the marks of it […] People who have contempt for music must be seen as spiritless creatures similar to the animals. May this magnificent gift of God always be my companion on my journey through life.’[59] In this same document the young Fritz testifies: ‘I developed a thorough detestation of all modern music and of all that was not classical. Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bach are for me the pillars of German music.’[60] This negative opinion of ‘modern music’ (Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz) was probably influenced by Gustav Krug Senior.

Nietzsche’s earliest musical compositions date from 1854, soon after he had heard Handel’s Messiah in the cathedral, and were prompted by that experience.[61] They are immature pieces of course, mainly in the nature of exercises, but he was making good progress in piano playing. By 1856 he was able to play a few Beethoven sonatas. In November of the same year he composed two sonatas dedicated to his mother, followed in 1857-58 by, among other things, a ‘birthday symphony’ for piano and violin, an overture in G minor for string orchestra, and piano pieces for two and four hands. There is no evidence that Nietzsche ever seriously contemplated becoming a professional musician; in all probability he did not possess the requisite talent for it, and neither did he undertake the necessary studies. On the other hand he was always more than a dabbler or music-lover. Like his father he had a gift for improvisation on the piano. Above all, music was an emotional need for Nietzsche, as the best medium for mastering his moods. Music would always be for him exploration and discovery of realities ‘knowable’ in no other way. It was the ‘spirit of music’ that moved him.

After years of ill health Auguste Nietzsche died on the second of August 1855. She was forty. Elisabeth recalls: ‘She suffered from exceedingly painful gastric troubles, which she bore with great sweetness and patience. In spite of her affliction, she did not cease managing the affairs of the household in a truly admirable manner. “Leave me this one solace”, she would say, when she was entreated to spare herself.’[62] Erdmuthe was much grieved by the death of her youngest child, from whom she had never been separated. Her own death, at age seventy-seven, followed eight months later on the third of April 1856. As befitted her status in Naumburg her funeral was in grand style. ‘The Heavenly Father knows how I cried’, wrote the thirteen year old Nietzsche. And he observed: ‘It is a strange feature of the human heart that when we have experienced a great loss we do not try to forget it, but bring it before our soul as often as possible. It is as if by frequent recounting we create a true consolation for our sorrow.’[63]

Before Fritz had reached the age of twelve three of the five adults with whom he had grown up were dead. Of course he and his sister continued to have regular contact with their numerous aunts and uncles, especially Rosalie, Friederike and Lina in Naumburg. Their favourite holiday destination was the parsonage at Pobles, but Fritz and Elisabeth also visited their aunts (Carl Ludwig’s other half-sisters) in Plauen, their uncle Pastor August Nietzsche (the oldest and sole surviving half-brother of Carl Ludwig) in the tiny Thuringian village of Nirmsdorf, and also Franziska’s friends in Altschönefeld, from where the eleven year old Fritz in summer 1856 made his first acquaintance with nearby Leipzig, including its bookshops and music shops. It was during this stay in Altschönefeld that Nietzsche, aged eleven, wrote his first extant letter to Gustav Krug, reporting that a little earlier in Pobles his grandfather David Oehler had played for him several Beethoven sonatas, and adding: ‘In Leipzig I purchased Beethoven’s G Major Sonata op. 49. How are you faring with the arrangement of your overture?’ The trips to Pobles had the added significance of allowing the family to revisit nearby Röcken and the graves of Carl Ludwig and little Joseph. After grandfather Oehler died in December 1859, aged seventy-two, the Pobles holidays came to an end. Franziska’s mother Wilhelmine moved to relatives and died in Mersburg in November 1876 at the age of eighty-two. Rosalie, constantly ailing, lived on in Naumburg where, aged fifty-five, she died in 1867. Uncle August Nietzsche died in 1858 at the age of seventy-three, having been pastor of Nirmsdorf for fifty years, but Fritz remained in contact with August’s daughter Mathilde and son-in-law Emil Schenk (not the friend of the late Carl Ludwig) in Jena, whom he visited in the summer of 1859.

Soon after Erdmuthe’s death Franziska moved with the children into a more spacious house near the Marientor, Rosalie taking separate lodgings. At thirty, for the first time in her life Franziska was mistress of her household, while Fritz now had his own bedroom instead of having to share with Elisabeth. In October 1858 the family moved again, to Weingarten 18, which became Franziska’s residence until her death in 1897 (she was able to purchase the property after her mother died in 1876). This was the house where she nursed her insane son in the 1890’s. Naumburg alone can qualify as Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘home town’: it is where he had his early schooling between 1850 and 1858, and when he attended Schulpforta boarding school between 1858 and 1864 Naumburg was just a few kilometres away. Nevertheless, Nietzsche never had tender feelings for the town. In a letter to his mother and sister in 1885 he would say of Naumburg that ‘there is nothing in my heart which speaks in its favour; I was not “born” there and never became “at home” there.’[64]

In the early Naumburg years Nietzsche formed the strong bond with his sister Elisabeth which was to remain unclouded for many years. Even as a young boy he took it upon himself to educate Elisabeth, who became his first ‘disciple’. As soon as Elisabeth was old enough to understand that her brother produced ‘writings’ she began her life-long practice of collecting and hoarding them; young Fritz, she relates, sometimes used to raid her ‘treasure drawer’ and burn items he regarded as too childish.[65] Elisabeth too attended school in Naumburg, proving herself an able pupil and outstripping Fritz in some subjects, notably French and English. While they were young children Nietzsche gave her the nick-name ‘Llama’ after reading a description of this animal in a book of natural history. What made the name appropriate, Elisabeth later wrote, is that the llama ‘willingly carries the heaviest burdens, but if coerced or treated badly it refuses to take any nourishment and lies down in the dust to die.’[66] Nietzsche never stopped using this nickname to and of his sister; nobody else used it. Elisabeth inherited the Oehler characteristics of strong will and high-spiritedness with little of reflective intellectuality from the Nietzsche side. She was not, admittedly, without intellectual attributes, and her many writings on her brother, beginning with the first volume of her biography in 1895, earned her repeated (albeit unsuccessful) nominations for the Nobel Prize for Literature. But although her prose style is pleasing, clear, and energetic, she possessed neither depth nor independence of mind. While, like Fritz, she was always ‘different’, in her case this was expressed as reverence for her brother. Frau Nietzsche hoped that her daughter would marry as soon as she reached an appropriate age, and as an attractive young woman Elisabeth had no lack of qualified suitors, but Fritz had spoiled her taste to the degree that she found other men too dull to contemplate as husbands. In 1885, however, at the age of thirty-eight and the relationship with her brother having turned sour in the wake of his liaison with the ‘immoral’ Lou Salomé, Elisabeth married the anti-Semitic publicist Bernard Förster. Early the following year the couple moved to Paraguay to establish a German ‘colony’, but in June 1889, just six months after Nietzsche’s mental collapse, Förster, overcome by a self-inflicted financial scandal, committed suicide. Elisabeth returned to Germany permanently in 1893 and as head of the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar spent the rest of her life immortalizing her brother. She wrote her last book at the age of eighty-eight.

The most important single document we possess from Nietzsche’s school years in Naumburg is a nine thousand word autobiography entitled ‘From My Life’. Written shortly before entering Schulpforta, it reveals not only the literary gifts of the boy but a rare reflectiveness which anticipates his later development. Apart from a few diary entries from 1856-57 it is the first of a series of autobiographical fragments from Nietzsche’s school and university years. ‘From My Life’ gives a chronological account beginning with Nietzsche’s birth and moving through to the summer holidays of 1858. It was composed in Plauen and Pobles in the latter part of August, Nietzsche having written from Plauen to his aunt Rosalie in Naumburg asking for information on the lives of his father, his great uncle Krause, and grandmother Erdmuthe. The document describes the deaths of his father and brother, the sorrowful departure from Röcken, the new environment of Naumburg including the difficulties which he and his sister experienced adjusting to a town where most people were strangers to one another, his childish games with his sister, his friends Gustav and Wilhelm together with their families, the musical and literary interests he shared with his friends, and the deaths of Auguste and Erdmuthe. The chronology is interspersed with many reflective passages, including on the nature and method of autobiography. Nietzsche’s above-quoted observations on music belong to this document, as does an analysis of his poetical activity, including a listing of his poems divided into three periods, 1855-56, 1857, and 1858 (the titles of forty-six ‘selected’ poems are given).

The way he describes his friendship with Gustav and Wilhelm presages his life-long yearning for a philosophical meeting of minds: ‘We exchanged ideas over poets and writers, works we had read, new appearances in the field of literature; we made plans together, gave poems to one another and were not content until we had completely opened our hearts. These were my friends, and with age the friendship also grew. Indeed to possess true friends is high and noble, and God lends real beauty to our life when he gives us companions with whom to strive.’[67] One passage reflects on the qualities of good poetry: ‘A poem which is empty of thought and covered over with phrases and images, resembles a rosy-cheeked apple with a worm inside of it. Hackneyed expressions must be completely absent from poetry, since the frequent use of such phrases testifies to a mind incapable of producing anything itself. In composing a work one must above all pay attention to the thoughts; one can excuse negligence of style before one can excuse a confused idea. Goethe’s poems with their deep gold-clear thoughts are a model.’[68] A ‘Retrospect’ at the end of the document contains some formulaic words of piety which, while they do not testify to inward Christianity, demonstrate that the thirteen year-old Nietzsche was still far from any forthright rejection of the religion of his family: ‘I have already experienced so much, joyful and sorrowful things, cheerful and sad things, but in everything God has safely guided me like a father his weak little child. Much that is painful has been laid upon me, but I recognize with reverence the sublime power of God who reigns over everything. May the Good Lord give me power and strength to carry out my intention and protect me on my life-path. Like a child I trust in his grace. He will preserve us all, so that nothing makes us disconsolate.’ The manuscript concludes as follows:

Life is a mirror.

To recognize oneself in it,

I would like to name as the first thing

For which we strive!!

An autobiographical fragment by friend Wilhelm Pinder, also from 1858, includes an appreciative description of ‘Fritz Nietzsche’: ‘The fundamental feature of his character was a certain melancholy, which expressed itself in his whole being. From his earliest childhood he loved solitude and followed his own thoughts. He had an extremely pious inwardly turned sensibility and as a child thought about things that did not occupy other boys of his age. He possessed a steady industriousness which like everything else about him served as a model for me. Many of my inclinations, especially in literature and music, were awakened and nourished through him alone. He had a serious but also friendly and gentle nature. He never did anything without consideration. When we worked together, and he wrote something to which I could not immediately assent, he knew how to discuss the issue with me in a clear objective fashion. Apart from this his main virtues were modesty and gratitude, which he demonstrated in the most pronounced way on all occasions. From this modesty there arose a certain shyness, and particularly among strangers he did not feel at ease.’[69]

The earliest extant literary piece from Nietzsche is a poem composed for the first of January, 1852, when he was seven years old. It opens with the line ‘To the beautiful new year’s morning’ and addresses his mother with reverential thankfulness and the hope that ‘God will let you live a long life’.[70] As a child it was Nietzsche’s habit to present collections of his poems to his mother on her birthday. He would continue this practice through his school years and a little beyond, when in addition to poems and musical compositions dedicated to his mother or Pinder and Krug he occasionally sent collections of songs to girls with whom he was enamoured.

In 1854-55 Fritz passionately sided with the Russians in the Crimean War, filling his exercise books with military drawings and notes on siege warfare. In 1854, at the age of nine, he wrote a play ‘King Squirrel’, based on a character he had created in his childish games and to whom he dedicated poems and musical compositions. Another play, entitled ‘The Gods in Olympus’ and set half on earth, half in the realm of the gods, was performed in the Pinder-Krug house, Nietzsche playing Mars, the god of war.[71] Fragments of these plays survive. The Greek gods and heroes occupied the imagination of the boy even before he left Weber’s Institute; in part this was due to the influence of Herr Pinder, but then, as Elisabeth comments, ‘Graecomania was indeed peculiar to the age, and everything was given a Greek name in those days’.[72] Apart from school exercises, most of Nietzsche’s literary output until he began at Pforta in October 1858 consists of poems. Greek themes with heroic deeds figure prominently, a Christian note being sometimes struck seemingly for the benefit of his mother. The young poet is keenly conscious of his difference from other people (not just children) and in a manner characteristic of his later life usually sees this fatalistically as belonging to his nature and for him as a force for freedom. A poem from early 1856 opens ‘Over there on that cliff top/That is my favourite place to sit’.[73] A startling melancholy sometimes shows through, as in an untitled poem from the first half of 1858:

Oh woe! That I have left

The dear house of my father

The whole world is like a grave

And all joy is gone

I cannot sing with cheer

But must always lament

When with bitter pains

I travel my road

My heart was like the blue day

Now it is barren and empty

The songs of the nightingale and the lark

Rang out all around me

Now it is silent like a grave

White snow all around me

Bitterly do I cry out

Woe! Were I at home![74]

Another conspicuous feature of the early poetry is a preoccupation with storms and dangerous sea voyages; this will remain a favourite field of metaphors for the rest of his life. Some of Nietzsche’s early (pre-Pforta) productions did not survive his raids on Elisabeth’s treasure drawer but the extant material is sufficient in quantity to indicate a powerful creative urge obviously marking him off from the majority of children. Despite formal assent to the religion of his family and fatherland he did not possess a ‘pious’ temperament, a point he would underline in Ecce Homo. He enjoyed contemplating danger and heroism, which is normal for a child, but he also liked to dwell on death, isolation, homelessness and homesickness. Already he was a seeker of a decidedly artistic stamp, without knowing quite what he was seeking. Or perhaps he was searching for happiness, as in some remarkable fragments from 1857. In one fragment entitled ‘The Transitoriness of Happiness’ a ‘wanderer’ lands in Egypt and is struck by the ruin and devastation of a once magnificent land, then moves on to Mesopotamia and has the same experience.[75] In a related set of poems a character named Alfonso sets out to discover the true meaning of happiness:

On the high towers of the castle

Alfonso sits pale and gloomy

Filled with an unnameable yearning

After the meaning of happiness

And he thinks of the old heroes

Who through power and strength

Subjugated peoples

That was not true happiness

Ah! What can beauty be

He thinks this over day and night

And refuses all sustenance

He turns stubbornly inward

He sits and sees

The sun go down

And breaks out in tearful words

Ridden with pain he calls out

Ah sun! You witness of my suffering

Sink down again and leave me behind

Moaning and bitterly tormented by doubt

Would I sink down into the grave like you

Listen! Something sounds so sweet and fine

Beautiful notes from the old monastery

Calling all people to quiet and prayer

For him this gives no rest by day or by night[76]

Having rejected conventional solutions to the problem of happiness Alfonso embarks on a ‘pilgrimage’ in search of an answer, receiving diverse advice without achieving ultimate satisfaction. It is perhaps impossible to ‘explain’ the persistent melancholy and nostalgia, often coupled with an heroic tone, in Nietzsche’s juvenilia. Certainly he had experienced grief during his formative years. Outwardly, however, his family life in Naumburg from 1850, despite the loss of grandmother Erdmuthe and Aunt Auguste, does not seem to have been particularly unhappy. His mother was not of a naturally morose disposition, nor did Elisabeth develop anything like a bleak cast of mind. He had numerous devoted aunts and uncles whom he enjoyed visiting, and the Pinder-Krug house was a constant stimulant. Yet the young Fritz’s sense of existential isolation was the most important element in his psyche, and without it, no doubt, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche would never have come into being.

Shortly before Fritz began at the Cathedral Gymnasium in October 1855 he was offered a free place at the famous Orphan School at Halle. Grandfather David Oehler (several of whose sons had attended the University of Halle) and grandmother Erdmuthe Nietzsche (whose son Carl Ludwig had studied there) favoured acceptance but Franziska decided otherwise, hoping that within a few years there would be an opening at the equally reputable Schulpforta outside of Naumburg. In fact Franziska and Fritz had been aware of the possibility of a place at Pforta ever since the early years in Naumburg. Doubtless Frau Nietzsche thought that a few years of gymnasium fees were well worth it if a reasonable prospect existed that Fritz would remain in the vicinity of Naumburg for his later schooling. The decision not to uproot her son after six years in Naumburg was probably a wise one for a boy who would always suffer from a sensation of homelessness: not only did it allow him to stay within the circle of his relatives but it permitted the further development of his friendship with Gustav and Wilhelm, both of whom also moved on from Weber’s Institute to the Cathedral Gymnasium. In hindsight it seems fated that Nietzsche did not go the Halle Orphan School, at which, in contrast to the humanistic culture of the gymnasium and later at Schulpforta, there still reigned the Pietist spirit of its seventeenth century founders.

The Cathedral Gymnasium had highly qualified teachers, several of whom, including the headmaster Dr Carl Förtsch, were classical philologists. Nietzsche’s studies now began in earnest, and the materials preserved in his notebooks show how demanding these were. But despite rising early and staying up late at night to study, Nietzsche did not obtain particularly good grades at the gymnasium. Almost half the class-hours in the school were taken up by Latin and Greek, in which subjects young Fritz struggled. Even in German, French, history and geography, he regularly received grades of ‘satisfactory’ or ‘unsatisfactory’ in respect of his ‘knowledge’, while his ‘effort’ usually, and his ‘conduct’ invariably, were awarded full marks.[77] Nietzsche’s Leaving Certificate, dated the twenty-fifth of September 1858, indicates that he had reached the level of ‘good’ in religion, ‘satisfactory’ in German, French, history, geography, science and mathematics, but was still deemed ‘unsatisfactory’ in Latin and Greek.[78] With regard to his conduct Dr Förtsch commented: ‘He has always recommended himself to his teachers by his obedience and well-mannered behaviour in and outside of school. He has been conscientious in attendance, in the lessons attentive and participatory.’ The boy was still ‘the little pastor’, but as yet, in schoolwork, without signs of unusual intellectual prowess. Records for the gymnasium show Gustav Krug at about the same level as Fritz, with Wilhelm Pinder significantly above them both.

In the years 1855-58, by virtue of his gymnasium studies and ongoing contact with the Krug-Pinder house, Nietzsche became familiar with a wide range of literature. From his family and Weber’s Institute he already had a good knowledge of the Bible. To this he added a first acquaintance with the Greek and Latin classics, German classics including Goethe, Herder, and Schiller, also the Nibelungenlied, and of English authors mainly Shakespeare, who soon became a favourite. At the end of 1858 or early 1859 Elisabeth made a list of the books in her brother’s library; along with works by the above-mentioned authors this includes titles from Lessing, literary and musical biographies, historical works, and a collection of sayings from the ancient world. From other evidence it can be established that by the time he entered Pforta or soon afterwards Nietzsche either possessed, or had read, or had examined, or at least wanted to obtain (among other items): the autobiography of Jung-Stilling, a collection of stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, an Old German Reader edited by Karl Simrock (whose lectures Nietzsche would attend at the University of Bonn), Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and poetical works by Chamisso.[79] Conspicuous is the absence of books of theology, church history, or Christian edification. It seems that as yet (he turned fourteen in October 1858) Nietzsche was not reading any strictly philosophical books, although there was philosophical content in much he did read, for instance Goethe and Lessing.

1. 3 Schulpforta (1858-64)

In ‘From My Life’, which was completed on the first of September 1858, there is no mention of Schulpforta, probably because at this point Nietzsche expected to return to the Naumburg Gymnasium. But although the offer of a free place at Pforta apparently came suddenly it could not have been altogether unexpected or at least unhoped for. Elisabeth would always maintain that her brother was offered a scholarship at Pforta because of his outstanding academic record at the Naumburg Gymnasium, but this explanation does not tally with his average performance there in most subjects. Nietzsche’s academic deficiencies are confirmed by the fact that as a result of the entrance examination for Pforta he had to repeat in his new school the last term he had completed at the gymnasium; this meant that he would not graduate from Pforta until September 1864, when he was nearly twenty years old. The true reason Nietzsche received a scholarship seems to be that as a pastor his late father had been a servant of the state. In addition the school tended to take children who were orphans or fatherless. Whether there were other factors involved, for example the reputation of Carl Ludwig (the resident physician in Pforta, Carl Zimmermann, had been personally acquainted with Nietzsche’s father), is difficult to judge. In a fragment from 1861 Nietzsche claims that the decision whether to accept the scholarship was left to himself: ‘I already had good feelings towards Pforta, partly because of the reputation of the school and the famous names who had been there in the past, partly because I admired its beautiful grounds and environment. I quickly decided for acceptance and have never regretted it.’[80] The proximity of Naumburg meant that he could meet his family and friends regularly, mostly on Sundays at a coffee-house half-way between the school and Naumburg. Gustav and Wilhelm stayed at the gymnasium, graduating at Easter 1864. Despite the cessation of daily contact Nietzsche’s friendship with these boys not only continued but deepened during his first four years at Pforta.

Nietzsche started at Schulpforta in early October 1858. Located just south of the Saale a few kilometres from Naumburg, for over three centuries it had been one of the most prestigious schools in Germany, numbering among its pupils Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1739-45), J. G. Fichte (1774-80), and Leopold von Ranke (1809-14). A Cistercian monastery under the name ‘Sanctae Mariae ad Portam’ had been founded on the site in 1137, but in 1543 the establishment was turned into a secular school. When Nietzsche arrived it occupied about sixty acres, including a thirteenth century gothic church, residential buildings for the teachers and pupils (the latter sleeping in thirty-bed dormitories), classrooms, cloisters and capacious gardens, all set within high walls. There were about two hundred boys at the school, most of whom were on scholarships, and twelve teachers, eight bearing the title of professor. Each pupil had a tutor among the teachers, who exercised a personal supervisory function, was in contact with the boy’s family, and dispensed money coming from home. Nietzsche’s tutor was Professor Robert Buddensieg, a theologian and instructor in religion. Nietzsche became very fond of Buddensieg and was profoundly grieved when he died in August 1861.

Since 1815 the school had been Prussian, and something of the atmosphere of a Prussian cadet-academy still attached to it. Life in Schulpforta was regimented down to the smallest details. Boys had to rise early for lessons and study sessions which would last ten hours a day, six days a week, with a few hours of freedom on Sunday; there were also compulsory religious services and periods of prayer. But although a Christian school, Pforta had a tradition of humanistic education and openness to modern tendencies of thought. As regards subjects of instruction, the emphasis was on Latin and Greek, the former receiving the greater weight; these two subjects made up nearly fifty percent of class hours. German literature, including middle-high German, was taught by the eminent literary historian Karl August Koberstein. Other subjects were history, geography, religion, Hebrew, and mathematics. Teachers sometimes gave private (optional) classes in modern languages (English, French, Italian). Physical education was not overlooked, Nietzsche proving himself proficient at swimming. In later life Nietzsche’s main regret about the curriculum at Pforta was its neglect, typical of German schools at the time, of the natural sciences. On the other hand he remained grateful for the rigorous training in ‘method’ he received in the course of his language studies. This training in fact, together with the spirit of German classicism reigning at Pforta (Schiller’s one hundredth birthday was celebrated with fanfare in November 1859), tended to subvert the official Christianity of the school.

During six years at Schulpforta Nietzsche not only absorbed a wealth of knowledge but immeasurably strengthened the mental disposition – above all the yearning for truth, understood as inseparable from the drive for autonomy – which would be his for the rest of his life. He was a good student, and recognized as such by his teachers, but again, as in the Naumburg Gymnasium, he did not always excel in his grades. At bottom Nietzsche was too independently-minded to work for the sake of pleasing his teachers, and unless his school-work served some inner urge he did not devote himself to it wholeheartedly. By the same token, once he inwardly embraced a subject he went to the top of the class. He found mathematics boring and consequently was always weak at this subject. And he made little progress in Hebrew, again because he was not interested. Indeed Nietzsche had little talent for languages. He was deficient in Latin and Greek at the Naumburg Gymnasium and only gradually improved at Pforta, and although he had a keen interest in English authors (Shakespeare, Shelley, and especially Byron) whom he wanted to read in the original, he would never apply himself sufficiently to succeed in this. It was the same with French (he obtained some competence in this in later years when he regularly spent time in Nice) and Italian. In his mature life most of his friends were competent in a greater number of languages than was Nietzsche.

In a fragment from 1868 Nietzsche explains how Schulpforta discipline helped him pursue his autonomous path: ‘My father, a Protestant country pastor in Thüringia, died too early, so I lacked the strict superior guidance of a masculine intellect. When as a boy I came to Schulpforta I discovered a surrogate for paternal education in the homogenizing discipline of an orderly school. But precisely this well-nigh military compulsion which, because it is supposed to work upon the masses, treats the individual coolly and superficially, led me back to myself. In the face of a monotonous regimen I rescued my private inclinations and strivings; I practiced a hidden cult of arts and endeavoured through an over-excited thirst for universal knowledge and enjoyment to break the rigidity of the regulated order of time and its use.’[81] But Nietzsche’s most eloquent tribute to Schulpforta is in a notebook fragment twenty years later: ‘I cannot see how somebody who did not at the right time go to a good school can ever make up for this. Such a person does not know himself; he goes through life without having learned to walk, the slack muscles are betrayed by every step […] Under all circumstances what is most desirable is a hard discipline at the right time, at that age when one is proud to see much demanded of one. For this is what differentiates the hard school as the good school from every other: that much is demanded, that it is demanded strictly, that even the good and excellent are demanded as normal, that praise is infrequent, that indulgence is lacking, that reproaches are sharp and objective without regard to talent or origin […] The same discipline makes competent the scholar and the soldier, and strictly speaking there are no competent scholars who do not have within them the instincts of a competent soldier […] What does one learn in a hard school? To obey and to command.’

Nietzsche did not make new friends easily at Pforta. Almost to the end of his school years his best friends remained Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, whom he saw at every opportunity and with whom he carried on a regular correspondence on matters literary, musical, and philosophical. He continued to write poetry and compose music, often sending his work to his friends in Naumburg, and he was always encouraging Wilhelm and Gustav to their own creative efforts. In a letter to Pinder at the beginning of April 1859 he asks to be sent a topic for an essay, and as a topic for Pinder suggests ‘On Divine and Human Freedom’: ‘Freedom is one of the most important subjects. Just throw out questions. What is freedom? Who is free? What is free will?’ Nietzsche and Pinder often ended their letters to each other with ‘Semper nostra amicitia manet’ (‘May our friendship always endure’).

At the end of April 1859, back in Pforta after spending his Easter vacation in Pobles and Naumburg, he wrote to Pinder detailing the result of his holiday occupations: ‘Firstly an abortive play entitled “Prometheus”, filled with no end of specious ideas on this subject, secondly three poems on the same theme, which I ridicule in the third piece. The latter, by the way, is a queer thing but not yet finished – just six closely written quarto sheets – and is headed “Question marks and notes together with a general exclamation mark over three poems entitled Prometheus”. In this a poet is set against the public, and the whole thing is a mixture of nonsense and stupidity, among other things a sentence which continues for an entire page. There are terribly comical distortions, real stupidities. I do not know how I got such crazy ideas.’[82] In another letter to Pinder soon afterwards Nietzsche invites his friend to join him in a research project: ‘Prometheus has become interesting material for me and I would much like it if we both wrote down our thoughts on this topic. Above all assemble from lexicons and other handbooks of mythology as complete an account of his life as possible together with related myths concerning Japetos, the Titans, Epimetheus, Pandora. You are better able to do this, since I have access to fewer books. Then upon closer examination of this material write down all your thoughts, and I shall do the same.’ Nietzsche follows with suggestions as to the detailed division of tasks. There is no further record of this project, but no doubt Nietzsche continued investigations. It is noteworthy – since Pforta had a well-stocked library – that Nietzsche assumes Pinder to have superior access to books in Naumburg. The Cathedral Gymnasium possessed an impressive library, which Nietzsche would occasionally consult even after leaving Pforta. There was also the private library at the Krug-Pinder residence.

The notion of a research project of the kind Nietzsche mentions is most unusual for a fourteen year old. But by the time he arrived at Pforta Nietzsche was at home in the world of books: he had always loved libraries, beginning (if we are to believe his memories) with his father’s at Röcken, then grandfather Oehler’s at Pobles, then the Naumburg libraries and now Pforta. As for the ‘crazy ideas’ in Nietzsche’s notes on Prometheus, taken as a whole they indeed amount to a chaos, but in parts they reveal a remarkable anticipation of themes which come to the fore in his writings of the early 1870’s. Thus he mocks his play-fragment and poems as follows: ‘Ugh! How awful! One wants to renew the times of Aeschylus, or if there are no more human beings, must one allow Titans to arise again? Unheard of slander against contemporary humanity! Now, where everything is flourishing, are we supposed to return to the primordial origins of culture? Is that not an extraordinary impertinence?’[83] But this ‘extraordinary impertinence’ is just what Nietzsche in 1871 will venture in The Birth of Tragedy, on whose title page will appear a vignette of Prometheus released from his chains.

In a letter to Pinder from mid-February 1859 Nietzsche sent him a short ‘continuation of my autobiography’, consisting of one long paragraph giving his sensations and thoughts upon entering Pforta, together with a poem ‘Song of May’ speaking of nature’s springtime rejuvenation as consolation for sadness. Another characteristic poem ‘In the Distance’ went off to Pinder in June. In part it reads:

In the distance, in the distance

Shine the stars of my life

And with melancholy look

I gaze upon my bygone happiness

Ah so willingly, so willingly

Looking back in delight!

Like a wanderer who stands on the heights

Looking into the distance

This world is too small for the noble spirit

Who flies up upon wings of enthusiasm

High up over this nullity of life

And flees into blessed, better heights

Where the stars beside him wander around suns

Who sees in the universe the infinite

The all-seeing reign supreme

But one feeling checks the tremendous

Wild impulse of the heart

Enriching and filling his life

With love and refreshment –

It is the magnificent feeling of love for home

Oh how happy is he who in the storm of life

Knows a house where he can rest

In August 1859, a few months short of his fifteenth birthday, Nietzsche committed to his notebook one of his most oft-quoted early poems, ‘Without a Homeland’:[84]

Wild steeds carry

Me without fear and hesitation

Through the farthest realms.

And whoever sees me knows me,

And whoever knows me calls me:

The homeless man.

Heidideldi!

Never forsake me!

My happiness, you bright star!

Nobody may dare

To ask me

Where my homeland is:

I am truly not bound

To space and fleeting hours,

I am as free as the eagle!

Heidideldi!

Never forsake me!

My happiness, you beloved May!

That one day I shall die,

Must kiss bitter death,

That I hardly believe:

Shall I sink into the grave

And never again drink

Life’s fragrant froth?

Heidideldi!

Never forsake me!

My happiness, you colourful dream.

Nearly thirty years later, in Book Five of The Gay Science, Nietzsche will refer to himself as one of those who, in the conditions of modern Europe, ‘are entitled to call themselves homeless in a distinctive and honourable sense’.[85]

Other preserved writings from Nietzsche’s first years at Pforta include school essays, extracts from his reading, numerous poems, some diary entries (but he did not keep a steady diary for any length of time) and accounts of his holidays, three short chapters of an unfinished novel ‘Capri and Helgoland’, and a drama ‘Philotas’ running to about thirty pages. In the first chapter of the fragmentary novel, which is set at sea and features a young man contemplating his proper homeland, the following passage occurs: ‘This inward feeling of home is given to all human beings, and it is good if we can preserve in our innermost heart what is dear and precious to us but also become master of this mood. We are pilgrims in this world and have our home everywhere and nowhere.’ And in the second chapter: ‘Before a storm all human beings are beset by an uneasy intimation; one looks at everything in a much more serious and anxious way and sees everywhere an omen. Earnest tension replaces joyful recollection; the same sea that had previously been murmuring so cheerfully now appears uncanny and grim.’[86] Nietzsche’s unfinished drama centres on the conspiracy against Alexander the Great by his general Philotas. He had possibly read Lessing’s play of the same title, but in his own piece Nietzsche is concerned mainly with the authenticity or otherwise of Alexander’s quasi-divine ‘greatness’.

Nietzsche’s notebooks, his letters to Wilhelm and Gustav, and his letters to his family (especially his wish-lists for Christmas and birthdays) give a good idea of his reading at Pforta. Apart from Greek and Latin works he read, to name just some of the more important authors he explicitly mentions during six years at the school: Cervantes, Dante, Machiavelli, Sterne, P. B. Shelley, Byron, Emerson, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Jean Paul, Novalis, Hölderlin, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, Platen, Feuerbach, A. W. Schlegel, Alexander von Humboldt, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Chamisso, Petöfi, Guizot, and Rousseau. In addition he made a serious study of the Nibelungenlied, the Edda, and read many biographies and historical works (including literary, cultural, and philosophical histories) from the library at the school. In regard to ancient authors he built on the foundations he had acquired at the Naumburg Gymnasium, so that by the time he left Pforta he had spent nine years immersed in the Greek and Latin classics. Otto Bendorf, a teacher at Pforta from 1862 to 1864, wrote many years later that ‘already at that time his great erudition was astonishing, and no less the deep understanding he brought to things’.[87] The young Nietzsche also monitored his own reading and the development of his interests. In an autobiographical fragment from August 1859 the fourteen year old declares that ‘I am now seized by a powerful drive to knowledge and universal culture; this has been prompted by Humboldt.’ Apparently he had been reading Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos (a few months later his Aunt Rosalie would send him for his fifteenth birthday a biography of Humboldt). He goes on in this fragment to list in chronological succession his occupations with theatre, poetry, church music including his own compositions, painting (in which, owing to short-sightedness, he would not show any long-term interest), then literature, geology, astronomy, mythology, and Old German. In closing he gives, as two mottos: ‘Above all religion, the foundation of all knowledge!’, and ‘Great is the domain of knowledge, unending is the search for truth!’[88]

At no time of his life was Nietzsche more intensively occupied with music than during his Schulpforta years. His wish-lists invariably included musical scores, from Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin. Beginning in 1861, encouraged by Gustav Krug, he became increasingly attracted to Robert Schumann, who soon became the greatest influence on his own compositions. For a fee Nietzsche could gain access to a school piano, on which in the evening he would entertain other pupils. He joined the Pforta choir. Although active in composing he never received formal instruction, instead privately studying from a standard treatise by Beethoven’s teacher Johann Georg Albrechtsberger.[89] His productions were mostly fugues, songs and short piano pieces, but also a miserere, parts of a motet, a requiem, a mass, a Christmas oratorio, and an ‘Ermanarich Symphony’ based on a hero from the Edda saga. He continued to work on some of these compositions years after leaving school. On his regular visits to Naumburg he took the opportunity to play and discuss music with Gustav, with whom he carried on an energetic musical correspondence. In 1863 he enjoyed playing the piano at nearby Bad Kösen with an Anna Redtel, sister of a fellow pupil. Nietzsche obviously liked the girl, for he sent her a handsomely bound booklet, with a gold vignette on the cover, containing some of his own songs. A note from Anna, upon leaving Bad Kösen in September, thanks him for the gift, telling him ‘I will always remember with great pleasure the beautiful hours I spent with you.’

In July 1860, when Fritz and Wilhelm were holidaying together at Gorenzen with Uncle Edmund Oehler, the pair decided to form a literary society to give structure to their creative efforts. Gustav was soon included in the project, the ambit of the society being extended to cover music as well. ‘Germania’ was founded on the twenty-fifth of July on the ruins of the Schönburg castle just outside of Naumburg. The statutes, very demanding for schoolboys not yet sixteen, were drafted by Nietzsche: every month each member had to submit either a poem, a musical composition, or an essay; at least six essays were required every year; a ‘chronicler’ would be appointed every quarter to produce a written report on the submissions of the members, which reports would be read out at the quarterly meetings (‘synods’); financial contributions would be made every month to purchase musical scores and books; proposals for acquisitions would be made in rotational order; members would be reimbursed from treasury if their purchases exceeded a prescribed amount; the finances were to be managed by Gustav Krug; at the quarterly meetings each member would deliver a lecture which would count as his contribution for that month.[90] Preserved records for Germania indicate that its first purchases included the scores for Wagner’s Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde (proposed by Krug) and Liszt’s Dante-Symphony (proposed by Nietzsche), a collection of Hölderlin’s poetry (proposed by Pinder), and a subscription to a Leipzig pro-Wagner journal Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft.

Germania was an enormous stimulus to Nietzsche’s productivity and for nearly three years he managed to meet the challenging schedule for submissions. Elisabeth, ever an attentive observer of her brother’s activities, relates that ‘we were much amused at the solemn courtly tone which the friends constantly observed between themselves (save in the matter of mutual literary criticism, when each was more or less driven to discourtesy), a tone which prevailed not only at their meetings but also in their private intercourse.’[91] Most of Nietzsche’s significant literary and musical productions from mid-1860 until mid-1863 were contributions to Germania, with some essays doubling as school-work. After the initial period of enthusiasm, however, Wilhelm and Gustav gradually fell behind in their submissions and by the middle of 1862 they had both ceased active participation. Nietzsche attempted to revive the society through an admonishing official report (‘the sanctity of the statutes has been assailed and Germania has gone to the dogs through inner dissolution, dissension and apathy’) in September of that year, but without success.[92] In July 1863 the society was wound up, with the idea of reviving it at university.[93] This did not eventuate, but in later years Nietzsche continued to dream of a small circle of philosophical friends which would function in the same way as Germania.

The discussions within Germania are reflected in the lively correspondence between Nietzsche and his Naumburg friends. Unfortunately Nietzsche’s letters to Krug during these Pforta years are lost but many letters survive from Krug to Nietzsche, from Pinder to Nietzsche, from Nietzsche to Pinder, and a few from Nietzsche to Pinder and Krug jointly. In a long letter from Krug to Nietzsche at the end of November 1860 there occurs the first mention of Richard Wagner in Nietzsche’s correspondence. Krug reports on the impression he has gained of the as-yet-unperformed Tristan und Isolde from an article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (another Leipzig magazine supportive of Wagner). In March 1861, while Nietzsche was in Naumburg for the Easter holidays, Krug gave a Germania lecture (the first of several lectures on Wagner by Krug) on ‘Some Scenes from Tristan und Isolde’. By this time Krug had obtained the piano score of Tristan and was able to play to Nietzsche from Act One. However, notwithstanding his response to Tristan, and contrary to his claim in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche did not become an instant convert to Wagner.[94] In a fragment from 1884 Nietzsche recalls that at seventeen he regarded Tannhäuser and Lohengrin as ‘beneath my taste’, while Tristan presented him with a ‘comprehensible world’.[95] It does not appear that any other work of Wagner besides Tristan made a favourable impact on Nietzsche until he heard the overture to the Meistersinger in Leipzig in October 1868, shortly before meeting the composer in person; this positive reaction was reinforced when he attended the full performance a few months later in Dresden. The very first mention of Wagner in an extant letter of Nietzsche does not occur until December 1861, when on a Christmas wish-list to his mother he requests a photograph of Wagner or of Liszt or of some other ‘famous living man’; after this there are no more references to Wagner in his surviving letters until November 1865, when he mentions in passing that some works by Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz are due to be performed in Leipzig.[96]

No doubt Nietzsche had numerous conversations about Wagner with Gustav Krug from late 1860 onwards; it is also certain that he made references to Wagner in lost letters to Gustav between 1861 and 1864. Elisabeth reports there was much playing and ‘howling’ from Tristan by Fritz and Gustav in Frau Nietzsche’s Weingarten house (Gustav’s house being unavailable because of his father’s dislike of Wagner’s music) during the autumn holidays of 1862.[97] For a few weeks in October Nietzsche had the entire score of Tristan in Pforta, before returning it to Gustav. Initially, Nietzsche had reservations not only about Wagner but in relation to opera generally. A letter to Krug and Pinder from the fourteenth of January 1861 is especially revealing in this regard. Since August 1860 Nietzsche had submitted to Germania a number of parts for a Christmas oratorio.[98] Then, over the Christmas holidays in Naumburg, a spirited discussion took place among the boys as to the relative merits as musical forms of opera and oratorio. ‘Although one has believed hitherto’, Nietzsche wrote to his friends, ‘that the oratorio occupies the same place in spiritual music as opera does in worldly music, this seems to me incorrect and a disparagement of the oratorio. In itself the oratorio is of great simplicity, which it must be as elevating and strictly religious music. Thus does the oratorio spurn other means which opera uses for effect; it cannot be regarded as an accompaniment in the way opera still is for the masses. It excites no sense other than hearing. Also the content is infinitely more simple and sublime, and for the most part well-known and readily intelligible even for uneducated people. For this reason I believe oratorio is a higher form of music than opera […] The chief reason oratorio is less popular is that music is often mixed in unholy fashion with that which is worldly. The challenge of oratorio is that in all its parts it displays the holy and divine.’ At this point Nietzsche’s idea of the religious function of music was still Christian, but after rejecting Christianity he nevertheless continued to think of music in metaphysical or ethical terms. This is a major reason he became attracted to Wagner. When at a later date he recoiled from Wagnerianism it was because he saw Wagner as compromising the seriousness of music for base ‘theatricality’.

The year 1861 was a turning point in Nietzsche’s spiritual development. His church confirmation occurred on the tenth of March. Congratulatory letters came from Uncle Edmund and Bernard Dächsel, both of whom assumed that Fritz would follow his late father into the pastorate. In Naumburg there must have been much talk to the same effect from his mother, Aunt Rosalie, and others. Around this time there occurred some unpleasant arguments between Nietzsche and his mother. Details, including the topic of the disputes, are not known, but the discord is mentioned, with profuse apologies, in an April letter from Nietzsche to his mother and sister. It is hard to think of what could have caused serious dissension between Nietzsche and his mother (a thing almost unknown) except the topic of his future career, the sensitivity of which was enhanced by their shared reverence for the late Carl Ludwig. It is likely that Nietzsche, pressed upon from all sides to embrace a path in life to which he did not feel drawn, in frustration told his mother that he did not envisage becoming a pastor, perhaps that he did not consider himself a Christian. There was no point in arguing with his mother on such matters, hence Nietzsche’s apologies. Franziska Nietzsche, indeed, could hardly have failed to notice that Fritz never showed any eagerness for a career in the church. Possibly she believed, especially in view of the reverence in which Fritz held his father, that nonetheless he would eventually pursue such a course. Confirmation was supposed to be a time of resolve and declaration for Christ, but to avoid unpleasant confrontations Nietzsche had to leave the question outwardly in limbo. This must have been a source of anxiety for him. It seems that Fritz continued to discuss his inner conflicts with Uncle Edmund, for in November 1862 the latter, having himself recently been through a period of doubt before experiencing a re-awakening and consolidation of faith, wrote to his nephew enjoining a trust in ‘Jesus alone’: ‘My dear Fritz, I know from our conversations that you are a searching, struggling and fighting soul.’

Nietzsche’s musical compositions in 1861 show a gradual but distinct move away from Christian themes. In August he converted parts of his Christmas oratorio into a piano piece entitled, after a poem by Justinus Kerner, ‘Pain is the Fundamental Tone of Nature’.[99] His occupation during the first half of 1861 with the Norse-Icelandic Poetic Edda led him to produce an essay ‘Ermanarich, King of the Ostrogoths: An Historical Sketch’, which he read to a meeting of Germania in July.[100] Earlier in 1861 he discovered Liszt’s Dante Symphony (upon which, in September, he gave a lecture to Germania) as well as the same composer’s Hungaria. At the end of April he submitted to Germania ‘Six Serbian Folksongs: Translated into German Rhymes’. At first his comrades Gustav and Wilhelm were astonished that he should know this Slavic language but as Nietzsche indicates in a foreword added soon afterwards his ‘translations’, of five ‘lyrical poems’ and one ‘epic poem’, were re-workings from a German book published in 1826, Folksongs of the Serbs, translated with an historical introduction by Talvj (Therese von Jakob).[101]

By autumn 1861 Nietzsche had embarked on a ‘Ermanarich Symphony’, parts of which he presented to Germania in November. ‘It was in Michaelmas 1861’, he reports in a note from 1862, ‘when in a few days I began and brought to completion this fragment of the Ermanarich Symphony, written for two pianos on the model of the Dante Symphony with which I had become acquainted a little earlier. This was a time when the Ermanarich material moved me more strongly than ever. I was still too shaken for poetry and did not feel sufficiently distant to create an objective drama. In music however I successfully set forth the mood in which the Ermanarich saga was for me completely incarnated. Nevertheless I was undecided as to what I should call the product, whether “Ermanarich Symphony” or “Serbia”, since I had the plan, similarly to what Liszt had achieved in Hungaria, of conveying in a composition the emotional world of a Slavic people.’[102] Nietzsche continued to be occupied with the Ermanarich theme for the remainder of his time at Schulpforta and a little beyond. In 1862 he produced a poem ‘The Death of Ermanarich’ as both a school exercise (for which he received the top marks in his German class) and a contribution to Germania. Later in the year he sketched out ten pages towards a drama on the theme, while towards the end of 1863 he wrote a short treatise, also for his German class, entitled ‘The Formation of the Saga of the Ostrogoth King Ermanarich until the Twelfth Century’, this being Nietzsche’s first serious effort in source-criticism and much impressing his teacher Koberstein.[103] All this, whether Nordic-Germanic (and Nietzsche was also much interested at this time in the Nibelungenlied, upon which he wrote an essay for Germania in November 1862) or ‘Serbian’ (‘Slavic’) or ‘Hungarian’ (as with three musical pieces from February 1862 which he calls ‘Hungarian Sketches’), and whether musical, poetical, or historical-discursive, was far distant from the thought-world of Christianity. It was also distant from the atmosphere of modern Germany: ‘It is well-known’, he wrote in his 1861 ‘Historical Sketch’, ‘that the North draws everything into the realm of the terrible, the sublimely wild, and the mysterious, which in Germany remains in the region of light and humanity.’ He continued, speaking of the Edda: ‘That twilight of the gods (Götterdämmerung) where the suns darkens, the earth sinks into the sea, where the burning whirlpool uproots the all-nourishing world-tree and raging flames lick the heavens, is the grandest creation of human genius, unsurpassed in the literature of all ages’.[104]

In August 1861 Nietzsche experienced another loss with the death from typhus of his tutor Robert Buddensieg. Frau Nietzsche, who had often visited Buddensieg and his wife at Pforta, was also deeply grieved. As compensation Fritz’s new tutor, the recently arrived teacher Max Heinze (at that time in his mid-twenties) became a friend. It so happened that in the early 1870’s Heinze, as a professor of philosophy, would briefly be Nietzsche’s colleague at the University of Basel; then he moved to Leipzig where he made his reputation as an historian of philosophy. Heinze would remain in touch with Nietzsche and his mother right through to Nietzsche’s collapse, after which he helped Frau Nietzsche in any way he could; upon Franziska’s death in 1897 he became one of her insane son’s guardians.

One of Nietzsche’s most well-known literary productions from his Pforta years, dating from October 1861, was a school assignment for German in which the pupil was required to write a letter to a friend recommending his favourite poet. Nietzsche wrote on Friedrich Hölderlin, whom he had discovered, probably through Wilhelm Pinder, before coming to Pforta. The essay is significant because of the many echoes of Hölderlin in the mature Nietzsche. Among the books in Nietzsche’s library that Elisabeth listed in 1858-59 was an introductory work on Hölderlin by Wilhelm Neumann containing biographical information, selected writings, and critical material. After receiving his German assignment Nietzsche wrote to his sister in Naumburg asking her to urgently send this book to Pforta. For more than a century after Nietzsche’s essay was published in the Appendix to the first volume of Elisabeth’s biography of her brother, passages in it were quoted as testimony to the young Nietzsche’s precocious originality. Recent scholarship has revealed, however, that as regards this particular essay Nietzsche deserves less credit than he has received.[105] Had Elisabeth compared the essay to Neumann’s book she would have found that her brother had not only paraphrased Neumann but taken over without acknowledgment many passages word for word; such passages include those which have received most notice from Nietzsche scholars and biographers.

This discovery is a salutary corrective to overstated claims about the young Nietzsche’s originality but it by no means annuls the interest attaching to the essay. What remains significant is that Nietzsche chose Hölderlin as his favourite poet, the particular passages from Neumann he selected to paraphrase or ‘plagiarize’, and what he adds on his own account. At the beginning of the essay Nietzsche indignantly rejects the charge that Hölderlin’s productions stem from a half-mad broken spirit lashing out at Germany and Christianity. The schoolboy had been captivated by the person of Hölderlin, who like Nietzsche lost his father when a child, possessed a melancholy temperament, was expected by his mother to become a parson but turned away from conventional Christianity, loved Greek antiquity, loved poetry, and was a solitary brooder. With regard to the basic tendency of Hölderlin’s thought the most significant passage in the essay is where Nietzsche writes, half paraphrasing, half plagiarizing: ‘Noteworthy is a series of poems where he tells the Germans some bitter truths, unfortunately all too well-grounded. Also in Hyperion he slings sharp and cutting words against German “barbarism”. However, this aversion to the existing state of affairs is compatible with the greatest love for the fatherland, which Hölderlin truly possessed in the highest measure. What he hated in the German was the mere specialist, the philistine.’[106] When Nietzsche wrote this essay he had read some poetry of Hölderlin, from the Neumann extracts and from another collection of Hölderlin’s poems possessed by Pinder, but probably had not read the novel Hyperion. He was not yet able to independently arrive at the judgements he found in Neumann, but he could recognize in Hölderlin, partly through the help of Neumann’s commentary, a spirit related to his own. No doubt he took the German assignment as an opportunity to occupy his mind with someone widely frowned upon in the respectable literary world. Perhaps Nietzsche was testing the reaction of his teacher. In fact Koberstein gave the essay a good mark but not the highest, commenting ‘I would like to convey to the author the friendly advice to concern himself with a healthier, clearer, and more German poet’.

In December 1861, two months after his essay on Hölderlin, Nietzsche produced a lecture for Germania on his other favourite poet, Lord Byron. Nearly twenty-seven years later, in Ecce Homo, he declares that he ‘must be profoundly related’ to Byron’s character Manfred and was ‘ripe’ for Byron’s work Manfred at the age of thirteen.[107] Nietzsche turned thirteen in October 1857, but there is no evidence he was reading Byron before 1861. The cast of mind that was attracted to Hölderlin was drawn also to Byron, whose cult still flourished throughout continental Europe and whose works were available in a variety of German translations. The first reference to Byron anywhere in Nietzsche is in a letter to his mother and sister in April 1861, where he asks them to bring ‘my Don Juan’ to their next rendezvous, a request he repeats twice in October and once again in December. In the meantime he had access to other copies and editions of Byron, including the edition he used for his Germania lecture, the eight volume Collected Works translated by Adolf Böttger. Although before entering Pforta Nietzsche was probably aware of Byron from the Krug-Pinder house and grandfather Oehler (his copy of Don Juan came from David Oehler’s library), his interest seems to have been further stimulated by a teacher Diederich Volkmann, who came to Pforta in 1861. Volkmann, six years older than Nietzsche, was a classical philologist who also taught English in private lessons – outside the standard Pforta curriculum, for a fee. In a letter to Elisabeth at the end of November Nietzsche wrote that ‘in your position [she must have acquired some competence in the language] I would definitely read Byron in English’, indicating he intended joining Volkmann’s classes after Easter. Nietzsche became friendly with Volkmann and continued contact with him after leaving Pforta, but he does not seem to have attended, or at any rate benefited from, Volkmann’s English lessons.

The classic description of the Byronic hero was given by Thomas Macaulay in 1831: ‘proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection’. Byron was another case of a boy who lost his father at an early age and was brought up without masculine authority. But it was the English poet’s temperament, and the fact that his poetry was an act of self-revelation or confession, that so attracted Nietzsche: he was drawn to Byron’s aristocratic free-spiritedness and rebellion, his pessimism and misanthropy combined with compassion, his uncompromising individualism, his fundamental honesty and love of truth, and his feeling of isolation or homelessness. Like Nietzsche’s essay on Hölderlin, the lecture on Byron draws from secondary sources, in this case mainly Böttger’s biographical introduction. But again, what is significant is not so much that Nietzsche took material from one or another scholarly work, but what he took, whether word for word, as paraphrase, or as stimulating his own comments. At this date Nietzsche seems familiar with nearly the full range of Byron’s writings but in the Germania lecture he refers mainly to a few short dramatic pieces, including the work which would remain his favourite, Manfred. Of this work he declares, at the beginning of the lecture: ‘As a drama it is a monster, one could even call it the monologue of a dying man, rummaging in the most profound questions and problems, stirring through the awesome elevation of this superman who rules over spirits, delighting through the magnificent wonderfully beautiful diction.’[108] This is Nietzsche’s first documented use of the noun ‘superman’ (Übermensch). He uses the adjective ‘superhuman’ (übermenschlich) several times later in the lecture, including in the following passage: ‘The most extraordinary product of Byron’s brain is in any case Manfred, which in every respect steps beyond the boundaries of the usual and could almost be called a superhuman work […] Actually there is no work richer in ideas, which in spite of its dramatic deficiencies, despite being really a heaping up of despairing thoughts, attracts the reader with a powerful magic and can put him in the condition of the deepest melancholy.’[109]

The word ‘Übermensch’, unusual but not previously unknown in German literature, would be employed in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra and other later writings (albeit not with great frequency in the published works) and has become emblematic of his philosophy. ‘Übermenschlich’, fairly common in German, had been used before by Nietzsche, in his 1858 autobiography and in a diary entry for the twenty-fourth of August 1859 on his re-reading of Schiller’s The Robbers: ‘To me the characters are almost superhuman; one believes oneself to observe a struggle of the Titans against religion and virtue, whereby divine omnipotence wins an infinitely tragic victory.’[110] The context of the word, consonant with the Byron lecture, is telling. In 1871, speaking of the young Goethe’s ‘Prometheus’ poem, Nietzsche will write in The Birth of Tragedy: ‘Man, raising himself up into something Titanic, acquires his hard-won culture for himself, compelling the gods to unite with him […] But the most wonderful thing about that Prometheus poem, which in its fundamental idea is the authentic hymn of impiety, is the profoundly Aeschylean theme of justice.’ Already at Pforta Nietzsche saw the young Schiller and Byron (and probably Hölderlin) as Titans rising up against the gods on behalf of a new and superior (more ‘just’, admittedly, but not in the moral sense) type of human being, the ‘superman’. Byron, an admirer of ancient Greece, especially of Aeschylus and especially of Aeschylus’ Prometheus, composed his own ‘Prometheus’ poem. But it was Byron’s Promethean spirit which inspired Nietzsche at Schulpforta and thereafter. He continued sporadically to read Byron for many years. While still at Pforta Robert Schumann’s ‘Manfred Overture’ became one of his favourite musical works, and in Basel in 1872 Nietzsche produced his own ‘Manfred Meditation’ for piano. In a letter responding to the composer Hans von Bülow’s harsh criticism of this latter piece, he wrote ‘I am unable to regard the Byronic Manfred, which was almost my favourite poem as a boy, otherwise than as a mad-formless and monotonous absurdity.’[111] This did not stop him quoting Byron with approval in Human, All Too Human (1878), including a few ‘immortal lines’ (quoted in English, a rarity for Nietzsche) from the beginning of Manfred.[112] As late as Ecce Homo he confesses to a ‘profound relationship’ with the Byronic figure of Manfred, explaining that as a child he ‘found all these abysses in myself’.[113]

In July 1862, while holidaying with his Uncle Edmund in Gorenzen, Nietzsche sent a Pforta friend Raimund Granier the first chapter of an abandoned novel ‘Euphorion’ (after the Byronic character in Goethe’s Faust). In his accompanying letter Nietzsche tells Granier that he now finds the fragment ‘sickening’ and has discarded it ‘in disgust’. The piece is evidence, however, of his quasi-Byronic experimentation at this time, as in the following passage: ‘Opposite me lives a nun, whom I occasionally visit to enjoy her morality. I know her very precisely, from head to toe, better than I know myself. Earlier she was a skinny nun – I was a doctor and soon made her fat. She lives in marriage with her brother, who was too fat and flourishing for me, so I made him as thin as a corpse. Soon he will die – which pleases me – for I want to dissect him.’[114] Nietzsche signed this letter, to which he attached two recently composed songs, ‘FWvNietzky’. It seems Nietzsche was rather close to Granier at this time, at least in regard to matters of the intellect: in his letter he refers to Granier’s ‘deeply inward nature’, reports that in Gorenzen he has been occupied with ‘refutations of materialism’, and mentions that he has been reading Rousseau’s Emil. Although Nietzsche and Granier would not form an enduring friendship their post-Pforta exchange of letters (with Byronic tones and a quotation from Manfred on Nietzsche’s side) in September 1865 is a revealing episode in Nietzsche’s early correspondence.

It was in October 1862 that Nietzsche, just turning eighteen, wrote the two pieces for Germania which jointly amount to his first philosophical effort. ‘Fate and History: Thoughts’ and ‘Freedom of Will and Fate’ are rambling unfinished pieces but they anticipate to a remarkable degree the issues and tenor of his mature thinking.[115] Nietzsche has by this time abandoned any semblance of conventional Christian faith and poses the problem of religion squarely within the context of modern thought. It is significant, however, that while acknowledging the tendency of modern science to undermine all theology he does not unambiguously welcome this result: ‘To venture out into the sea of doubt without compass and guide is foolishness and ruin for undeveloped heads; most are destroyed by storms, only very few discover new lands […] Great revolutions lie ahead when the masses begin to understand that the whole of Christianity is built on assumptions – the existence of God, immortality, the authority of the Bible, and others – which will always remain problematic. I have tried to deny everything: oh, tearing down is easy, but building! […] From hour to hour the hand of the clock is moving forward to twelve, to begin its course anew: a new world-period is dawning […] If it became possible, by means of a strong will, to overthrow the entire past, we would be immediately transported into the realm of autonomous gods, and world-history would be for us nothing but a dreamy self-deception, the curtain would fall, and man would find himself like a child playing with worlds.’ When these youthful thoughts are set alongside Nietzsche’s declarations in 1882-88 (when he came to see himself as ushering in the new world-period) the impression of continuity is striking, even uncanny. It is not surprising that on the theme of human freedom (the essay-topic he suggested to Wilhelm Pinder in April 1859) he does not get beyond a preliminary statement of issues and difficulties. What is noteworthy, however, as far as his future development is concerned, is his belief in the power of the human being to in a certain manner cooperate with fate, such that, assuming the requisite self-understanding and strength of will, individuality and freedom can triumph.

At this stage Nietzsche had read very little philosophy. The only philosophical author with whom he seems reasonably familiar is Ralph Waldo Emerson. He began reading Emerson in 1861 or early 1862 and explicitly draws from him (especially Emerson’s ‘Fate’ essay) in both pieces.[116] Emerson remained a favourite of Nietzsche ever after. As for Nietzsche’s understanding of Christianity, apart from Emerson he may have been influenced by the liberal theologian Karl August von Hase, whose Life of Jesus (1829) and Church History (1834) he recommended to his sister in a November 1861 letter. From this letter it is evident that Nietzsche had not yet read these books by Hase, and nowhere else in his letters or works does he mention Hase, but it is significant that he was interested in this author – ‘the most intelligent representative of ideal rationalism’, he tells Elisabeth – whom he had heard praised by the Naumburg Pastor Wenkel. Elisabeth relates that her brother’s recommendation of the books by Hase occasioned a ‘storm of indignation’ from their mother and Aunt Rosalie; doubtless it was the erudite Rosalie rather than Franziska who was aware of Hase’s reputation.[117] It does not appear, incidentally, that while at Pforta, or possibly at any time, Nietzsche read the original version of David Friedrich Strauß’s Life of Jesus (1835-36), which in its sceptical attitude to Christian doctrine went far beyond Hase. However, during his first year at university Nietzsche did read Strauß’s new (1864) popular presentation of the same material.

The most revealing expression of Nietzsche’s view of Christianity around this time is in a letter to Krug and Pinder on the twenty-seventh of April 1862: ‘Only when we recognize that we are accountable for ourselves, that a reproach concerning an erroneous manner of living can only redound on ourselves and not on any higher powers, only then do the basic ideas of Christianity throw off their outer garb and get to the real issue. Christianity is essentially a matter of the heart; only when it has become embodied in us and taken possession of our soul does one become a true Christian. The main doctrines of Christianity express just the fundamental truths of the human heart; they are symbols, and even the highest must always be a symbol of something still higher. That faith makes one blessed means nothing else except the old truth that only the heart, and not knowledge, can make one happy. That God became man means only that human beings should not seek their blessedness in the infinite, but should build their heaven upon the earth; the illusion of a super-terrestrial world brought the human spirit into a false relation with the terrestrial world; it was the consequence of the childhood of peoples […] Through hard doubts and struggles humanity comes to manhood, recognizing in itself “the beginning, the middle, and the end of religion”.’ The end quotation is from Ludwig Feuerbach, whose The Essence of Christianity Nietzsche had recently been reading (this and another work by Feuerbach appear on a wish-list for his birthday the previous October).[118] More than twenty years later Nietzsche will put the exhortation ‘Stay faithful to the earth!’ into the mouth of his prophet Zarathustra.

While Gustav Krug and Wilhelm Pinder were Nietzsche’s best friends almost to the end of his Pforta years he did make new friends at the school, including two who would be important in later life. The first, Paul Deussen, arrived in Pforta in October 1859 and entered the same class as Nietzsche. A few months younger than Fritz, he too was the son of a Protestant pastor, in the small town of Oberdreis in northern Rhineland-Palatinate. Deussen was an extraordinarily serious and studious boy, outstripping Nietzsche in linguistic gifts and excelling him in school grades; already at Pforta he was called ‘Papa Deussen’, a nickname still applied to him by students when he was an elderly professor. Although Deussen lacked the creative spontaneity and musicality of Nietzsche, the two were drawn to each other by their common intellectual passion and sense of the seriousness of life. They left Pforta at the same time in September 1864 and spent two semesters together at the University of Bonn. After Nietzsche left Bonn in August 1865 they saw one another again just a few times but until the early 1870’s corresponded regularly. Thereafter, although contact became sporadic, each remained important for the other, especially Nietzsche for Deussen, who provides interesting recollections of his friend in Memories of Friedrich Nietzsche (1901) and the posthumously published My Life (1922). Deussen went on to attain international stature as an historian of philosophy and Indologist; for a short period in the late 1880’s he was more well-known as a philosopher than Nietzsche.

‘I am not sure what first brought us to one another’, wrote Deussen in 1901, ‘but I think it was our common love for Anakreon, for whose poems we enthused all the more readily because the easy Greek posed fewer difficulties for the understanding. We recited his verses on our walks together. We would often withdraw to the empty auditorium, where I would passionately declaim a poem (Schiller’s “Glocke” for example) with Nietzsche accompanying on the piano, always complaining that my recitation was too loud. Through this kind of quiet intercourse and our daily walks, we isolated ourselves from our comrades, who had little knowledge of the quiet inwardly-turned boy and often misjudged him. His indifference towards the trivial interests of our comrades, his lack of esprit de corps, was interpreted as lack of character. What would have happened to me if I had not had him I find difficult to imagine. A high estimation, perhaps overestimation, of everything great and beautiful, and a corresponding contempt for everything serving merely material interests, was certainly part of my nature; but by daily association with Nietzsche this smouldering spark was roused into a flame of total enthusiasm for everything ideal, a flame which never died down in me, also not after our ways parted. At that time, in Pforta, we understood one another totally. On our solitary walks we discussed every possible topic of religion, philosophy, poetry, visual arts and music; often our thoughts led into obscurity, and when words failed us we looked one another in the eye and said: “but we understand each other”. At heart Nietzsche was a deeply serious person for whom everything theatrical was utterly alien.’[119]

The second new friend, Carl von Gersdorff, also slightly younger than Nietzsche, came from a Prussian aristocratic family whose estate was located in Ostrichen, not far from Seidenberg in Silesia. A very different kind of personality to Deussen, he was not a born philosopher or outstanding intellectual but possessed an active and responsive mind. He had an easy self-confidence and noble bearing that reflected his background and attracted not only Nietzsche but in the 1870’s Richard and Cosima Wagner. Next to Erwin Rohde, whom Nietzsche met at university, Gersdorff was Nietzsche’s closest friend between 1866 and 1876, and although they were estranged for three years from late 1877 and never saw one another again after the summer of 1876, they reconciled by letter in 1881 and carried on a warm correspondence until Nietzsche’s mental collapse. In a letter written in September 1900, shortly after Nietzsche’s death, Gersdorff looked back on their Pforta days: ‘I was boarding with old Professor Koberstein, the eminent literary historian who gave instruction in German. Nietzsche had produced an independent critical-historical essay on the Ermanarich saga and handed it in to Koberstein, who was highly pleased with it, praising its scholarship, keen insight, soundness of reasoning and stylistic elegance. When Koberstein, usually rather silent at the dinner table, spoke about it to me so warmly, I took the opportunity of making Nietzsche’s acquaintance. I already felt, from the time I joined his class, that he was intellectually superior by a long way to all his fellow-pupils, and I had the sensation he would achieve something great. He attracted me by the free dignity of his behaviour wherein he immediately silenced any tone of vulgarity or foolish nonsense. Our association was not a little promoted by music; every evening between seven and seven-thirty we went together to the music room. I do not believe that Beethoven could have improvised more movingly than Nietzsche, for example when a storm stood threateningly in the sky.’[120]

Notable literary productions by Nietzsche during his final two years at Pforta include an essay on the female protagonist Kriemheld in the Nibelungenlied (November 1862), his long historical study of the Ermanarich saga (late 1863), various fragments on music and ‘moods’, a fragmentary essay on Greek tragedy (mid-1864), his valediction essay on Theognis (mid-1864), further autobiographical sketches, and, among numerous poems, especially the one which has become known under the title ‘To the Unknown God’ (September 1864).

Nietzsche had begun his study of the Nibelungenlied while at Naumburg Gymnasium. In December 1858, soon after entering Pforta, he requested as a Christmas present the recent translation by M. A. Niendorf. Perhaps he was already feeling the stimulation of Koberstein, an expert in Middle High German who treated the Nibelungenlied in the first volume of his history of German literature. Nietzsche retained an interest in the Nibelungenlied throughout his Pforta years, then at the University of Bonn he took a lecture-course (by Karl Simrock, who had produced his own translation) on Walther von der Vogelweide, one of its mooted authors. Following the rediscovery of the Nibelungenlied manuscripts in the mid-eighteenth century, the first half of the nineteenth century saw a tremendous upsurge of interest in this Teutonic epic not only in Germany but throughout Europe. In view of his interest in the Greek heroes it was logical that Nietzsche (like Wagner) should be fascinated by an authentically Germanic tradition of epic tragedy. But his essay on Kriemheld (a school assigment doubling as a submission to Germania) is significant mainly for the same reason as are his essays on Byron and Hölderlin, for evincing what is already a recognizably Nietzschean cast of mind. The essay opens combatively: ‘What is great and sublime is always the product of a deep and full heart. Small weak natures, whose actions are incapable of a grand forceful development, in their own limitedness typically mock or moralize at the vital fervour of passionate characters, and are easily frightened when they catch a glimpse of the daimonic power that rages through heaven and hell and through the abysses of love and hate.’[121] Intimations of the ‘superman’ appear at the end: ‘Only deep and full natures can dedicate themselves so completely to a terrible passion that they seem to step out beyond the human.’[122]

Nietzsche’s long essay from 1863-64, ‘The Forming of the Saga of the Ostrogothic King Ermanarich To the Twelfth Century’, was the culmination of several years’ interest in the Poetic Edda.[123] Together with his dissertation on Theognis from 1864 it is the most professional piece of writing Nietzsche produced at Pforta. No doubt his teacher Koberstein, who was greatly impressed by the finished work, gave scholarly guidance. It is conspicuous that unlike his earlier poetical and dramatical fragments on the same theme this is very much a scholarly effort by Nietzsche. He does not conceal how much he is stirred by the Edda, and he cannot help but give even this kind of writing a dramatic edge, but on the whole he is sober and methodical in his concern to identify the main features of the original legend and trace variations within different cultural traditions. At the time of this essay, looking ahead to his university studies, Nietzsche appears to have resolved on a ‘renunciation’ of his artistic passions in favour of ‘dry’ philology. However he concludes the piece on a confessional note: ‘I lay my pen down conscious that I have at least tried to give a connected account of a series of thoughts that have long occupied me, with the feeling of having gradually made the old saga vividly alive for myself so that now with a certain pain I take leave of it, and finally with the warmest thanks to those men, especially the Brothers Grimm, to whom in this area I owe everything, who have laid down an immortal monument in the heart of every German.’[124]

‘The Daimonic’ was a key element in Nietzsche’s imagination during his last years at Pforta, especially in connection with music. Through ‘moods’, he believed, the Daimonic ‘attunes’ individuals to music and other forms of art, providing access to what was intended by the artist. In a sketch from 1862-63 Nietzsche writes: ‘The artist himself can only testify to the effect that an indefinite Something has upon him, the Daimonic, the creative drive. It is the highest requirement in the understanding of art that this Daimonic is also felt by the audience. This is neither feeling nor knowing, but an obscure intimation of the divine.’[125] This provides an important clue to the way Nietzsche will always think, not only of music in the normal sense, but of the mousike of philosophy. In a jotting from September-October 1862 he states that, although one may be ‘floored’ by the ‘passionate waves’ of Tristan und Isolde, ‘feeling (Gefühl) is not a measure for music’; by ‘feeling’ here he means something non-cognitive that as such is unworthy of the status he accords to music.[126] Then in a fragment from 1864 entitled ‘On Moods’ he writes: ‘The soul encounters only what it wants […] The soul is made from the same or similar material as events, so it happens that an event which does not strike a related chord weighs heavily upon the soul […] Moods arise either from inner struggles or from external pressure on the inner world: here a civil war between two camps, there an oppression of the people by one class, a small minority. It often seems, when I eavesdrop on my own thoughts and feelings and quietly attend to myself, as if I hear the tumultuous battle of wild parties […] Struggle is the continual nourishment of the soul, which knows how to extract from it what is sweet and beautiful.’[127]

An important letter from Nietzsche’s last months at Pforta is to a recent fellow-pupil Rudolf Buddensieg concerning the effect and cognitive significance of music. Buddensieg, who had left Pforta at Easter to study theology at the University of Leipzig, had evidently been a musical friend of Nietzsche at school and a few days earlier had written to Nietzsche confessing that music often induced in him a near ecstatic state which he did not know how to interpret. Nietzsche replied: ‘As regards your thoughts on the effects of music, what you have experienced in yourself is more or less the experience of all musically organized people. But this excitation of the nerves, this shudder (Schauer), is the effect not just of music but of all the higher arts. Recall an analogous experience while reading the tragedies of Shakespeare […] But the physical effect is preceded by an intellectual intuition (geistige Intuition), which by reason of its uniqueness, grandeur and plenitude of insight makes an impression as of something miraculous. Do not think that the ground of this intuition resides in feeling or sensation; no, it is grounded in the highest and most delicate part of the knowing spirit (erkennenden Geistes). Do you not feel as if something comprehensive and unsuspected has been revealed? Is it not as if you look over into a new kingdom which is normally concealed from human beings? By means of this intellectual intuition the hearer comes as close to the composer as is possible. There is nothing higher in art than this effect; it is itself a creative power. Do you find the expression inappropriate that I used myself two years ago, when I wrote some sheets on the subject for my friends – I called the effect ‘daimonic’? If there are anywhere intimations of a higher world, they lie concealed here.’ Nietzsche is referring to a two-part essay ‘On the Daimonic in Music’, written for Germania between September 1862 and May 1863, but unfortunately lost.[128] His insistance on the cognitive content of music echoes his 1858 comment on poetry (in ‘From My Life’) that ‘in composing one must above all pay attention to the thoughts’.

In connection with Nietzsche’s future Wagnerianism a significant document is his 1864 commentary on the first chorus-song of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. In this school essay Nietzsche investigates the origin of tragedy in ancient Greece, where, he says, musical elements take the lead, and contrasts this with German drama which he sees as developing from the epic tale.[129] In Greek tragedy, says Nietzsche: ‘The choir assumes by far the most important role, with the intermediate speeches often serving only to introduce new motifs altering the mood of the choir and conditioning the progress of feelings […] The Greeks thought of this tragic effect differently to us; for them it was achieved through the great scenes of pathos, the expansive flowing out of emotion, for the greatest part musically, whereby the action plays a small part and lyrical sensation is everything.’ With regard to modern opera, Nietzsche finds that ‘with the exception of the wonderful reform plans and deeds of Richard Wagner’, there is a ‘great mis-relation between music and text, between tone and sensation’. He continues: ‘The [Greek] tragedians had the special advantage that they were not only poets but also composers, in such a way that the one went hand in hand with the other. And when we add that according to ancient testimony they were also masters of dramatic form, orchestrics, stage scenery, and were themselves practiced actors […] so we see in their works what the most recent school of music sets up as the ideal of “the musical work of the future”, wherein the most sublime arts come together in harmonious unity and each art serves to allow the other to appear in its proper light, all working together to achieve a unitary artistic enjoyment.’[130] This is text-book Wagnerianism, and indeed it has been shown that in writing this essay Nietzsche drew upon (to the extent of sporadic plagiarism) the writings of a number of contemporary musicologists sympathetic to Wagner.[131] At this point Nietzsche was still four years away from his embrace of Wagnerianism, but the essay shows the extent of his preparation not only for Wagner’s art but for the philosophical view of The Birth of Tragedy.

In the summer of 1864 Nietzsche embarked for the first time on an extended philological essay treating a Greek author. This was Theognis of Megara, a sixth century B. C. philosopher-poet whose mentality – that of a disaffected aristocrat in an age where ‘the rabble’ were on the rise – bears comparison with the mature Nietzsche. In this Latin essay, however, which was a valediction dissertation for Schulpforta, Nietzsche is concerned not so much with Theognis’ ideas as with source-criticism, in particular the authenticity of the various fragments traditionally attributed to this poet. It is indicative of Nietzsche’s scholarly turn at this time that he remained occupied with these source-critical problems for two years after leaving Pforta. In January 1865 he presented a reworked version of his Theognis treatise to the Leipzig Philological Society. Shortly thereafter he showed it to the professor of philology, Friedrich Ritschl, who told him he had never seen such mature work from a student. This resulted in Nietzsche’s first publication, when in March 1867 his findings on Theognis appeared in the Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. It seems reasonable to say that Theognis ‘influenced’ the young Nietzsche just as did Emerson, Byron and Hölderlin; the pessimistic mood of the Greek poet, his occupation with death, the personal character of his poems, and his lofty disdain for the lower classes, all resonated in him.

In addition to his scholarly and philosophical pieces Nietzsche continued producing autobiographical fragments throughout his Pforta years. What is significant about these is not so much their narrative as their reflective dimension, that is their concern with autobiographical method, the motive of autobiography, and the course of an inward life. Thus in a fragment from September 1863 headed ‘My Life’ the eighteen year old writes: ‘If we wish to review and properly estimate a human life we must not be guided by accidental events, the gifts of chance, the changeable external fortune arising from intersecting external circumstances, though these are what initially meet the eye. It is precisely the small events and inner processes, which one overlooks, that in their totality show most clearly the individual character, for they grow organically from the nature of the person, while the others seem only inorganically connected with him.’[132] In another fragment of the same title dating from summer 1864, shortly before he left Pforta, Nietzsche sums up the course of his intellectual development after the death of his father: ‘Perhaps it was a misfortune that henceforth my development was not supervised by a masculine eye, but that curiosity and the drive to know led me with great disorder into the most diverse educational material, in a manner apt to confuse the spirit of a youngster […] When I came to Pforta I had looked into most of the sciences and arts and really felt interested in everything apart from the all too rational and to me boring mathematics. After a while I felt averse to this planless wandering in all domains of knowledge; I wanted to forcibly restrict myself, to penetrate into some particular area thoroughly and inwardly. I was able to realize this desire very pleasantly in a small scholarly society which I formed with two friends […] My inclination for classical studies also grew; I remember with great pleasure my first impressions of Sophocles, Aeschylus, of Plato especially in my favourite Symposium, then the Greek lyricists […] Now, as I am about to enter university, I hold it as a firm rule for my future scholarly life: to combat the inclination to superficial many-sided knowledge.’[133] Nietzsche felt the danger of falling into dilettantism, and already in Pforta had his eyes fixed on mastery of the philological craft; what was different about him, however, and this too is clear in his Pforta years, was his resistance to the complacent ‘specialization’ that is synonymous with spiritual death.

In 1863-64 Nietzsche had to curtail his extra-curricular literary and musical activities to prepare for final examinations. The question of his future studies, the what and the where, was looming by this time. On the twenty-seventh of April 1863, about sixteen months before he was due to leave Pforta, he wrote to his mother: ‘I am thinking more often than usual about my future; external and internal causes make it somewhat uncertain. Perhaps I could still study any discipline if I had the power to exclude all my other interests. Write to me your opinions about this […] If only I were not being asked by everyone about job training!’ Like most letters from Franziska Nietzsche to her son during his Pforta years her reply has not been preserved, so it is difficult to know if she was applying pressure for him to study theology and enter the church. Probably she was not exerting very much pressure, for this would be reflected in Nietzsche’s own letters; nevertheless, he could not have been in any doubt as to his mother’s hopes. On the second of May he wrote to her again: ‘As for my future, it is precisely the practical reservations that disturb me. The decision as to what to study will not come by itself. I must reflect and choose, and it is this choice which is causing me difficulties […] How easily one can allow oneself to be moved by a hankering for a venerable family tradition or by some special wish, so that the choice of a career seems a lottery where there are many entries but few winners. I am now in the particularly uncomfortable predicament of having a whole host of interests in a large number of different disciplines, whose overall satisfaction would make me a learned man but hardly into a professional animal. It is therefore clear that I must cast off some of these interests, likewise that I must acquire some new ones. But which are going to be the unhappy ones I throw overboard? Perhaps the children of my heart!’

Wilhelm Pinder and Gustav Krug, both of whom were due to leave the Cathedral Gymnasium in Naumburg at Easter of 1864, planned to study law at the University of Heidelberg. Carl von Gersdorff, who would not leave Pforta until Easter of 1865, was also planning legal studies, although, being under pressure from his father, it was with resignation rather than inclination. Paul Deussen, like Nietzsche, was expected by his family to study theology, the difference being that in Deussen’s case this was reinforced by living paternal authority. The fatherless Nietzsche felt more free than any of his friends to make an autonomous decision on his future, and was loath to take any step which would lock him into a life-path for which he felt no attraction. Without question the schoolboy Nietzsche had a sense of his own genius, and, as inseparable from this, of the awesome responsibility of his freedom. As his Pforta days drew to an end he was concerned not to make a premature decision; now, as always in later life, he wanted to be left to himself, to his own devices, to his inner life, to his own thoughts, to his own projects and passions. His inclination towards solitude, he would often say later, was an aspect of his fate and not at all a choice. But something else characteristic of Nietzsche at this early date – and for some time to come – is that he had no definite idea of the objects towards which he would direct his genius. While poetry and music had been the passions of his youth he was far from thinking that he would or could make a career as a poet or musician. He knew he would not become a pastor, although he had not yet stated this unequivocally to his mother and Rosalie. Not for a moment did he consider the legal profession. Only two possibilities remained for somebody in his position: schoolteaching or an academic career. By pursuing the right studies at university both options could be left open and a final decision deferred. If he could presently pursue his passions he did not want to think of future difficulties.

As he relates in the ‘My Life’ fragment from 1864, during his last few years at school Nietzsche pursued a more disciplined plan of study. In so doing he felt increasingly attracted to classical studies and for the first time became properly acquainted with Sophocles, Aeschylus, Plato, and the Greek lyric poets. In another autobiographical sketch, from 1868-69, he wrote: ‘From a vague dispersion into the many directions of my talent I was preserved by a philosophical seriousness which was never satisfied except in confronting the naked truth, undeterred by, indeed with a proclivity towards, hard and terrible consequences. A feeling of dissatisfaction with generalism drove me into the arms of rigorous scholarship and I yearned for the safe-harbour of objectivity as an escape from the rapidly changing feelings of my artistic inclinations […] Only in the final period of my life at Pforta did I abandon, through accurate self-knowledge, all artistic life-plans; from this point the vacant space was occupied by philology. What I wanted was a counterweight to my restless and changeable inclinations, a discipline that could be pursued with cool sobriety, logical coldness, regular steady work, without its results seizing my heart. At that time I thought to find all this in philology […] Fortunately I had excellent philological teachers whose personalities caused me to esteem the discipline.’[134]

At his final examinations at Pforta Nietzsche was graded excellent in German, Latin, Greek and religion, satisfactory in French, history and geography, and unsatisfactory in Hebrew and mathematics. In fact, so poor was his performance in mathematics that there was momentarily a question as to whether he would receive his Leaving Certificate. Strong words were needed at the masters’ synod from the Latin teacher Corssen, directed at the mathematics teacher Buchbinder, to bring Nietzsche through the crisis.[135] According to Elisabeth, Corssen called her brother ‘the most gifted pupil Pforta has had as long as I remember’ and was strongly supported by other teachers. Koberstein and the Greek teacher Steinhart (a Plato scholar) were likely among Nietzsche’s advocates. His conduct at Pforta, with the exception of one or two isolated incidents, had been exemplary, so it would have been a scandal to deny him. Still, the story of Nietzsche’s near-miss through mathematical weakness was passed down in the school and in 1872 was publicly recalled by his then opponent Ulrich von Wilamowitz, who had been a few years behind him at Pforta.

On his last day at Pforta, the seventh of September 1864, Nietzsche composed what is deservedly his most well-known poem. Although untitled in his notebook, it is usually called ‘To the Unknown God’:

Once more, before I move on

And send my glance forward

In loneliness do I lift up my hands

To you, to whom I flee,

To whom in the deepest depths of my heart

I have solemnly consecrated altars

So that for all time

Your voice may call me again

On these there glows, deeply inscribed

The word: To the Unknown God

I am his, may I have remained with the wicked gang

Even until this present hour:

I am his – and I feel the bonds

That pull me down in struggle

And, would I flee

Compel me to his service

I want to know you, Unknown One,

You who have reached deep into my soul,

Into my life like a raging storm,

You Incomprehensible One, Related One!

I want to know you, even serve you [136]

There is no documentary evidence relating to Nietzsche’s decision to study at the University of Bonn. In May 1864 Gustav and Wilhelm, settled in Heidelberg as law students, wrote long letters to Nietzsche detailing the attractions of the city and the university. They had arranged his accommodation in Heidelberg and were expecting his arrival in September or early October. In a letter to them jointly on the twelfth of June Nietzsche let them know he would not be coming, but declined to give reasons. Over the previous year there seems to have been a cooling in Nietzsche’s feelings towards these friends of his childhood. Ever since the decline and dissolution of Germania he had seen them and corresponded with them less regularly. His focus on his schoolwork in 1863-64 is part of the explanation. Another factor is that Deussen and Gersdorff at Pforta were becoming substitutes for his Naumburg friends. Nietzsche lacked empathy for the all-too-respectable ambitions of his Naumburg companions. For all the stimulation Pinder and Krug had provided him at a crucial time of his life, and for all the genuine warmth of their relationships, neither was the kind of ‘seeker’ he now looked for in a friend. Gersdorff, to be sure, was also going to study law, but unlike Pinder and Krug his heart was not in it; for the time being he was, like Nietzsche, an ‘idealist’. And Deussen, although he had not yet abandoned his plan of becoming a pastor, was a soul in search of truth, thirsty for knowledge, possessed of the same ‘life-seriousness’ as Nietzsche himself. Nietzsche and Deussen both decided for the University of Bonn and for the same course of study: principally philology, with theology and humanistic subjects on the side. There were good connections between the teachers at Schulpforta and the academic staff at Bonn. In all likelihood the boys were advised to go to Bonn; both left Pforta with personal letters of recommendation to Bonn professors.

The first two weeks after leaving Pforta Nietzsche spent with Deussen in Naumburg. During this time he must have had conversations about his future with Franziska and Aunt Rosalie, but it seems that, while having no intention of proceeding to a career in the church, he avoided provocative announcements. It is doubtful whether at this date Frau Nietzsche still harboured genuine hopes of her son becoming a pastor. Nietzsche knew that, to temporarily mollify his mother, he could enroll in theology at Bonn while also pursuing philology and other studies; he could then drop theology at an opportune time. The weight of familial expectations regarding his career plans and religious opinions must have been oppressive for Nietzsche at this point but for the time being he could evade the issue. The open breach would not come until Easter 1865.

From Naumburg the boys made their way to Deussen’s home in Oberdreis, where they stayed for another few weeks, celebrating the common birthday of Nietzsche and Deussen’s mother on the fifteenth of October. Nietzsche enjoyed the family atmosphere of the Deussen parsonage, Paul being one of nine children. He was particularly taken with his friend’s sixteen year old sister Marie, whom he describes in a letter to his mother and sister on the eighth of October: ‘Despite her youth Marie Deussen is a splendid, very intelligent girl, who occasionally reminds me of you, dear Elisabeth, for which reason, naturally, I cannot refuse her my particular favour.’ For Marie’s birthday in December Nietzsche sent her a bound collection of his songs.[137] ‘I find that very gallant of me’, he wrote to Naumburg on the ninth of December, ‘it is the best way I can demonstrate my appreciation’.

1. 4 Nietzsche’s Medical History to 1864

The case of Pastor Carl Ludwig Nietzsche’s illness and death, itself unresolved, has a sequel in his son. But it is not just biographical curiosity which justifies the attention that has been given to Friedrich Nietzsche’s medical history. Even before Nietzsche retired on a sickness pension from the University of Basel in 1879 there were people, notably Richard and Cosima Wagner, who were saying that his recent thought showed signs of mental illness. Despite much attention to the subject including by medically qualified commentators there has never been a firm diagnosis of the condition which resulted in Nietzsche’s mental collapse. It is relevant, nonetheless, to set forth the known facts concerning his health through to his departure from Pforta.

Nietzsche’s state of health prior to the summer of 1856, when according to his 1858 autobiography he had to stay home from school because of ‘headaches’, is difficult to assess owing to lack of evidence. A letter from his mother to her brother Edmund in January 1853 reports her son suffering from a bout of ‘scarlet fever’ over which she was worried, it having claimed many victims in the district.[138] Records from the Cathedral Gymnasium indicate that Nietzsche had seventeen sick-days during the summer semester of 1856, a significant number. For the last two of Nietzsche’s six semesters at the Cathedral Gymnasium records are unfortunately lost. Eleven sick-days are indicated for his third-last semester (summer 1857), after they had fallen to two in the previous semester. During his first semester (winter 1855/56) only three sick-days are registered.[139] It is likely that most of these days lost from school were due to headaches and eye problems. According to Elisabeth, ‘as a result of the tiring winter of 1856-57, my brother for the first time showed signs of eye trouble, which at the start took the form of headaches […] My brother was obliged to prolong his summer holiday by a few weeks in order to recover from strain to his eyesight.’[140] This association of headaches and eye problems continued for many years, without a cause ever becoming clear. It is possible, however, that Nietzsche’s eye problems were independent (or relatively so) of the debilitating headaches from which he suffered throughout his life.

For the six years Nietzsche attended Schulpforta there is much more information on his health, from his many letters home and from the school’s medical records. At the beginning of December 1858, having been at Pforta for less than two months, he wrote to his mother that he had just consulted the school doctor, who wanted to see him regularly. The records indicate that he was in the school infirmary between the fifteenth and the twentieth of March 1859 (in his first semester) on account of ‘rheumatism’. In a letter to his mother on the twentieth of March he complained of headaches and asked if she had any remedies for this, also for coughs and colds. He was again in the infirmary for seven days in November, this time for ‘catarrh’. With regard to Nietzsche’s frequent periods in the Pforta infirmary it should be noted that the school did not believe in being soft or indulgent on the boys, being more inclined to the opposite (Spartan) policy that they should attend classes unless demonstrably unwell. In January 1860 Fritz was in the infirmary for twelve days because of ‘catarrh’, and in June of the same year for fifteen days because of ‘rheumatism’. A long bout of illness began in January 1861, involving nine days in the infirmary for a ‘cold’. He wrote to his mother (in mid-January): ‘I have constant headaches covering my whole head, my neck is painful every time I move and my throat is sore when I breathe. For two whole nights I have not slept at all but have been freezing and sweating by turns. I cannot get my mind clear. Everything around me is like a dream.’ Towards the end of January he reported to his mother that while his throat and neck had improved he was still suffering from frequent headaches, then on the thirtieth of January he told her: ‘The headaches are again so bad I cannot work. My neck aches and my throat is sore again. Owing to the pain I have not been able to sleep at night.’ Just a few days earlier he had been released from the infirmary (where he did not like staying, because he felt so isolated) but the school doctor advised him to return there. In the first half of February he stayed away from the infirmary and felt he was improving, although, as he wrote to his mother, he felt ‘extraordinarily exhausted’ and was beset by headaches at the least excitement. On the sixteenth of February, his condition having worsened, he wrote to Frau Nietzsche: ‘I am really fed up with these headaches; I am not improving and they just keep coming. The slightest activity of the head causes me pain. I am missing many lessons and am unable to catch up. Behind each ear I now have a poultice, but I don’t believe this will help. If only I could take long walks every day! Otherwise I don’t know how I am supposed to recover. I have been wondering whether it would be better for me to spend a few weeks in Naumburg and cure myself by walking.’ The doctor allowed him to go home. Back in Pforta at the end of the month, he felt a lot better; his headaches, so he wrote to his mother, had returned only a few times, and ‘it will be all right’.

In 1862 Nietzsche was confined to the infirmary on six occasions for a total of thirty-nine days. The causes are recorded as ‘congestion of the head’, ‘headaches’, ‘catarrh’, and ‘rheumatism’. On the twenty-fifth of August, after spending a week in the infirmary with ‘congestion’, he was again allowed to complete his recuperation in Naumburg. On this day he wrote to his mother, who at the time was staying with her brother Feodor in Merseburg: ‘The doctor has advised and permitted me to travel to Naumburg and there to undertake my water- and walking-cure. So today I am going to our house in Naumburg and there I shall live a quiet life without music or any other agitation. The doctor has given me the necessary dietary instructions. You do not need to worry and on no account should you return from Merseburg, where you are much needed [Feodor Oehler’s house had just burned down]. Perhaps living alone is the best life for me. So don’t worry, dear Mamma; if I avoid everything that can excite me the headaches will disappear.’ Over the next twenty-six years Nietzsche’s frequent sickness bulletins would be much the same as this. He would always be trying water-cures, he believed that incessant walking was a help, he would be preoccupied with his diet, and above all he would try to live a ‘quiet life’, which included dispensing with music. The only element missing from the quoted letter which looms large in his later quest for health is the climatic factor, but probably in 1862 he had not yet experienced a sufficient range of climates for this to occur to him.

When he sent Nietzsche home in August 1862 the doctor at Pforta, Carl August Zimmermann, made the following remarks in the school medical register: ‘He is a sturdy, thickset fellow with a noticeably fixed gaze, short-sighted and often plagued by recurring headaches. His father died young of softening of the brain and was conceived at an advanced age, the son [Fritz] at a time when the father was already sick. No serious signs are observable as yet but in view of his antecedents vigilance is necessary.’ Dr Zimmermann knew that Nietzsche’s father was already ill well before the alleged ‘fall’ of 1848. He did not have to be told this by Fritz or Frau Nietzsche, for he himself had been a pupil at Rossleben at the same time as Carl Ludwig, whose medical problems as a boy he was aware of. To be sure, there was not much that Dr Zimmermann could do other than counsel caution and apply received remedies for the symptoms Fritz displayed from time to time. These remedies included ‘cupping’ for the treatment of congestion, a mustard poultice for rheumatism, the application of oil for catarrh, water-cures, and dietary regimens. Another issue was Nietzsche’s eyes. Both Fritz and Elisabeth had inherited a weakness of the eyes, in particular short-sightedness, from their father. Elisabeth relates that in 1857 grandmother Oehler arranged for Fritz to consult a Jena eye-specialist, who made a connection between the boy’s eye problems and his headaches.[141] In the 1870’s and 1880’s Nietzsche’s medical advisors paid great attention to his eyes as a possible root cause of his illness, but it was never satisfactorily resolved whether his troublesome eyes were a cause, effect, or an independent but interconnecting condition. It is clear that already before Schulpforta Nietzsche not only suffered from short-sightedness but experienced aches around his eyes. His condition was probably exacerbated by the poor lighting by which he worked at night in Schulpforta, possibly too by the dark rooms he occupied when first in Naumburg. However, it appears that Dr Zimmermann paid no attention to the lighting at Pforta, even after being alerted to the issue by the Jena specialist.

Nietzsche had four stays in the school infirmary during 1863, for a total of thirty-five days. His conditions were ‘catarrh’ (twice), ‘inflammation of the ear’, and ‘diarrhea’. It appears that only one day intervened between the second and third of these stays and that his ear problem developed from his catarrh; except for this one day he was confined to the infirmary from the twenty-fourth of April to the twentieth of May. On the eleventh of May he wrote to his mother: ‘Behind the ear festering sores have formed. I especially suffer at night, and in general it is the most painful illness I have had.’ He wrote to her again on the seventeenth of May: ‘I have been feeling pretty miserable of late, since without seeing any change in my condition I have been tormented by pills and oil-rubs. Two nights ago I had the most dreadful coughing attack lasting two hours, with a cold and streaming eyes. Today my hoarseness has lessened, but the cold has returned.’ In 1864, his last year at school, Nietzsche spent only two short periods in the infirmary (‘catarrh’ and ‘congestion of the head’) for a total of six days. Except for one bad period in mid-1865 this seems to have been the beginning of nearly seven years of relatively good health which lasted until he contracted diphtheria and dysentery in France during his war-service in 1870. Thereafter he was chronically ill for the rest of his life, with brief periods of remission.

Clearly the extent of Nietzsche’s illness in childhood and adolescence was much greater than the average. It is noticeable, moreover, that most of his symptoms during this early period resemble those of his later years; gastric problems, and dry retching accompanying his headaches, are the main additions, especially after 1870, to the previously recorded symptoms. Headaches are the primary and most debilitating ongoing complaint. The consensus which emerged soon after Nietzsche’s collapse in 1889, and particularly after his death in 1900, that his primary illness must have been syphilis, was arrived at largely in ignorance of Nietzsche’s and his father’s early medical record. It is possible, no doubt, that syphilis was at some point overlaid on a pre-existing condition in Nietzsche. It is also possible that Nietzsche’s father suffered from syphilis and transmitted this disease to his son, but Carl Ludwig was himself chronically ill in his boyhood and youth, with symptoms in many respects similar to those of Fritz. Altogether, Nietzsche’s early medical history, and that of his father, would seem to tell against the diagnosis of syphilis, especially when taken in conjunction with other factors, including Nietzsche’s belief that he suffered from a hereditary condition and his lack of belief (so far as can be judged) that he suffered from syphilis.[142]

[1] KSA 9: 681; see also Nietzsche to Georg Brandes 10 April 1888.

[2] EH ‘Why I Am So Wise’ no. 3.

[3] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 5; Leben I, 12.

[4] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 5.

[5] Franziska Nietzsche to Adalbert Oehler c. October 1895, quoted in Benders and Oettermann, Chronik, 786.

[6] Franz Overbeck in Gilman, Begegnungen, 215-16.

[7] Müller, ‘Nietzsches Vorfahren’; Devreese, ‘Friedrich Nietzsches Ur-Urgrossvater Christoph Andreas Nitzsche’. The research of Devreese (published in 2012) seems the most comprehensive and reliable.

[8] Möbius, in his 1902 Nietzsche (17), reports that in the Leipzig Address Book for that year the name Nietzsch appears three times, Nietzsche five times, Nietzschke four, Nietzschmann eighteen, Nitsche fifteen, Nitzsche ninety-five, Nitzschke thirty-one.

[9] Nietzsche to Heinrich von Stein beginning of December 1882.

[10] KGW II 7/1: 533 lists nine publications of Nietzsche’s paternal grandfather between 1780 and 1820. Several are in Latin, but among the works in German are On Advantages, Burdens and Comfort in Old Age: For the Stimulation of Further Reflection and Judgement by the Thoughtful Elderly (published in 1789 when the author was thirty-three), Gamaliel, or the Eternally Enduring Truth of Christianity, for Instruction and Reassurance in the Current Ferment in the Theological World (1796) and Contributions Towards the Advancement of Rational Thought Concerning Religion, Education, Duties of Subjects, and Love of Man (1804). See Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 41-55, for a review of Friedrich August Nietzsche’s career and quotations from his writings.

[11] An extant letter from Erdmuthe to the Superintendent, responding to his preliminary inquiries about marriage and arranging for a discreet chaperoned meeting in Weißenfels, is a charming document of its time, reflecting a delicate balance of reserve and receptiveness: ‘Most honoured Herr Superintendent! Your kind letter, received through my brother a few days ago, has filled me with deep gratitude for your friendly feelings expressed in so lively and touching a manner. I cannot see it otherwise than as an act of God’s providence that you became aware of me, who I had believed to be unknown outside the circle of my close friends, and that you have become moved to a wish which presupposes an unconditional trust in me. In view of this conviction, and the respect I have for you, I accept with pleasure your suggestion for the continuation of our acquaintance, so that I may convey to you orally, which I would not be able to do so well in writing, my views, opinions, feelings and wishes. As to the place of our meeting, I am pleased that you have chosen somewhere outside of Naumburg. To me also Weißenfels seems the most suitable choice, because I at at any rate do not know anybody there. In response to your kind invitation my brother and his wife, as well as my sister, will accompany me there, which is a great comfort to me, for they have always taken a most tender concern for my welfare, and also in respect of this most important matter are supporting me in a brotherly and sisterly manner with their judgement and advice.” (in Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 61-62)

[12] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 33.

[13] Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 69-83.

[14] Oehler, Nietzsches Mutter, 2.

[15] Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 81.

[16] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 10.

[17] Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 35-36; Oehler, Nietzsches Mutter, 4.

[18] Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 86.

[19] Franziska Nietzsche’s autobiographical fragment ‘My Life’, written in 1895-96 just a year before her death, is printed in part in Adalbert Oehler, Nietzsches Mutter, 26-39, and more fully in Klaus Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 32-64.

[20] Franziska Nietzsche, ‘Mein Leben’, in Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 54.

[21] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 15.

[22] Carl Ludwig Nietzsche to Emil Julius Schenk 29 October 1844, quoted in Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 351.

[23] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 16-17 (with omissions).

[24] KGW I 1: 285.

[25] Förster-Nietzsche, Leben I, 19.

[26] Hödl, ‘Dichtung oder Wahrheit’, 297-98.

[27] e. g. Schlechta III: 15, following the BAW editors.

[28] KGW I 2: 259-60.

[29] KGW I 3: 191.

[30] Elisabeth Förster to Franziska Nietzsche 9 April 1889, quoted in Peters, Zarathustra’s Sister, 5.

[31] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 150-60.

[32] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 329.

[33] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 331.

[34] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 335-36.

[35] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 377-78.

[36] Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 378.

[37] Möbius, Nietzsche, 14; Möbius refers to his own conversations with Franziska Nietzsche’s physician in Naumburg Dr Gutjahr, the latter reporting testimony from Franziska.

[38] Friederike Dächsel to Bernhard Dächsel, quoted in Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 385.

[39] EH ‘Why I Am So Wise’ nos. 1 & 3.

[40] KGW I 1: 283-84.

[41] This (KGW I 1: 283) is the first occurrence in Nietzsche’s writings of the adjective ‘übermenschlich’ (superhuman).

[42] KGW I 1: 286.

[43] KGW I 1: 287.

[44] Oehler, Nietzsches Mutter, 46-47.

[45] Franziska’s diary entry for 9 August 1849 reads (in part): ‘My dearly beloved Ludwig, it is already eight days since we laid to rest your dear earthly remains! It has been very comforting to our deeply grieving hearts that you my dear blessed Ludwig have been honoured by so many signs of love and respect. But you deserved it, for I shall never forget your goodness in thought and deed, and I shall always try to be like you, my best husband and friend, and shall tell the children how you always wanted the best. O my good dear Ludwig! I thank you from my heart for your faithful love and for the fine image of yourself, my inwardly beloved Ludwig, which in spirit always hovers about me.’ (Klaus Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 150-51)

[46] Friedrich Nietzsche to Franz Overbeck 10 February 1883.

[47] Goch, Franziska Nietzsche, 363-64.

[48] Förster-Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche und die Frauen seiner Zeit, 22; Leben I, 27, 63-66.

[49] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 38.

[50] Nietzsche to C. A. Burckhardt July 1887 (draft); EH ‘Why I Am So Wise’ no. 3.

[51] Förster-Nietzsche, Leben I, 65.

[52] EH ‘Why I Am So Clever’ no. 1.

[53] Friedrich Nietzsche to Franziska Nietzsche 12 August 1887.

[54] Förster-Nietzsche, Leben I, 30-31.

[55] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 30.

[56] KGW I 1: 288.

[57] EH ‘Why I am so Clever’ no. 10.

[58] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 16; Goch, Nietzsches Vater, 357-58.

[59] KGW I 1: 306.

[60] KGW I 1: 298.

[61] KGW I 1: 297-98.

[62] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 29.

[63] KGW I 1: 300-301.

[64] Nietzsche to Franziska and Elisabeth Nietzsche 14 March 1885.

[65] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 41.

[66] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 40.

[67] KGW I 1: 294-95.

[68] KGW I 1: 307.

[69] Wilhelm Pinder in Janz, Biographie I, 60.

[70] KGW I 1: 317-18.

[71] KGW I 1: 309; Förster-Nietzsche, Leben I, 46. Thirty years later (11 November 1885) Nietzsche would sign himself ‘Prince Squirrel’ in a letter to his sister.

[72] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 52.

[73] KGW I 1: 6.

[74] KGW I 1: 272-73 (the middle stanza of this three-stanza poem has been omitted).

[75] KGW I 1: 126-29.

[76] KGW I 1: 175-76 (two stanzas omitted).

[77] Brobjer, ‘Nietzsche’s Education at the Naumburg Domgymnasium 1855-1858’, 314-15.

[78] Brobjer, ‘Why Did Nietzsche Receive a Scholarship to Study at Schulpforta?’, 327.

[79] See Appendix B in Brobjer, ‘Nietzsche’s Education at the Naumburg Domgymnasium 1855-1858’.

[80] KGW I 2: 263.

[81] KGW I 5: 52.

[82] The extant fragments of this project appear in KGW I 2: 36-51.

[83] KGW I 2: 47-48.

[84] KGW I 2: 104-05.

[85] GS no. 377.

[86] KGW I 2: 85 & 87.

[87] Otto Bendorf in Gilman, Begegnungen, 49.

[88] KGW I 2: 134-36.

[89] Nietzsche to Hans von Bülow (draft) 29 October 1872.

[90] The statutes of Germania are given in KGB I 4: 142-43.

[91] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 92.

[92] KGW I 2: 475-78.

[93] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 95.

[94] EH ‘Why I Am So Clever’ no. 6.

[95] KSA 11: 258.

[96] Nietzsche to Franziska and Elisabeth Nietzsche soon after 12 November 1865.

[97] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 97-98.

[98] KGW I 2: 480-81.

[99] ‘Schmerz ist der Grundton der Natur’ was submitted to Germania in August 1861 (KGW I 2: 482).

[100] KGW I 2: 274-84.

[101] KGW I 2: 244-52; KGB I 4: 297-98.

[102] KGW I 3: 4.

[103] KGW I 2: 370-75; KGW I 3: 54-65 & 239-69.

[104] KGW I 2: 281.

[105] Brobjer, ‘A Discussion and Source of Hölderlin’s Influence on Nietzsche’, 397-412.

[106] KGW I 2: 338-40.

[107] EH ‘Why I Am so Clever’ no. 4.

[108] KGW I 2: 345.

[109] KGW I 2: 349.

[110] KGW I 2: 119-20.

[111] Nietzsche to Hans von Bülow 29 October 1872.

[112] HAH no. 109.

[113] EH ‘Why I Am So Clever’ no. 4.

[114] KGW I 2: 447.

[115] KGW I 2: 431-40.

[116] Nietzsche read ‘Fate’ and other essays from Emerson’s The Conduct of Life (1860) in the 1862 German translation by E. S. von Mühlberg, Die Führung des Lebens: Gedanken und Studien. About the same time he read G. Fabricus’ 1858 translation, Versuche, of the first (1841) and second (1844) series of Emerson’s Essays. See Brobjer, Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context, 22-25, 117-22.

[117] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 89-90.

[118] Nietzsche’s ‘birthday note’ is given in KGW I 2, 307; the quoted words in Nietzsche’s letter come from Chapter 19 of Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (see KGB I 4: 192).

[119] Paul Deussen in Gilman, Begegnungen, 40-46 (with omissions).

[120] Carl von Gersdorff to Heinrich Köselitz 14 September 1900 (with omissions), quoted in Janz, Biographie I, 96.

[121] KGW I 3: 33.

[122] KGW I 3: 38.

[123] KGW I 3: 239-69.

[124] KGW I 3: 269.

[125] KGW I 3: 81.

[126] KGW I 2: 474.

[127] KGW I 3: 372-73.

[128] KGB I 4: 259; a few associated fragments are printed in KGW I 2: 473-75.

[129] KGW I 3: 340

[130] KGW I 3: 342.

[131] Brobjer, ‘Sources and Influences on Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy’.

[132] KGW I 3: 189-90.

[133] KGW I 3: 418-19.

[134] KGW I 5: 42 & 53.

[135] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 116-17.

[136] KGW I 3: 391.

[137] The package of four songs was based on texts by Chamisso, Petöfi, and Pushkin (KGB I 4: 340).

[138] Benders and Oettermann, Chronik, 20.

[139] See Brobjer, ‘Nietzsche’s Education at the Naumburg Domgymnasium 1855-1858’.

[140] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 63-64.

[141] Förster-Nietzsche, The Young Nietzsche, 63-64.

[142] Nietzsche’s medical records from Schulpforta are given in Janz, Biographie I, 128-29. The most detailed treatment of Nietzsche’s medical history, with documents, is Volz, Nietzsche im Labyrinth seiner Krankheit.