Friedrich Nietzsche

He was born in 1844 in the city of Röcken, near Leipzig, in Saxony, to a devout Christian family. It was named after King Friedrich IV of Prussia, who celebrated his 49th birthday on the day of Nietzsche's birth (Nietzsche abandoned his middle name Wilhelm in the end). His father, Karl Ludwig, a Lutheran priest and former teacher, and his mother, Francesca Olere, married in 1843. His younger sister Elizabeth was born in 1846, and his younger brother Ludwig Josef was born in 1848. When he was 6, His younger brother, who was born only two years earlier, died in 1850. The family then moved to the city of Neumbor, where they lived with his father's maternal grandmother and two unmarried daughters (his father's sisters).

Toward the age of nine, Nietzsche began to play the piano and wrote a number of fantasies and mazurkas. In addition, Nietzsche wrote poetry and two tragedies (the gods of Olympus, Orkadl), which he presented with his friends. Nietzsche was accepted to the prestigious Pforta school where he studied from 1858 to 1864.

After graduating in 1864, Nietzsche began studying classical theology and philology at the University of Bonn. Despite his mother's opposition, he stopped his theology after one semester, because of his loss of faith in God's existence. This may have been caused in part by the influence of the book "The Life of Jesus" by David Strauss, which negates the divine nature that Christianity attributes to Jesus and views it as a historical figure. After a while Nietzsche moved to the University of Leipzig together with his professor, Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl.

A year later, Nietzsche became interested in the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who died five years earlier. Roland Heiman, the biographer of Nietzsche, describes the accidental discovery, apparently in 1865, of Schopenhauer's book The World as Will and Image, among books in the shop of his landlord. The book was published in 1819 and did not generate echoes until the 1950s. When Nietzsche discovered Schopenhauer he was overcome with excitement:

I began to look into a mirror that reflected the world, my life and my spirit with a terrible glory. " I began to look at this dark, energetic genius to act on my mind.

The immediate effect of Schapenhauer on Nietzsche was a feeling of contempt for himself, until he sought to impose penalties on himself. By the sheer force of his will, he had not allowed himself to sleep more than four hours a night, and had kept it for two whole weeks. Schopenhauer's philosophy dwarfed his preoccupation with philology, which he considered unimportant.

An echo of Schopenhauer's metaphysical ideas can be found in Nietzsche's early writings, especially in "The Birth of Tragedy from the Fragrance of Music."

In 1867 Nietzsche enlisted for a year of volunteering in the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. But as a result of a riding accident in March 1868 he became unfit for service and again devoted all his energy to his studies.

After retiring from the army, he began to meet with musician and composer Richard Wagner in Leipzig, and later with his wife, Cosima (the daughter of Franz Liszt).

As a professor in Basel

Nietzsche, 1869.
With the help of Moro Ritschl, Nietzsche received an extraordinary proposal to serve as a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel, even before his doctorate was completed, and even before he completed his master's degree. He was only 24 years old. Nietzsche accepted this suggestion and decided to move to Basel, where he renounced his Prussian citizenship His life. Few scholars claim that Nietzsche received his Swiss citizenship as a Swiss citizen, although most scholars believe that from that moment on, he became a non-national. Despite this, he served in Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) as a medic. During the battles, he witnessed traumatic events and suffered from dysentery and dysentery. In 1870, Nietzsche returned to Basel and followed the rebirth of the German Empire and then Otto von Bismarck with great skepticism: "I see Prussia as one of the most dangerous forces of all culture ..." He wrote and advised his good friend Rohada "to escape this dying Prussia, Anti-cultural, in which slaves and priests pop up like mushrooms, we will soon be overwhelmed by Germany. "

Upon his return to university as a professor, he began to lecture, when his opening lecture dealt with "Homer and Classical Philology." However, he seems to have been influenced by Schopenhauer's contempt for academic institutions. His purpose was to teach, but he was not going to continue to work at the university until the end of his life.

In addition, he returned to meet with his friends Richard and Cosima Wagner and even visited both of them at their home in Trivszyn, Lucerne. He saw himself as a houseowner in their house. In 1870 he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of "The Beginning of the Tragic Idea" as a birthday gift. In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music," which was praised by his philological colleagues, and Moro Ritschl even noted his enthusiasm for the book.

Between 1873 and 1876, Nietzsche published four essays on the subject of criticism of German culture, influenced by Schopenhauer's philosophy and Wagner's views: David Strauss - the pious and the author, how useful and damaging history is to life, Schopenhauer as educator Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. These essays were later collected and published as "Studies that are not in the Present". At the same time he wrote the book Philosophy in the tragic era of the Greeks, which dealt with five pre-Socratic philosophers but this book is not completed.

In these years there was a mutual cold in relations between Nietzsche Lugner. In Nietzsche's notes about Wagner in 1874 he appears in a new criticism: when he became acquainted with Brahms music, Nietzsche disapproved of Wagner's mockery of composers of his generation. He stopped admiring Wagner's palace, rejected several invitations to visit him, and on one of the last visits he placed on the piano the score of Brahms' "victory song" in its red cover and said, "You see, here is someone else who also knows how to write good music!" In his notes, Nietzsche noted: "The tyrant does not admit any selfhood except his own self and that of his closest friends, and Wagner is very much at risk of denying the talent of Brahms and of the Jews."

During the Bayreuth Festival in 1876, where his friend Wagner appeared, Nietzsche saw the decay of her European audience and famously said "Is man simply a mistake of God, or is God simply a mistake of man?"